From the U.S., the artist and activist looks back on the physical shock of freedom, the impact of his confinement in Guanajay, and his unshaken conviction to return to the island
/ 14ymedio
14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Miami, July 24, 2026 / On July 11, 2021, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara went out into the streets of Havana with barely 20 pesos in his pocket and the determination to join the popular uprising that shook the island. He did not get far: he was arrested before joining the march and taken to the maximum-security prison in Guanajay. There he served a full five-year prison sentence, subjected to isolation, the harsh conditions of political imprisonment, and constant psychological harassment from the Cuban regime.
The artist landed in the United States six days ago, where he was taken as a condition of his release, far from his homeland, his home in San Isidro, and his son.
Question. After five years imprisoned and cut off from the outside world, what has that immediate collision with physical freedom been like? What was the first thing you felt or thought when you set foot outside Cuba?
Answer. It’s a stage, a transition. Tomorrow it will be a week since I arrived in the United States, and in this transition the hardest thing for me has been adapting to freedom. It’s like learning to walk again. The light, the beauty… At first you walk down the streets and everything is beautiful, but not everything beautiful is yours, or not everything beautiful can you touch.
The matter of time, the fact that five minutes aren’t really five minutes, or the relationship with transportation, how to get from one place to another, which can seem close and at the same time very far. Even the relationship with aesthetics: how you come out of a situation where you’re dressed in gray 24/7, and for five years you don’t dress differently nor do you have any reason to – neither you nor your physical, aesthetic, intellectual, political body has to interact in any way other than dressed in gray – and when you arrive here that contrast is insane.
“There are moments when I feel like something is missing or something is too much.”
There are moments when I feel like something is missing or something is too much. I went into prison wearing a face mask, because of COVID. I compare the feeling of being without a mask to freedom of expression. You feel like something was taken from your mouth, from your eyes, something you used to have in Cuba that you no longer have here, because you spent five years unable to speak, unable to say things.
Question. You were locked up in Guanajay, a prison whose conditions have been denounced as extreme and inhumane. There you shared imprisonment with many of the young people from July 11. What were you able to see and learn about how they are living through their confinement, what is their physical and emotional state, what do people suffer inside that prison?
Answer. The first thing: when I arrived, I felt my body shut down. I was overwhelmed with emotions. First, getting out of that confinement, the first confinement, which was in Guanajay, then the second confinement, which was the State Security safe house near Guanabo beach.
Then, going through all the stress before the airport. Then getting on a plane, flying 45 minutes, and arriving in the United States. And in that moment there is so much information in so little time. I meet Claudia Genlui, the first of my friends I see up close. But I was seeing so many people moving around, so many things my body had left behind for five years. So my body shut down. Then I go out and there’s a crowd of people with cameras, listening to what I have to say. Among those cameras, you see friends, you see faces, you see people from your childhood.
“I was seeing so many people moving around, so many things my body had left behind for five years. So my body shut down.”
And in that span of time, if your body had responded to all those emotions, it could have collapsed. That’s why, little by little, it has been opening up, letting the information through.
In fact, with my friends it’s been little by little: at first I spoke with two, then I spoke with four, then I spoke with six, then I spoke with ten, and so on, little by little, I’ve been incorporating more friends into my routine, because it’s impossible to talk to all my friends from the first day without collapsing, without crying, without going into shock. Little by little my body has lost that rigidity.
Prison is a different experience for each individual. Even the violence experienced inside is a completely different kind of violence.
For example, there were a lot of people from July 11 who were released on a kind of parole, and many went back to prison for not following the script the regime set for them. I served the full five years. There are many types of imprisonment and many types of relationships inside, where many of the young people or the people who went out on the 11th weren’t even activists or political people. They were young people who simply went out to fight for their freedom, for Cuba’s freedom.
A young man named Denis came to me – he was released under a kind of conditional freedom that required him to keep his mouth shut, work for them, and take a certain stance, and when he failed to comply, they sent him back to prison.
