The independent journalist and Cuban activist Yosmany Mayeta Labrada announced this Wednesday his formal addition to Martí Noticias, the digital platform of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), a U.S. government agency that operates Radio y TV Martí.
" Proud to belong to the great family of Martí Noticias, my home since I was very young and now a little more grown-up," Mayeta wrote in a post on Facebook, accompanied by photographs taken at the OCB headquarters in Miami, in front of the institution's Newsroom sign.
The announcement comes just weeks after Mayeta managed to resolve a lengthy immigration process that posed a risk of her deportation to Cuba.
On July 1, 2026, his attorneys Liudmila Marcelo and Yelena Guerra successfully obtained that the Immigration Court dismissed all charges against him, eliminating the deportation proceedings and leaving him free to apply for permanent residency with the Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS).
Mayeta had arrived in the United States in 2019 with a J-1 visa tied to a journalism fellowship, which left him in legal limbo for seven years: this type of visa requires a waiver or two years of residency in the country of origin before he can adjust his immigration status.
In June 2026, the journalist publicly revealed his migratory struggle and warned that being deported would mean imprisonment in Cuba due to his activism and journalistic work against the regime.
A native of Santiago de Cuba, Mayeta joined the Cuban Patriotic Union (UNPACU) in 2011 and has since developed the citizen journalism project "Kuba x Dentro," through which he documented blackouts, police repression, shortages, and corruption in the eastern part of the country.
He collaborated with independent media such as CubaNet and 14ymedio before going into exile.
His name transcended the borders of activism thanks to the viral phenomenon “¡Súbelo, Mayeta!”, a slogan born from a song by the Santiago urban artists Lico Wayne, Tino Mán, and the producer Asdrúbal Reyna, which became a popular rallying cry for civic denunciation on social media.
The slogan jumped from screens to the streets in October 2024, when young people in Santiago de Cuba led a protest conga chanting the phrase amid a nationwide electricity collapse, establishing Mayeta as a reference figure for civic activism in Cuba.
With his joining Martí Noticias, the Santiago native makes a leap from his work as an independent civic communicator to an institutional media platform with greater reach and resources, although with connections that, as he himself acknowledges, stem from his younger days as a journalist.
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