Cuban political prisoners central to ongoing negotiations with US | The Excerpt

On the Thursday, May 14, 2026, episode of The Excerpt podcast: On April 10th, the U.S. gave Cuban leaders only two weeks to free political prisoners if they wanted to preemptively land a deal with the U.S. Cuba then made an offer to two of their higher profile prisoners – Maykel Castillo Pérez and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara: They could either leave Cuba or stay and rot in prison. Both agreed to be exiled. Yet both still languish behind bars. USA TODAY Investigative Reporter Rick Jervis joins The Excerpt to talk about what’s next for Castillo and Otero as well as high-level negotiations between US and Cuban officials.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Dana Taylor:

From the moment the Trump administration toppled former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela's longtime ally Cuba has been in the White House's crosshairs. In the aftermath of that operation, President Donald Trump declared Cuba would be "next". On April 10th, the US gave Cuban leaders only two weeks to free political prisoners if they wanted to preemptively land a deal with the US. Cuba then made an offer to two of their higher profile prisoners, Maykel Castillo Pérez and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara. They could either leave Cuba or stay and rot in prison. Both agreed to be exiled, yet both still languish behind bars.

Hello, and welcome to USA TODAY's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Thursday, May 14th, 2026. Here to talk about what's next for Castillo and Otero, as well as high-level negotiations between the US and Cuban officials, I'm now joined by USA TODAY Investigative Reporter Rick Jervis. Rick, thank you so much for taking the time out and joining me.

Rick Jervis:

It's good to be here, Dana.

Dana Taylor:

Rick, can you please start us out by telling us how you came to know these two prisoners, Castillo and Otero? Who are they, and what made their story so compelling to you and your colleagues?

Rick Jervis:

So pretty much anybody following Cuba for the last couple of years have heard of these two individuals. Maykel Castillo Pérez is a Cuban rapper and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara is an activist and a visual artist that became really well known in 2021 during widespread protests in Cuba, mostly because Maykel actually was part of a rap group that created this song Patria y Vida. It was a hip-hop song created by hip-hop artists both on the island and outside of the island by Cuban exiles.

And it's kind of a protest song. It basically denounced a lot of the lack of freedoms in Cuba, and it just became viral. And within a couple of months, it had more than a million views. And it became sort of the anthem of these widespread protests found in Cuba in 2021. So, it was a really well-known song. Maykel was known to be part of that, and Luis was also deeply involved with the actual group that made it.

And then they got arrested in 2021. Maykel got arrested in May of 2021, and Luis Manuel was arrested in July of that same year. And they were sentenced to nine years and five years in prisons, respectively. And these two became really famous later that year because that song Patria y Vida won two Latin Grammy's later that year. Maykel couldn't basically attend the actual ceremonies because he was in prison, but the song became really, really popular, and both these individuals really got global recognition after that.

Dana Taylor:

Castillo and Otero each recorded audio from their prisons and shared those files exclusively with USA TODAY. I want to start with some of Otero's audio. Can you set this up for me, please?

Rick Jervis:

We basically wanted to get the voices from these two individuals directly from them. So we're able through a third person to have these two individuals call them and basically record some of their thoughts. What you're going to hear now is Luis Manuel's thoughts directly on some of the protests which happened in 2021 that ultimately landed him in prison.

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara:

[Translator Ramon Padilla] We are talking about a process that has been underway for more than six or seven years in this country. There are changes taking place in Cuba; the San Isidro Movement, other movements and the entire opposition. Then there were the protests outside of the Ministry of Culture on July 11th. All of this, we would argue, is symptomatic of a Cuba that is in transition. A Cuba that the Americans are now stepping in to support, giving a good push to that Cuban built upon civil society; all Cuban exiles. We are that civil society, and we have worked to organize ourselves with varying degrees of success both in and out of Cuba.

Dana Taylor:

Rick, what were your thoughts after hearing this?

Rick Jervis:

It was really interesting. First of all, it's very, very difficult to get anybody's thoughts from inside Cuban prisons. These are institutions which are obviously very tightly guarded and there's not a lot of freedom there for the individuals inside. And so to be able to hear somebody talk from inside of the prison was really remarkable.

