Dissident Manuel Cuesta Morua was released in Cuba: “He is very beaten, he cannot speak in this state”

President of the Transition to Democracy, Barack Obama’s interlocutor during his visit to Cuba, Cuesta Morua is a pacifist, a dialogueist, who believes that the way out of this crisis It is “a dialogue between Cubans and the regime” and not “between the regime and Donald Trump only”.

His wife and witness to his arrest, María Mercedes Benítez, saw him arrive this Sunday morning from a province, exhausted and beaten with fists. There is no form of transportation in Cuba and he arrived on foot.

“He has just been released. He is badly beaten and was transferred to a camp, to another province, for state security. They hit him a lot. Can’t talk in this state”said Maria Mercedes from Havana.

She witnessed the arrest yesterday. In Havana a lieutenant of the Criminal Investigation who had summoned them to his house by telephone and when they went, his name did not exist in the unit.They pushed him away handcuffed in a van to an unknown destination.. They took her data but never gave her information about her condition.

Manuel Cuesta Morua is one of the most important figures of the democratic opposition in Cuba, for the transition. He was born on December 31, 1962 in Havana, Cuba. He graduated in History from the University of Havana in 1986 and worked in cultural institutions, before being fired in 1991.

He advocated the use of “institutional channels and the participation of opposition members in elections” to democratize Cuban society. He proposed reforming the Cuban electoral law to allow the presentation of pro-democratic candidates on the island.

In 2019, he opposed the country’s new constitution, particularly criticizing the leading role of the Cuban Communist Party and a political system that was necessarily socialist. Since 2025 he has headed the Council for the Democratic Transition in Cuba, succeeding José Daniel Ferrer.