SAN LUIS POTOSÍ, Mexico.- The actress and humorist Cuban Gelliset Valdés, who will soon be living in the United States for three years, stated in interview with presenter Abel Álvarez who currently has an I-220A form and has never contemplated returning to Cuba.
In conversation for the program Abel anywhereValdés, a native of Pinar del Río, who cultivated the Cuban public in spaces such as Let me tell yourevealed that his immigration experience was not easy and told anecdotes related to his difficult journey to the United States.
Although the actress had visited Miami on several occasions, she stated that she had not chosen to settle permanently there because she had her son in Cuba. However, everything changed when he managed to obtain a Spanish passport so that his son could emigrate and reach American territory.
However, for her the situation was different. In the middle of 2021, with an expired visa, Valdés made arrangements to, through a third country, have an interview to apply for a work visa.
That’s how he left Cuba on November 16, to go to the United States embassy in the Dominican Republic, he told Abel. However, the authorities denied him a visa.
“It took a long time trying for my son to leave legally, to arrive at least by plane, and suddenly, I was on the other side, backwards, in a backwards situation. Suddenly, I was the one who couldn’t get out,” he said.
At that time, she undertook, together with her husband, the television director and screenwriter Delso Aquino, a migratory journey to the northern border of Mexico. “I had no other option. “I didn’t go to Cuba, or I stayed working in the Dominican Republic, or I flew to Mexico and stayed there for a while, or I left and took risks across the border.”
And he added: “For Cuba I was not going to return in any way. I had been in that country for a long, long time with a level of disenchantment, disappointment, sadness, everything, I had been in that for many years. So when they denied my visa, it was very clear to me.”
He entered the United States through Mexicali, after having traveled from one place to another, from one motel to another, “where they began to take money from us.”
Separated from her husband and having been detained in a migrant center in California, she was taken to another in Texas, handcuffed, with leg shackles and shakiras in her hands.
“Horrible, with iron shackles on his feet. That’s how I did the entire plane ride, it’s horrible to be up there, I don’t know how many feet high,” he said.
“When we got to the detention center, our handcuffs were so tight that the Texas officers themselves said, ‘But why did they do this to them?’” he added.
His testimony described the anguish of those moments when he no longer heard from Aquino.
“I was very afraid for him too. I was scared, I was scared of what was happening,” she commented, adding later that her partner was released three days after being detained and was taken to Miami.
Already in Miami he has been able to resume his career, although he has not been able to regularize his immigration status. “Life has led me to do humor since I started with Julio Pulido on the program To not leave home until today that I am still in Miami.”
Gelliset has transcended for his characters of Elda (Chispa’s wife, a drunk character), Beruco (a “handsome” man who raises pigs in Havana), and Felipa (a guajira). Their characters have been shown to the public in programs Kicking the Can and To another with that story, directed by his partner Delso Aquino.
The Cuban audience has special affection for Tonita, the gossip of the neighborhood where the Bartolete Pérez workshop was located, in the humorous Let me tell you.
