Cuban Historian Denounces Repression for Criticizing Gov.
publishes letter to Díaz-Canel
HAVANA TIMES – On November 28, 2025, historian Alexander Hall Lujardo published an open letter to Cuba’s ruler, Miguel Diaz-Canel, denouncing that he is suffering a serious “violation of rights” and “political persecution” at the hands of State Security, a political police body under the Ministry of the Interior.
Hall Lujardo says he is subject to “procedures outside the law that violate human, civil, and political rights,” such as the migratory restriction that prevents him from leaving the country to continue his academic career.
On November 19, 2025, the young intellectual—who identifies as an “anti-racist activist and militant for democratic socialism”—reported on his social media accounts that the Havana regime is preventing him from traveling to pursue graduate studies at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso) in Quito, Ecuador, even though he has a scholarship for an academic program at that institution.
Hall states in his letter that he has been the victim of the “discretionary, arbitrary, and coercive conduct of police authorities, due to his critical leftist positions” in academic spaces and “alternative media” outside the state press system controlled by the Communist Party of Cuba.
The young intellectual, who has also collaborated with El Toque, defends his right to share his “progressive ideals (…) in alternative spaces beyond institutional boundaries, given the absence of political pluralism and insufficient openness in state-run media.”
Alexander Hall holds a degree in History from the University of Havana (2022). In addition to publishing commentary and essays on various Cuban and foreign platforms, he is the coordinator of the book Cuba 11J: Counter-hegemonic Perspectives on the Social Protests (Marx21 publishing house). After the publication of that text, he says, Cuban authorities intensified their persecution.
“The response from police bodies to this work manifested itself in the criminalization of thought, the persecution of dissent, and the repression of non-partisan journalism, all of which contravene constitutional guarantees, democratic values, and human rights,” Hall adds in his letter.
The Cuban historian argues that “defending national sovereignty cannot be carried out at the expense of civil rights, human freedoms, and democratic guarantees, much less in blatant disregard of popular sovereignty.”
Alexander Hall took part in the July 11, 2021, demonstrations and suffered police excesses and procedures outside the law. Since 2023, he has been subject to a travel restriction known as “regulación,” a euphemism the Cuban regime uses to punish independent journalists, critical intellectuals, activists, and human-rights defenders.
The Ministry of Interior conditioned lifting the arbitrary measure on him incriminating himself and publicly repenting for his work, handing over money received for his publications, and surrendering his devices. Hall has refused, considering the demands a violation of his right to freedom of expression.
In September 2024, he was “summoned as a witness” to Villa Marista in Havana, the headquarters of State Security, to appear regarding an alleged criminal process opened against El Toque.
The Flacso-Ecuador Student Committee spoke out against the travel ban imposed on the Cuban historian: “We demand the immediate freedom of movement for our comrade Alexander Hall and the end of all forms of political persecution against academics, intellectuals, activists, artists, and journalists in Cuba and throughout the world.”
For his part, Hall also addressed his open letter—in which he denounces his “state of civil defenselessness”—to the president of the People’s Supreme Court, Ruben Remigio Ferro, and to the president of the National Assembly of People’s Power (Parliament), Esteban Lazo Hernandez.
First published in Spanish by El Toque and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.