On November 28, 2025, Cuban historian Alexander Hall Lujardo published an open letter to President Miguel Díaz-Canel, accusing State Security of violating his rights through arbitrary measures. He claims the government is blocking his travel abroad to pursue studies due to his critical leftist positions. The letter highlights ongoing persecution against independent intellectuals in Cuba.
Alexander Hall Lujardo, a historian who graduated from the University of Havana in 2022 and identifies as an anti-racist activist and militant for democratic socialism, has denounced a serious violation of rights and political persecution by State Security, a political police body under the Ministry of the Interior.
In his open letter, also addressed to Rubén Remigio Ferro, president of the People's Supreme Court, and Esteban Lazo Hernández, president of the National Assembly of People's Power, Hall describes extralegal procedures including a migratory restriction known as 'regulación', imposed since 2023. This measure prevents him from leaving Cuba to pursue graduate studies at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso) in Quito, Ecuador, despite having a scholarship.
On November 19, 2025, Hall reported this travel ban on social media. He attributes the repression to his critical leftist positions expressed in academic spaces and alternative media outside the control of the Communist Party of Cuba. As coordinator of the book Cuba 11J: Counter-hegemonic Perspectives on the Social Protests (Marx21 publishing house), he states that after its publication, authorities intensified persecution, criminalizing thought and repressing non-partisan journalism.
Hall participated in the July 11, 2021, demonstrations and suffered police excesses. In September 2024, he was summoned as a witness to Villa Marista, State Security headquarters, regarding an alleged criminal process against El Toque, a media outlet he has collaborated with. The Ministry of the Interior conditioned lifting the restriction on him incriminating himself, publicly repenting for his work, handing over money received for publications, and surrendering his devices—demands he refused as violations of his freedom of expression.
He defends his right to share progressive ideals in alternative spaces amid the absence of political pluralism and insufficient openness in state-run media. He 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'.
The Flacso-Ecuador Student Committee demanded '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'. Hall declares himself in a 'state of civil defenselessness'.