Cuban regime did not let activist Anamely Ramos return to island

Cuban art professor and activist Anamely Ramos Gonzalez claimed American Airlines did not allow her to board her flight to return to Cuba from Miami’s international airport on Wednesday.

The art curator said that "Cuba sent a message saying that I cannot enter my country," in a live video on Facebook. 

"Regardless of the agreement they have with the Cuban government, I am a Cuban resident, I do not have residency in any other country in the world, and therefore, I cannot stay here illegally," she said.

"I am going to stay at the airport because I am going back to Cuba," she added.

American Airlines called the Miami-Dade police, who asked the activist to leave the airline's area.

The Cuban professor published a post on her Facebook this Wednesday where she claimed: "today, I will return to Cuba."

"I know the country I'm going back to, but still, I know I'm going to freedom. They have power, a kind of power they should be ashamed of every day. They feel safe, but that safety is cardboard. They have generated horror, and that horror will catch up with them. Our power gathers, and theirs drives out. So let us concentrate on gathering," she added.

The Cuban activist posted on social media that her son, who lives with his father in Argentina, played a violin piece for her this Tuesday.

"I also have many things to lose, but he who gives life never loses. This is mostly so that my son can have the right to come home. We are still connected. I love you. Let's not lose faith," she concluded.

Ramos Gonzalez left Cuba in January 2021 to pursue a Ph.D. in Anthropology at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico.

In November 2020, she went to the San Isidro barracks, along with other artists and activists, to demand the release of Cuban rapper Denis Solis, who was arbitrarily sentenced to eight months in prison.

After being evicted on November 26, she was subjected to house arrests, arbitrary detentions, and interruptions to her mobile internet service.

Ramos is an art historian and teacher of cultural processes. She has curated more than 15 exhibitions and was a professor at the University of the Arts in Havana, from where she was expelled—for her political ideas against the regime—, and at the Higher Institute of Art in Luanda, Angola, where she taught art history and cultural processes.