Alejandro Quintana Morales, radio presenter on Radio Rebelde and television presenter, arrived in the United States on Monday, “a country where, at last, I can feel free,” he said in his Facebook profile. The young man published a photograph surrounded by family and friends living in Florida who received him at the Fort Lauderdale airport.
“They say that I am already in the city of the Sun, that here I can express what I think without having to ‘speak softly,'” he stated in his post. Quintana adds that, however, he has “mixed feelings” for having left so many people he loves.
“I am happy, because I found in the arms of this other part of the family the warmth to feed my reasons for joy,” he adds, before attributing his presence in Miami to a divine purpose.
“United States of America, here I am!” He ends.
“They say that I am already in the city of the Sun, that here I can express what I think without having to ‘speak softly'”
Quintana Morales, originally from Pinar del Río, had a program on the Educational Channel, Ways of Doing, in addition to the radio program, and had graduated in Social Communication from the University of Havana just a year ago.
His departure comes a few days after that of Yunior Smith, previously a reporter in the international section of the Informative System and highly critical of US policy towards Cuba. The journalist is on the southern border of the country trying to request political asylum and claims to have suffered censorship in his work.
Quintana Morales’ march, less controversial than Smith’s, has not been without criticism. His post has received more than 600 comments in just 24 hours and, although most people wish him luck and success, there are not a few who have accused the young man of complicity with the regime or insulted him, even violently.
In January, Frank Abel Gómez Bernal, another pro-government broadcaster, arrived in the United States, where he asked for political asylum, assuring that, although he had his job in Cuba, he “was starving.”
This February, the former director of the Cuban Television Information System and of the magazine Buenos Días, Yailén Insúa Alarcón, ended up stranded at the Bogotá airport when she tried to get to Nicaragua fleeing the island. In her case, she asked the Colombian government for asylum, alleging danger. for his life if he returned to Cuba.
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