The Action for Amnesty 2026 Forum could be the starting point for a solid opposition front
14ymedio, Madrid, Ariel Hidalgo, May 6, 2026 / The time has come for the Cuban people to be present and speak out. They need no permission to speak and act in their own home, for their consciousness has grown. It is time to make heard, loud and clearm, their naked yet luminous truth, for it needs no deceptive trappings of lies, both in the face of those who clamor for a false sovereignty and the powerful neighbor who ignores the Cuban people, claiming that the country’s devastation is due to a dysfunction of the nation itself and not to the model upheld by those who have oppressed the people under the pretext of a false representation.
Until today, at this crucial moment when the fate of our nation is to be decided, the voice of our people has not been heard, just as it was ignored in 1898 when peace was agreed upon between two foreign powers to determine the fate of our land in the Treaty of Paris, after a war initiated by Cubans themselves to achieve their independence. This omission cannot be repeated. In a conflict that has lasted for many years, the lives of so many brothers and sisters, as well as the sacrifices of so many warriors for peace, cannot be ignored.
But now the time has come to remove the gags and make our presence felt, without hatred or resentment, but peacefully demanding respect for all our rights.
But now the time has come to remove the gags and make our presence felt, without hatred or resentment, but peacefully demanding respect for all our rights
All the strands of the people are converging into a single voice, like a vibrant rainbow stretching from San Antonio to Maisí and from the coasts of Cuba to the world: union members, religious leaders, human rights activists, writers, artists, feminists, environmentalists, lawyers, self-employed workers, and other sectors. This voice is not only clamoring for the freedom of political prisoners through the Action for Amnesty Forum 2026, founded on February 6th, but also for the dismantling of the social and legal structures that foster and perpetuate their imprisonment. And this forum is becoming the focal point for this entire spectrum of voices.
Because it is the integration of several alliances, such as D’Frente and the Council for the Democratic Transition of Cuba, composed of 34 organizations led by Manuel Cuesta Morua, as well as dissident academics Alina Bárbara López and Jenny Pantoja, and exiled activists such as Carolina Barrero, Ileana de La Guardia and Amelia Calzadilla. This forum must demand, massively before the world, the right to be recognized as the legitimate voice of the Cuban people, and not a spurious government that night after night receives, from many corners of the country, the resounding repudiation of the entire Cuban people.
The Forum could be the starting point of a solid opposition front, because if it called for “closing ranks” in the demand for amnesty, then now, in the face of the government’s declaration that political prisoners will not be released, we must close ranks to put an end to the context that led to this injustice, since this leadership leaves no alternative but to eradicate the political structures that generated the criminalization of dissent, an achievable goal if we take into account that there is also another authority in the people, the one that the leader of the Silk Road Revolution, Václav Havel, alluded to: “the power of the powerless.”
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