Filmmaker Lester Hamlet Veira Rodríguez arrived in the United States this weekend after denouncing being “banned” from Cuba, according to a video shared on his Instagram account.
“September 2022. Friendship and loyalty above all!” said Hamlet.
The filmmaker was excitedly reunited with a friend at what appears to be Miami’s American airport, although he didn’t make it clear.
Hamlet cried for the few seconds of the video. The person recording the moment said to him, “Welcome.”
On his social networks, his friends and followers welcomed him and wished him success. “How well. I am very happy”, “Welcome to one of the best and most complete” and “Congratulations, welcome and many successes in this new stage”.
Lester Hamlet made no further explanation after denouncing his five-year exile from Cuba.
The filmmaker recounted on Aug. 24 that he received a call from the ICAIC Protocol Department to tell him that because he had not returned to the island on time – a time set by them – a penalty had been imposed on him prevented “returning to Cuba in the next five years”,
Hamlet confessed: “My mind was bewildered by the arbitrariness of the so-called sanction, which is really an announced exile. I already know that they do not want those of us at home who have different ideas about freedom and home. I already know.” and I have seen in many imposed absences. I already know, moreover, that you feel the owners of your life. “
“Because of the awareness of being ‘different’ from this project, I accept the gift with honor and, at the age of 51, dare to start again in a different place, full of new hopes and with the impression of having experienced exile firsthand just want to thank them for the opportunity they forced me into even though it wasn’t a plan in my head, especially because of the affective ties that bind me to this space that now they don’t allow me to be part of. Thanks”.
“This broken society continues on its way into the most absolute mediocrity. How sad not to be able to witness first hand its impending end. I would have liked to have seen it, along with my countrymen, want to experience the joy that they are free, away, with an advanced freedom that falls in love and seduces”.
“We all already know that before long, well over five years, all this stupidity that comes with dictatorship will be gone. I have not the slightest doubt of that.”
Protected by the good fortune of being free and continuing to stand by so many who speak the truth, I also share with the world my satisfaction that I was able to do the right thing, film the truth, and endure myself to the… Committed to ending the story of this sick woman. madness”.
“The famous exile poem sang: ‘Goodbye, happy home, beloved Eden…’ Now that we leave behind an unhappy home and an Eden that exists only in lies, the far-off will be my new perspective to continue on Watching Cuba with my I tell the truth, long live free Cuba!” he concluded.
Havana regime spokesmen called him “brazen” in the Chapeando Bajito program, and authorities at the Ministry of Culture and the Cuban Institute for Cinematic Arts and Industry (ICAIC) denied that he had been exiled, saying that Lester Hamlet ” you can return to Cuba whenever you want”.
Bárbara Betancourt referred to the filmmaker Lester Hamlet without mentioning him. “There are those who come to Mexico with the official Cuban passport and then say that they have been exiled. I challenge them to build more credible justifications, even more worthy, because that thesis couldn’t resist a kid who said, ‘But if you were going with an official passport, how are you going to tell a different story?'”.
“Sent into exile with an official passport,” said Arleen Rodríguez Derivet, host of the Chapeando Bajito program.
Betancourt added that there are so many who leave even if they don’t have an official passport, a passport issued by the Ministry of the Interior (…) and they leave José Martí International Airport and arrive with the words “my story”. the fear is believable, they left me to kill in Cuba, but still they let me come to walk around Madrid for a while'”.
“You have to be very cheeky to think that up and also have bad intentions to accept an argument of this kind in order to get a residency permit or residency permit,” Bárbara Betancourt said of the Chapeando Bajito program.