But things that Luis Manuel brings up is also really interesting. People tend to forget that. There's a lot of talk about the Cubans and exiles and civil society outside of Cuba, but Luis Manuel is basically reminding everybody that there is this civil society inside of Cuba, that there are intellectuals and thinkers and artists and writers who are really trying to get change done in Cuba.

Dana Taylor:

We also have audio recordings from Castillo talking about his commitment to fight for change. Let's give that a listen.

Maykel Castillo Pérez:

[Translator Ramon Padilla] We need someone to emerge who possesses sufficient capability. Someone who understands the people's problems and can move the country forward, not back. We are 50 years behind. We need a person able to take the country forward. When I say forward, I mean the economy improves. That justice improves; that the courts are impartial.

Dana Taylor:

There seems to be a very tangible frustration for Castillo, and it's of course understandable given his current circumstances. What are your thoughts here?

Rick Jervis:

Yeah, this is interesting, too. Maykel is very different from Luis Manuel in some ways. The way that it was kind of explained to me, he's more street. And so what you're going to hear is a more visceral answer from him. And there is a lot of frustration coming out of him, both in his words and his tone. He's been sentenced to nine years. So there's a sort of palpable hopelessness around him, and he is really speaking direct about his hopelessness and about just his lack of hope that there's ever going to be change in Cuba.

Dana Taylor:

Let's zoom out a bit here and talk about the steps this administration has taken so far with Cuba to force change.

Rick Jervis:

Yeah. Following the January raid to actually arrest Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela, the Trump administration has essentially controlled all of that country's oil output and put an oil embargo on Cuba. Cuba was struggling with outages before. They've been struggling with a basically collapsed economy, and now they're really struggling. There's very little oil coming in and out of that country, and they're really struggling under long-term outages.

The Trump administration has tightened sanctions. They've basically increased the economic stranglehold on the island. And at the same time, they've been holding a number of back channel talks with Cuban leaders, where they have been urging Cuban leaders to make longstanding economic and sort of political reform, release political prisoners and all of this in exchange for loosening of sanctions. But it's really like a remarkable turn of events and something that I think a lot of people didn't expect out of this administration.

Dana Taylor:

When it comes to getting Cuba to release its political prisoners, the Biden administration seemed to make significant headway. Tell me about that, and then how the Trump administration's approach has differed.

Rick Jervis:

In January of 2025, former President Biden took the step of basically removing Cuba from its US list of nations that sponsored terrorism. And with that, and through negotiations brokered by the Catholic Church, Cuba actually began to release political prisoners, including some of the protestors actually arrested during those 2021 protests. And there was traction there. But when President Trump took office shortly after that, he probably put Cuba back on the state-sponsored list, and those efforts have since stalled.

Trump's approach is actually very different. He has quite a large stick to wield with several carrots also. So he is doing both. He is basically aggressively showing Cuba that he's kind of holding all the cards with the oil embargo, but at the same time offering different carrots. He's offering loosening of sanctions. He's offering an economic deal, which could really make Cuba prosper. And it'll be really interesting to see how it all plays out.

Dana Taylor:

What happens next for both these two political prisoners as well as the high-level talks?

Rick Jervis:

Well, now it's a wait-and-see game. Both of these political prisoners, Castillo and Alcántara, we've been told, are on a list of select political prisoners that they've asked to have released. The high-level talks seem somewhat stalled at the moment. There were a number of really high-end talks that seem to have a little traction, but nothing's happened since.

So it's kind of a wait-and-see game to see what the Trump administration does next. And I think a lot of people are also waiting to see whether Cuba, as an act of goodwill, starts releasing some of these actual political prisoners. And obviously Maykel and Luis Manuel are at the top of the list, so we'll see what happens.

Dana Taylor:

Rick Jervis is an investigative reporter for USA TODAY. Thanks for sharing your reporting here with us on The Excerpt, Rick.

Rick Jervis:

Sure. Thank you, Dana.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Our stories come from USA TODAY journalists across the country. We'll be back tomorrow morning with a deeper look into another story that matters.

Please note: Cuban officials did not return USA TODAY interview requests for comment.

Responding to a request for comment from USA TODAY, a State Department official said the Cuban regime continues to show indifference to the suffering of the Cuban people and is still holding hundreds of political prisoners. The official reiterated that President Trump favors a diplomatic solution but will not allow Cuba to deteriorate into a greater national security threat.