The Cuban activist and analyst Omar López Montenegro, founder and president of the Latin American Center for Nonviolence (CELANV), presented his book "Nonviolent Strategic Struggle. 100 Practical Tips" this Thursday in Montevideo at an event related to the Latin American Athenaeum in the city.
Entrepreneur Gonzalo Downey Castillo, who served as the event's host, described the day on Facebook this Friday with heartfelt words: "Yesterday I had the honor of presenting in Uruguay one of the people I have admired most in my life: Omar López Montenegro, founder of the Latin American Center for Nonviolence and a man whose career has been recognized worldwide by governments, parliaments, international organizations, and foundations, as a result of his relentless and tireless fight for Human Rights, Democracy, and Nonviolence."
Downey Castillo, who claims to have had López Montenegro as a friend and mentor for over twenty years, dedicated a significant portion of his publication to recalling the price the activist paid for his dissent.
"The Cuban dictatorship tried to take everything away from him. It stripped him of the right to live freely in his homeland, forced him to leave his country, denied him the chance to say goodbye to his parents, and threw him into exile with little more than a piece of clothing, as the price for saving his life and that of his family," he wrote.
López Montenegro was born in Havana and studied Economics. His activism for human rights began in 1988, the year he founded the Association for Artistic Freedom (APAL). In October of that year, he participated alongside other members of the organization in a protest during which he was beaten and arrested. He subsequently suffered numerous detentions and went into exile in May 1992.
Based in the United States, he has maintained an extensive career in the defense of human rights and has served as the Director of Human Rights for the Cuban American National Foundation (FNCA). He has also been a regular contributor to Radio Martí and has engaged in international activities promoting human rights and non-violent methods of struggle in various countries across Latin America and Europe.
López Montenegro currently presides over the Latin American Center for Nonviolence (CELANV), an organization based in Miami dedicated to promoting Nonviolent Strategic Action as a tool to foster political and social change in Latin America.
About the strength that López Montenegro maintained despite all that the regime took from him, Downey Castillo wrote: "But there was something they could never take from him: inner freedom. They couldn't steal the peace of his conscience or his love for life. And from that experience emerged a mission that has guided his existence: to ensure that no human being, in Cuba or anywhere in the world, is ever imprisoned, persecuted, or tortured for thinking differently".
Published in 2023, Nonviolent Strategic Struggle: 100 Practical Tips brings together Omar López Montenegro's experience as an activist and his study of nonviolent resistance movements around the world. Designed as a practical tool for activists and civic movements confronting authoritarian regimes, the volume organizes its hundred recommendations into three main sections: empowerment, strategy, and communication.
The work has also reached the interior of Cuba and circulated among activists on the island; in July 2026, the intellectual and activist Alina Bárbara López Hernández mentioned that she was reading a copy during one of her detentions in Matanzas.
López Montenegro's thoughts on the current Cuban reality were also captured in a paper published in May 2026, where he argued that the so-called "new man" forged by the revolution is today the one who most directly challenges the regime: "The great paradox of the 'new man' lies in the fact that it is precisely he who expresses himself most directly against the regime of political exclusion." The analysis is supported by data from the Cuban Conflict Observatory, which recorded 11,268 protests in Cuba during 2025, over 25% more than the 8,443 counted in 2024, as reported by Infobae.
Downey Castillo closed his publication with a wish that encapsulates the essence of López Montenegro's journey: "I hope that life grants me the privilege of seeing him return to his old Havana, to see him embrace his people again and walk through its streets with the same serenity, the same infinite love for life, and the same faith in freedom that he has managed to keep intact."
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