Maykel Osorbo

Maykel Osorbo, born Maykel Castillo Pérez, is a Cuban dissident rapper and co-author of 'Patria y Vida', the 2021 protest anthem that became the soundtrack of Cuba's 11 July 2021 nationwide demonstrations. The song won a Latin Grammy for Song of the Year in 2021, performed in absentia while its co-authors remained imprisoned.

Osorbo was arrested in May 2021 and sentenced in July 2022 to nine years on charges of assault and disrespect of national symbols, charges his supporters characterise as retaliation for his activism. He is held at Kilo Cinco y Medio prison in Pinar del Río, and Amnesty International has designated him a prisoner of conscience. In April 2026 he conducted a hunger strike at the prison denouncing degrading treatment, a parallel protest to Otero Alcántara's hunger strike at Guanajay; both men were named in the US dissident-release Deadline that lapsed on 24 April without either being freed.

On 14 May 2026 Osorbo refused a State Security ultimatum offering a choice between exile and remaining in prison until 2030, an effective extension beyond his original nine-year sentence; he chose to stay imprisoned rather than accept exile. At the UNGA's 7-8 July 2026 annual embargo debate, US Ambassador Mike Waltz named Osorbo, under his legal name Maykel Castillo Pérez, among roughly 800 Cuban political prisoners whose photographs he held up to the Assembly, alongside Otero Alcántara.

Osorbo's continued imprisonment despite the 2026 US-Cuba diplomatic engagement, and his own refusal of exile, have made his case a test of whether Havana will accept a genuine release for any dissident rather than a removal from the country.