The artist and activist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara published a video on his Facebook account in which he recounts, with a mix of indignation and restrained emotion, what he experienced during the act of repudiation led by Cuban diplomats at the United Nations headquarters in New York, directly linking it to the repression he himself faced in Cuba before being imprisoned.
The founder of the Movimiento San Isidro, who has been in the United States for only three months after being expelled from Cuba in July 2026 following a five-year prison sentence, described the moment he entered the forum "Cuba Libre: The Oppression That Havana Hides" —organized by U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz on October 19— and encountered a crowd shouting that at first he did not recognize as an act of repudiation.
"For the moment, I realize that this is a rally of repudiation that they are holding against us in the United States," he recounted.
What followed was a visceral reaction: his body transported him back to Havana, to the acts of harassment he himself endured for years before ending up behind bars.
"Imagine those individuals roaming free in Havana. Imagine them with the complete freedom to enter your home, even to hit you, to break everything they can, because you are not protected in Havana," he said, addressing both the Cuban people and the international institutions present at the forum.
That difference—the security he felt at the UN versus the total lack of protection for activists on the island—is the core of his reflection. "They can do nothing right now, we are here in the place of freedom," he thought at that moment. But immediately came the other side: "Imagine living that completely unprotected in the mouth of the beast. And as the beast bites you, crushes you, spits you out, chews you up again, breaks your bones with impunity."
Otero does not speak in abstract terms. Before being detained on July 11, 2021, and sentenced to five years in prison, he suffered more than 90 arbitrary arrests in less than three years, organized acts of repudiation by the State, raids, and hunger strikes.
The act of repudiation at the UN was led by the Cuban delegation headed by Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, who shouted "terrorists," "liars," and "out with terrorists from the UN" at the end of the forum. Ambassador Waltz publicly denounced it as "a mob of diplomats from the Cuban regime at the UN harassing former political prisoners."
The regime's response did not take long. The chancellor Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla described Otero as a "criminal" and a "circus performer" during a press conference, even questioning his artistic career. Otero did not respond to the insults but used them as an argument: "Those same characters who accuse us of being vulgar, of being lowlifes, as they say, behave like this at the UN."
For the artist, the episode holds value that goes beyond diplomatic scandal: it is a sign of desperation from the regime and, at the same time, a message of encouragement for those resisting inside Cuba. "What we experienced at the UN is a reflection of how ugly and horrific the Cuban dictatorship is," he concluded.
The annual vote at the UN on the Cuban resolution against the embargo was scheduled for October 27 and 28, in a context where support for that resolution has dropped from 187 votes in 2024 to 136 in the extraordinary session of July 2026.
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