One of Cuba’s most popular television personalities, humorist Carlos Otero, defected to the United States with his family, Miami’s Nuevo Herald newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Otero, 49, asked for political asylum on Monday at the U.S. border with Canada, where he was producing a television show in Toronto. He was traveling with his wife and two children.
His interview show on Sunday evenings was one of the most viewed in Communist Cuba.
“I hope to earn a living in exile and see my children grow up with the opportunity to study what they want, without having to agree with the system,” Otero told the Nuevo Herald.
Otero said Cuba was “frozen in time” and Cubans lived in great uncertainty over their country’s future since Cuban leader Fidel Castro fell ill and dropped from public view 16 months ago.
In his film Sicko, Michael Moore touts the superiority of the Cuban health care system over the US. Hollywood stars and leftwing politicians trot down to Cuba to hug the windy dictator and thumb their noses at the US. Yet not one of them has seen fit to defect to Castro’s island paradise. Funny, that.
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