dissident

July 20 (UPI) — Cuban artist and dissident Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara said he cannot return home after arriving in exile in the United States this weekend.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio renewed his call Monday for the Cuban government to release more than 700 political prisoners amid rising tensions between Washington and Havana.

Otero Alcántara, 38, arrived in Miami on Saturday after spending five years imprisoned in Cuba on charges of desecrating national symbols, contempt and public disorder.

His arrival was confirmed by Rubio, who said the artist had been imprisoned for challenging the Cuban government.

In his first public remarks since arriving in the United States, the founder of the San Isidro Movement said prison changed the way he sees people, but acknowledged that exile carries a high personal cost.

“Five years later, I am more human. Prison is a place where you can look into the eyes of people who, even after committing the worst crimes, are still human beings,” he said in videos published by Caraota Digital.

However, he said that being forced to leave Cuba does not represent true freedom.

“I have been expelled from Cuba. This is not right. … I can’t see my son. I can’t return to my home. It’s just not right,” he said.

Otero Alcántara gained international prominence via a collective of artists and intellectuals that called for greater freedom of expression in Cuba and that, according to Amnesty International, has been the target of constant persecution by Cuban authorities.

He was arrested while attempting to join the anti-government protests of July 11, 2021, and was sentenced to five years in prison a year later.

After confirming Otero Alcántara’s arrival in the United States, Rubio said on X that the artist’s imprisonment was the result of challenging “the Marxist tyranny of the Cuban regime,” and he demanded the immediate release of “the more than 700 political prisoners unjustly detained” on the island.

Rubio said President Donald Trump‘s administration will continue to support those seeking greater political freedoms in Cuba.

MIAMI — Cuban dissident and Grammy-winning musical artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara arrived in Miami on Saturday after being released from a five-year prison sentence on condition that he leave his country.

Alcántara, 38, was greeted at the airport by a crowd that was cheering, singing and holding their phones high in the air to get a photo of him. They draped him in a Cuban flag, printed with the words “Patria y Vida” — Homeland and Life — the title of a song he shared a Grammy for that became an anthem for Cuba’s political opposition against repression.

The United States granted him parole into the country last week, according to a social media page maintained by his friends and supporters. They wrote that he accepted exile as the only way to escape persecution and continue his art and activism.

Alcántara co-founded a group of Havana artists, writers and musicians called the San Isidro Movement, named for the neighborhood where Alcántara lived.

He was arrested July 11, 2021, during a public protest. In 2022, a court sentenced him to five years in prison for public disorder, contempt and disrespect toward national symbols.

His arrest and incarceration had long been denounced by human rights organizations and the U.S. government. Groups including Amnesty International called him a political prisoner, a designation the Cuban government rejected.

Alcántara was held in a maximum-security prison, he said, and was expected to be released earlier this month. But for days, advocates said they still could not contact him and did not know where he was.

The organization Cubalex, which legally advises dissidents and reports human rights violations from outside of the country, filed a habeas corpus petition on his behalf Monday.

Until he boarded a plane Saturday, his advocates were unsure of his location or whether he truly had been released.

His said his first stop on American soil would be at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Charity in Miami to make an offering.

Other political prisoners remained behind bars in Cuba, including his fellow artist Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo Pérez, his advocates said, and they hoped Alcántara’s release would lead to Pérez also being freed.

Alcántara brought from Cuba a broken statue of the Virgin Mary, which he described as a symbol of hope and healing, a chance to put back together something from fragments.