MIAMI, Florida.–
One of the most prominent Cuban opponents has been stranded in the United States for a week and demands to be able to return to Cuba after the airline American Airlines prohibited her from boarding a flight back to the island, citing instructions from the communist authorities.
Anamely Ramos, 37, is in the United States on a tourist visa that expires in a month.
Last Wednesday she tried to board a plane back to Havana from Miami International Airport, but the airline told her that
Cuba had included her name on a list of people not allowed to enter.
“When I go to register the luggage, American tells me that I cannot travel because Cuba issued a
No-Go
message, ” the dissident, who has been stationed under a tent on the streets of Miami, tells Noticias Telemundo.
“I have nowhere to return to and I don't want to stay here under political asylum.
Cuba is generating an immigration problem through me and it is generating it within the United States.”
Anamely Ramos is not the first dissident that the Havana regime banishes in order to release political pressure.
But
she is the first known Cuban to be denied the right to return without having another country
where she can stay legally.
Cuban opponent Anamely Ramos at Miami International Airport, after receiving the refusal from American Airlines to board a flight back to Cuba. Yenier Martínez Carrillo/StudioCreActivo
After the protests of July 11, 2021, the most massive in six decades of Communism, Cuba closed ranks against dissidence with more force than ever, imprisoning multiple opponents or pushing them into exile.
The regime detained hundreds of protesters and continues to conduct dozens of trials on charges of contempt, public disorder, assault and sedition, a serious charge that carries sentences of up to 30 years in prison.
More than 10 of those defendants are under the age of 18.
At the same time, the most visible protest artists, opponents and independent journalists have left the country in recent months after denouncing pressure from the Cuban political police.
Havana has not ruled on the case of Anamely Ramos, who is also an art curator and spokesperson for the opposition San Isidro Movement, a coalition of young people who have intervened in public space with
controversial political performances that are uncomfortable for those in power.
Ramos taught for more than a decade at the island's most important art university, the Instituto Superior de Arte, before she emerged as a political dissident and began to be frequently detained and interrogated.
In the US and Europe, Cubans also protested demanding a change on the island
Nov. 16, 202100:31
Telemundo News made multiple efforts to interview Cuban officials through the International Press Center, based in Havana, and the Cuban Consulate in Washington DC.
The requests did not have an immediate response.
American Airlines said in an email that the airline has "no discretion or choice in this matter."
“In all the countries in which we operate, the entry requirements and the admissibility of travelers are determined by the authorities of each country, not the airlines,” said spokeswoman Laura Masvidal, who
did not respond if the airline inquired of Cuban authorities. about the reason for the ban
or what other Cubans are on the list.
But the Cuban exile community in Miami, the capital of that diaspora, has pointed out to American Airlines that it is acting as an immigration agent.
Dozens of protesters accompanied Anamely Ramos this weekend to the airline's headquarters in Miami, with banners that read: "Cuba's borders cannot be at the doors of American Airlines" and "American Airlines, these are not It's American values."
Anamely Ramos (center) protests with dozens of Cuban exiles in front of the American Airlines headquarters in Miami.
Yenier Martínez Carrillo/StudioCreActivo
The protest is part of a performance that Ramos has called
'The Right to Return'
and which seeks to give back to Cubans the possibility of stepping on their homeland again, a right recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which says that "all person has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country”.
The drama that Ramos is experiencing has drawn the attention of local and federal authorities.
"Anamely Ramos has the right to return to her country," tweeted Brian Nichols, head of US diplomacy for the Americas.
"The regime is blocking his return for fear of what he might say."
Dozens of Cuban exiles protest in front of the headquarters of American Airlines in Miami, in support of Anamely Ramos. Yenier Martínez Carrillo/StudioCreActivo
Cuban-American congressmen from South Florida such as María Elvira Salazar and Mario Díaz-Balart, whose voter base is predominantly Cuban, denounced the banishment and said that Cuba's rulers run the island as "their private estate."
But their offices did not respond if they are taking any concrete action to help Ramos return to the island, where he has his home and most of his family.
[From Camila Cabello to Alejandro Sanz: International Artists Support the Cuban People After Protests]
The office of Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, of Cuban origin, also did not respond to multiple calls and emails asking if there are legislative options to review Cuba's protocols with airlines.
"The same modus operandi is repeated"
“With the case of Anamely the same modus operandi is repeated.
The power of the regime transcends even its own borders,” Karla Pérez, a 23-year-old independent Cuban journalist who left Cuba for Costa Rica in 2017 to finish her journalism studies, tells Noticias Telemundo after being expelled from a Cuban university for her political affiliation.
Karla Pérez, a Cuban independent journalist, is stranded in 2021 at a Panama airport after learning that Cuba forbade her to return.
Courtesy of Karla Perez
In 2021, when he tried to board a Copa Airlines flight back to the island, he was notified that he was "prohibited" from returning.
Pérez had lost his Cuban residence after spending more than two years abroad, in accordance with the current Cuban Immigration Law.
That law also establishes that the country can declare inadmissible to enter the national territory those who "organize, stimulate, carry out or participate in hostile actions against the political, economic and social foundations of the Cuban State."
Cuba considers political dissidence a national security problem and the few demonstrations that take place in public spaces are quickly neutralized.
Ramos warns that
if no action is taken, "more cases will come"
like his.
"Any opponent who goes out to a conference tomorrow or whatever, they're not going to let him come back," he says.
The social outbreak of July 11, when dozens of cities throughout the country took to the streets shouting "Down with Communism", was the climax of popular discontent that has a background of complaints of political repression and widespread food shortages. and medicines, exacerbated after the closure of borders due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the blow to tourism.
[They denounce the sale of explosive croquettes in Cuba: "He bathed my face and chest in boiling oil"]
Popular discontent is driving Cubans into exile in record numbers.
So far this fiscal year (since October 1, 2021)
the Coast Guard has intercepted more than 580 Cubans at sea
, more than half of the total of 838 for the entire 2021 fiscal period.
And with the elimination at the end of 2021 of the visa requirement to travel to Nicaragua, one of Cuba's few allies in the region, hundreds of Cubans have packed the ticket offices in Havana in order to reach US soil through rivers and jungles.
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