Cuban artist and dissident exiled from country after 5 years in prison arrives in Miami<\/a><\/p>\nBut several conservative Cuban social media influencers now publicly question whether Otero genuinely suffered as a political prisoner. They point to Cuban regime video recorded just after his release of him drinking beer at a safe house in the presence of security officers as he said goodbye to family and friends.<\/p>\n
Otero\u2019s exile supporters, however, insist that hardly lessens the real hardship he endured in prison.<\/p>\n
At the Coral Gables Museum this week \u2014 at a screening of a documentary about his work, Estamos Conectados (We Are Connected) \u2014 Otero brushed it aside.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy commitment to continue fighting isn\u2019t diminished one bit,\u201d Otero said.<\/p>\n
His defenders say the criticism he\u2019s faced stems from a resentment among some Cuban exiles that he and his art don\u2019t demonize Cuba as dogmatically as they do.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t get the reality that artists don\u2019t always toe a political line either way,\u201d one prominent moderate Cuban exile in Miami told WLRN.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy art has certified both the reality of Cuba and my love for it,\u201d said Otero, a member of the country\u2019s San Isidro dissident artists movement \u2014 which over the past decade has been a leading force challenging communist repression in Cuba.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what art should do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Otero co-wrote the Latin Grammy-winning song \u201cPatria y Vida,\u201d or \u201cHomeland and Life,\u201d an anthem for Cuban protesters.<\/p>\n
This is a News In Brief report. Visit WLRN News<\/a> for in-depth reporting from South Florida and Florida news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of Cuba\u2019s leading dissident artists is out of prison and in Miami \u2014 but some hardline Cuban…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-364780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}