“A trip of 20 kilometers can cost a fortune in pesos, so not every prisoner in the world has someone who can come see them, or bring them a little food.”
In there, there are also many types of imprisonment depending on the level of attention received. Many prisoners are kept in conditions that allow their families to visit. But today a trip of 20 kilometers can cost a fortune in pesos, so not everyone has someone who can come see them, not everyone has someone to bring them a little food. And not all political prisoners have outside attention or help from friends.
But prison for everyone is confinement in an extremely difficult situation. When you look at people’s faces, even the faces of those who are there because they committed a crime, you see sad faces, faces in which you can make out a feeling that doesn’t belong to any reality other than confinement.
Question. Prison in Cuba is designed to break the spirit, especially that of an artist. In what ways did they try to break you? Where did you find the strength to hold on for these five years, and how did you manage to keep your creative capacity alive inside prison?
Answer. Prison, and political prison even more so, is one of the most aberrant things human beings – in this case, dictatorships – have invented. It’s extremely hard to explain the human and personal experience of being locked behind bars, in a space where you cannot move, on top of every kind of deprivation. Having another human being decide for you, like what time you see your children, how long you see them, or what you’re allowed to say.
In my case, I feel the regime knew… Remember that the regime has a psychological profile on me and knows what things matter to me, what motivates me, and the things I cannot live without.
There was an incident at Calixto García Hospital [in May 2021], during which they saw the effect it had on me when they destroyed five or six of my paintings. That’s how they build a psychological profile. Coming from that experience, it seems they realized that if they didn’t let me paint, I would die, so they allowed materials to be brought in and let me paint.
There was a time when I was in the punishment cell (one of the many times I was) and I made a particular kind of painting, a very dark one. They confiscated that piece, examined it, and never gave it back to me. From that moment on, I was never sent to the punishment cell again. It seems they saw something there that they didn’t want to leave me alone with, so I could decide things for myself, because human creativity outstrips man’s surveillance.
“I think the strength came from my DNA, that heritage of the mixture of Black African, Spanish, and Arab blood. Did you know my last name, Alcántara, means ‘bridge’?”
I think the strength came from my DNA – the DNA my mother and father gave me, my family heritage. That heritage of the mixture of Black African, Spanish, and Arab blood. Did you know my last name, Alcántara, means “bridge”? That Alcántara had to come from somewhere.
My creative strength was nothing more than an exercise in resistance and a portrait of pain; at first it was like vomiting, like screaming. The horrible place where I was spoke to me from every direction, everything around me was begging me to depict it on a sheet of paper, on a piece of cardboard.
There’s a point where I say I could have had, say, a camera, as a metaphor. And a photograph wasn’t going to capture everything that was captured in the painting, because painting is something you touch.
Something that carries the tactile experience, the organic experience; it’s like when you’re working with ceramics and you’re touching it. That ceramic, at some point, receives heat, receives all the spiritual, physical, and chemical experiences that come with it.
And painting is the same way. Painting is so organic and clings so closely to reality that it’s capable of capturing experiences that a lens, for example, cannot capture. In that moment, everything around me… I was like in a trance. It was as if it passed through me and had to come out, it was inevitable to put it onto the cardboard, otherwise my head would explode.
Question. You’ve always said your body and your work are inseparable. How did your relationship with art change during your confinement? Do you feel that the Luis Manuel who comes out today is the same artist who went into Guanajay in 2021?
Answer. Yes, I do believe I’m the same Luis Manuel. Now, there’s an important word when you talk to me about coming out of prison as a different Luis Manuel: I do believe I’m the same person, what happens is that there are processes of maturity. One understands maturity by living through maturity. Prison is an extremely violent, extremely aggressive exercise.
When you look into the eyes of people who have committed crimes that are extremely hard to understand, and despite that you manage to see the face of a sad human being, that sensitizes you even if you don’t understand things, it makes you feel more human.
