We can’t keep pretending that I left Cuba for economic reasons. That’s a big lie. Anyone who has left Cuba over the past sixty years has done so for purely political reasons.
Download image
Manuel Alejandro González was born on January 17, 1990, in Holguín, Cuba, during the Special Period. He remembers his childhood as a time shaped by strong family affection, but also by severe economic hardship. From an early age, life in Cuba meant a constant struggle that required continual reinvention just to get by. Before emigrating, he faced major obstacles in developing a career in the audiovisual field. He says many opportunities were explicitly denied to him because of his activism and political views. After the protests of July 11, 2021, he was imprisoned and began living under constant pressure from State Security. Although he initially decided to return to Cuba after a professional trip abroad, a message from his grandmother, who tearfully asked him not to come back because of the danger he faced and the lack of any future, became the decisive turning point. He defines migration as a liberating and transformative experience, but also as a deeply painful one because of the separation from his family and from his country, which he still feels as his own. He describes the present situation in Cuba as critical and hopeless, arguing that the Cuban people have been deprived not only of material resources, but also of hope and joy. For him, migrating does not mean abandoning Cuba, but resisting from another place, and he believes the country’s future depends on a profound and urgent change involving all Cubans, both on the island and abroad. This interview was conducted within the framework of the project Memory of Our Cuban Neighbors, in Madrid, 2025.