Daniel Llorente Miranda, the Cuban political activist who in 2017 challenged the regime by running with an American flag in front of Raúl Castro in the Plaza de la Revolución, has returned to Cuba as an ordinary tourist.
Llorente himself announced his return in a video posted on TikTok this week, where he appeared on a street next to a car he rented at the airport.
"With my little cart, with two Cuban flags. No American flag, no provocations," he says at the beginning of the video.
The twist is difficult to process: the same man who was exiled from the Island, who crossed the Darién with his son and slept in his car in Tampa, now appears in Havana, proclaiming that he is not here to provoke anyone.
Llorente recounted that he entered the country without any issues: "I came in, nobody called me, nobody said anything to me. Everyone was telling me that they wouldn't let me in... well, I tell you that's not true. I left like any Cuban returning to their country, just for a visit."
He has his own interpretation of the silence from the authorities. According to him, the regime calculated that acting against him would be counterproductive: "They said, if we call Daniel, we can't tell him he can't come in because he's Cuban, we can't say that. And if we say something to him, it would be a scandal, people would find out."
The most bewildering change is not just his physical return, but the accompanying rhetoric. Llorente now self-identifies as a prophet and Christian messenger. "I did not come as a flag-waving man; I came in the condition of Moses," he states in the video. His declared mission is to bring to Cubans "the message of salvation" under the motto "Jesus Christ, Cuba is your home."
Where there used to be a United States flag and a challenging race before the dome of Cuban power, today there are two Cuban flags and a discourse centered on Jesus Christ.
The contrast with its history is significant.
It is important to remember that on May 1, 2017, Llorente ran onto the stage where Raúl Castro and other high-ranking officials were present during the official International Workers' Day parade. The images spread around the world. He was immediately subdued by security agents and later admitted to the Psychiatric Hospital of Havana, where he remained for months. The UN documented that since 2014 he had accumulated more than 30 arrests.
In May 2019, Cuban authorities forced him to board a flight with Aruba Airlines to leave the country without his family, in what he and opposition organizations described as an exile. He departed for Guyana.
From there, Llorente and his son Eliezer embarked in 2021 on a journey through ten countries, including two days in the Darién jungle, until they crossed the border in Laredo, Texas, on June 30 of that year.
He settled in Tampa, Florida, where months later the Tampa Bay Times and the Chicago Tribune found him sleeping in his car, unable to afford housing and working for minimum wage.
It was then that a Vietnam War veteran offered him his home in Tampa, moved by his story. Years later, Llorente went from being the recipient of help to assisting that very same veteran.
As of the time the video was published, Llorente had not reported any reprisals or actions from the Cuban authorities against him, although his presence on the Island raises inevitable questions about how long he will be able to stay there and how the regime will react to his new statements.
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