“It wasn’t a youthful protest, it wasn’t an adolescent experience, it’s an adult experience, it’s fighting for others, sacrificing yourself for others so that the world can be a better place.”
And especially when you come out understanding other political, ideological, and human processes: you don’t come out hating, you don’t come out with that darkness. That lets you see, it illuminates you, and in that illumination you’re more human. You reaffirm to yourself your love for humanity; you feel it wasn’t a youthful protest, it wasn’t an adolescent experience, it’s an adult experience, it’s fighting for others, sacrificing yourself for others so that the world can be a better place.
My relationship with art had a moment, for example, with the piece of the Virgin they commissioned from me for Santiago de Cuba, where my body went out walking, and along the way I began to understand the aesthetic dimension of the act of walking, where people saw not just a work of art but a real pilgrimage, and processes happened there that were, for me, a kind of illumination.
In prison I was like a camera, a kind of stack of paper, and reality was a stack for screen printing or woodcut printing. I would simply take the cardboard, press it against reality, and when I lifted it, these figures would come out. I still live with a lot of unanswered questions and answers that I myself give to reality; coming from there, that place spoke to me constantly, and I simply wrote down in colors each experience or each question I had inside, or that someone asked me to depict.
Question. For the regime, exile is a tool for dismantling the opposition and cultural movement. How do you process this forced banishment? Do you feel that leaving was the only possible path at this moment?
Answer. The regime, within its military mathematical codes, has always understood exile as the next step, because in some way it worked for them for 70 years. They see death as the last step, but they know the cost it carries.
In the case of someone like me, as an activist and artist, it’s a different process. I didn’t want to go into exile, I didn’t want to leave Cuba, because of the love I have for that reality, because I love always returning to my home, to my son, to the place where I scattered my mother’s and father’s ashes. That place is mine and no one is going to take it from me.
Now, in my thinking as an activist there’s something important: what is the next step in the evolution of activism itself so that Cuba can move toward democracy? We went through the confinement in San Isidro, the persecution, and all those experiences, and each one led to a social evolution.
“When I was arrested, I was given the option to leave; I could have left the next day, and I decided not to, that it was an experience of civic resistance I had to go through.”
When I ended up in prison, I could have stayed a prisoner and remained a victim of Castroism (which I still am), but I felt that no longer interested me or produced anything. When I was arrested, I was given the option to leave; I could have left the next day, and I decided not to, that it was an experience of civic resistance I had to go through. Who are you not to go through political imprisonment?
Having gone through that, and making the decision not to leave in those first months, helped me understand a reality. If we ask ourselves, on a spiritual level, why I had to be there, I understood it was to grasp the suffering of confinement and of the prisoner, both political and common.
Question. The San Isidro Movement and the spirit of July 11 marked a turning point on the island, but today much of that generation is in exile or under repression. From your perspective, where does the fight for Cuba’s freedom stand today?
Answer. I believe the fight for Cuba’s freedom has to be creative and has to constantly rethink itself in the face of new challenges. Fifteen years ago I was afraid to put a sculpture in the middle of a park. I would arrive at the Capitolio, put up an elephant, and I’d be terrified. I kept evolving as repression increased, but that creativity of mine never stopped existing.
There was a time when, locked in my house, unable to go out and do a public performance, the chocolate paintings stirred up thoughts to such a degree that they had to come in and destroy them. Then I went through Calixto García Hospital and later through prison, always proposing creative experiences.
I don’t think we should do the same thing San Isidro did, because we’re not in the times when San Isidro was born. We’re in a time when the situation and the repression in Cuba are extremely difficult, and we as creative beings must respond creatively. Right now I’m in exile: exile is going to speak to me and I’m going to respond to it, Cuban reality is going to speak to me from here and I’m going to respond to it, and all of that is going to be the new experience.
Question. What remains today of the San Isidro Movement?
Answer. For now, what remains of San Isidro are the human beings who are going to reunite at some point, we’ll embrace each other and see what the next step is at the level of collective experience.
