Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara addressed the controversy generated on social media over a watch that he has been wearing since arriving in Miami, and he dismantled it with an argument that is as simple as it is powerful: the watch is inexpensive, costing about 30 dollars, and it was gifted to him by someone who cares about him.
“The watch demonstrates that they cannot distinguish between a croquette and a hot dog because anyone with a moderate understanding of watches knows that this is a cheap watch; purchased anywhere; that cost 30 pesos and was given to me by someone who cares for me,” stated the co-founder of the San Isidro Movement in the interview granted to Tania Costa for CiberCuba.
The controversy arose days after Otero Alcántara arrived in Miami on July 18, when critics on social media —some connected to the Cuban government— suggested that the watch was a luxury item incompatible with the image of an activist.
Otero himself acknowledged the irony of the situation. In his opinion, what started as a gesture of affection ended up becoming ammunition for the attack. "This comes from a place of love. And it has turned into a whole film about the watch," he noted.
To illustrate the absurdity of the argument, he posed a hypothetical scenario: "Let's say that tomorrow Marco Rubio gifts me a watch worth 40,000 dollars. And what happens? That will make me stop fighting against the dictatorship in Cuba."
His response was emphatic: political commitment does not depend on what one wears on the wrist. "Am I supposed to dress in rags, in extreme hunger, in dire need to prove that I am someone who can fight for the freedom of Cuba? Honestly, that's a lie, brother. It's carried here in the mind," he stated.
Behind the joke, the activist identified an underlying issue: the belief that a dissident must live in misery to be authentic is, in his view, a direct legacy of communist egalitarianism. At this point, he referred to the "anthropological damage" that the dictatorship has inflicted on Cubans both inside and outside the island.
In the same interview, Otero did not hide his personal preferences. "I love dressing well," he added unapologetically.
In CiberCuba, the activist also announced his intention to auction the watch and allocate the money entirely to Cuban political prisoners, with the hope that it could reach 20,000 dollars in a sale.
But Otero’s central message reached further than the object in dispute. He called to redirect the energy of the debate towards those who truly need it: the more than a thousand political prisoners who remain in Cuban prisons, many of them without public visibility and suffering conditions that he himself acknowledged he had not experienced due to his international prominence.
"If you focus right now on Luis Manuel, if he's chubby, if he's wearing a watch, all that does is waste time. Right now in Cuba, there are more than a thousand political prisoners," he warned.
The organization Prisoners Defenders documented 1,281 political prisoners in Cuba in May 2026, many of whom were arrested following the protests of July 11, 2021, the same popular uprising for which Otero was arrested and later sentenced to five years in prison.
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