Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara joins Cuba-focused events in New York and New Jersey during UN week

September 30, 2026

Cuban visual artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, born in Havana in 1987 and a co-founder of the San Isidro Movement, took part in two Cuba-related events in the New York area in late September 2026, timed to the high-level week of the 81st UN General Assembly, according to event listings published by 14ymedio and coverage by Martí Noticias and Alas Tensas. Since arriving in the United States in July, he has shown drawings made during his incarceration at Miami's Freedom Tower in August and, on September 10, accepted the National Endowment for Democracy's 2026 Democracy Award in Virginia, according to Miami Dade College, the Miami Herald and 14ymedio.

On Wednesday, September 23, he sat on the panel launching the report Juventud, poder y redes sociales en Cuba (Youth, Power and Social Media in Cuba) by the organization Ciudadanía y Libertad, hosted at the Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center in Manhattan. The session, organized as a side event to the General Assembly, also featured Gina Romero, the UN special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, and Carolina Barrero, president of Ciudadanía y Libertad. Its authors say the report draws on testimony from young people inside and outside Cuba and identifies 12 patterns of restrictions on their freedom of association, assembly and expression.

On Friday, September 25, he was listed among the guests of Libres x Derecho 2. Voces del 11J, an exhibition and discussion organized by the Cuban Youth Dialogue Table (MDJC) and Cubalex at the West New York Cultural Center in West New York, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from Manhattan. The show featured 16 graffiti works made by artists in Cuba based on accounts from relatives of people imprisoned after the July 11, 2021 protests, and the program included a conversation with Kirenia Yalit Núñez Pérez, Alain Espinosa, Sissi Abascal and Annia Zamora.

Otero Alcántara was arrested on July 11, 2021, and in 2022 a court sentenced him to five years in prison for public disorder, contempt and disrespect toward national symbols, AP reported. Groups including Amnesty International called him a political prisoner, an allegation the Cuban government rejected. He completed his sentence on July 9, 2026, and arrived in Miami on July 18 on U.S. humanitarian parole. The artist has said Cuban authorities decided he had to leave the country; the pro-government website Razones de Cuba argued instead that Cuba simply processed a convicted person "in accordance with its law" and that Washington arranged his departure, as reported by Diario de Cuba.