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MIAMI — <\/span>A famous Cuban dissident artist and musician, Luis Manuel Otero Alc\u00e1ntara, arrived in Miami on Saturday after being released from a five-year prison sentence on the condition that he leave his country. <\/p>\n Alc\u00e1ntara, 38, was greeted at the airport by a crowd that was cheering, singing and holding their phones high in the air to get a photo of him. They draped him in a Cuban flag, printed with the words \u201cPatria y Vida\u201d \u2014 \u201cHomeland and Life\u201d \u2014 the title of a song he shared a Grammy for that became an anthem for Cuba\u2019s political opposition against repression. <\/p>\n The United States granted him parole into the country earlier this week, according to a social media page maintained by his friends and supporters. They wrote that he accepted exile as the only way to escape persecution and continue his art and activism. <\/p>\n Alc\u00e1ntara co-founded a group of Havana artists, writers and musicians called the San Isidro Movement \u2014 named for the neighborhood where Alc\u00e1ntara lived. <\/p>\n He was arrested on July 11, 2021, during a public protest. In 2022, a court sentenced him to five years in prison for public disorder, contempt and disrespect toward national symbols.<\/p>\n His arrest and incarceration had long been denounced by human rights organizations and the U.S. government. Groups including Amnesty International called him a political prisoner, an allegation the Cuban government rejected. <\/p>\n Alc\u00e1ntara was held in a maximum-security prison, he said, and was expected to be released last week. But for days, advocates said they still could not contact him and did not know where he was. <\/p>\n The organization Cubalex, which legally advises dissidents and reports human rights violations from outside of the country, filed a habeas corpus petition on his behalf Monday.<\/p>\n Until he boarded a plane Saturday, his advocates were not sure of his location, or if he was truly free. <\/p>\n His said his first stop on American soil would be at the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity to make an offering. <\/p>\n Other political prisoners remained imprisoned, including his fellow artist Maykel \u201cOsorbo\u201d Castillo P\u00e9rez, his advocates said, and they hoped Alc\u00e1ntara’s release would prompt insistence that P\u00e9rez also be set free. <\/p>\n Alc\u00e1ntara brought from Cuba a broken statue of the Virgin Mary, which he described as a symbol of hope and healing, a chance to put back together something from fragments. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n