There will come a time when I’ll sit down with the founders of San Isidro and we’ll see what’s left of that feeling and energy that united us. It may be that we decide San Isidro fulfilled its mission and can’t go any further, or it may evolve. That’s a decision that we, the people who built it, will make, because I’m not going to claim San Isidro as my own, nor am I the owner of anything; San Isidro was an energy that arose from the collective.
Question. Will your art continue down the activist path?
Answer. Yes, of course. I’m going to keep going down the activist path. There were times when I couldn’t sleep; things happened around me that forced me to tell their stories because they were voiceless beings. In Guanajay there were deaths and crimes that stayed there and that no one knows about, innocent people whom the surrounding environment itself pushed to be there.
“There are a lot of experiences I feel responsible for and wasn’t going to leave behind.”
There are a lot of experiences I feel responsible for and wasn’t going to leave behind. My paintings aren’t only going to be for sale, they’re going to be to make people think and to change a lot of social attitudes.
Question. In Cuba there are still hundreds of political prisoners and a population suffocated by the crisis and under heavy surveillance. What message do you send to those who are still resisting inside the island and to the families of those imprisoned?
Answer. The message to the families, to the people fighting inside, and to the prisoners is that institutions, dictatorships, and democracy are created by human beings. No one should think things are going to fall from the sky: we have to create them ourselves. And one important thing is that sacrifice is necessary.
Question. Exile forces you to rebuild from scratch, both personally and creatively. Where are your steps and your work headed now, in this new stage? Why Miami?
Answer. I decided to go into exile because today activists and journalists living abroad have a level of influence inside Cuba, and that distance no longer exists.
I understood that inside Cuba you spend more than 70% or 80% of your energy dealing with repression: hiding, going from one holding cell to another… All of that takes away creative time, and what interests us far more is creating rather than being victims. We’re going to keep pursuing the goal and the project.
“I’m going to respond with my artistic, political, cultural, physical self as it adapts to this reality. I’m never going to pretend.”
Exile really is a space to start from zero. I think this is the simplest answer I can give you: I’m going to respond with my artistic, political, cultural, physical self as it adapts to this reality. I’m never going to pretend; right now I’m not going to start painting who knows what, I don’t even know what’s going to happen.
And what’s going to come out of this collision of mine with exile, which is part of Cuba… We’ve been here barely ten days and we’ve already started stirring up controversy. You know, controversy follows us, but from controversy you also learn that reality evolves.
This exile that is happening right now, and that millions of people have lived through for 70 years, is going to give me raw material to express myself, to change, to produce things. Guanajay gave me an experience of confinement that, of course, I couldn’t paint the same way right now, and exile gives me this other thing, above all the distance from Cuba: how, even from here, I can still help make Cuba freer and help Cubans here be freer.
I’m going to flow, and honestly I’m going to let myself be carried by the aesthetic, biological, artistic, political, and cultural experience of exile.
Question. We’ve already seen you in photos walking around Miami, in iconic places like Versailles. After years of confinement, isolation, and harassment, how are people receiving you when they recognize you on the street, and what does it feel like to receive that affection in freedom?
Answer. Do you know what surprised me the most? Walking down the streets, having 60-, 70-, or 80-year-old men and women recognize you and give you a hug, admire you… You know, one comes from a place where creating is neither complicated nor a difficult challenge.
But you walk down the streets and you realize that these elderly folks who have been here for 30, 40, or 50 years hug you, and in that hug they pass on to you their hopes of returning to Cuba even if just once. That’s wonderful, it’s spectacular.
Question. If you go back to Cuba, what do you imagine yourself doing?
Answer. I’m going to go back to Cuba, of course. You know me. I’m going to go back to Cuba, and when I do, we’ll see what Cuba needs and what we can offer it. What I am sure of, though, is that today, tomorrow, and always I’m going to have a pencil, a pen, some ink, a bit of color to make art, or some sequins to put on a performance. We’re super connected and persistent.
Translated by GH
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