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During his April 1st talk, “San Isidro Barracking: The Art of Protests in Cuba”, Álvarez shared the story of the San Isidro Movement’s action against Cuba’s censorship on free speech.  He recounted his experiences participating in artist-led protests against the Cuban government following the 2018 passage of Decree 349, a law that mandated all artistic expression be approved by the Cuban government. These protests often featured performance art with a focus on themes of freedom of artistic expression and censorship. One such performance was an internet campaign that promoted taking pictures in which the Cuban flag was being worn as a garment and then posting them with the hashtag #LaBanderaesdeTodos — “The Flag is All of Ours” — in defiance of a 2019 law that dictated how the Cuban flag could be used.

Álvarez also shared the story of his friend Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, a Cuban artist currently imprisoned by the Cuban government following his participation in San Isidro Movement protests and subsequent hunger strikes. Álvarez showed the audience a clip from a documentary about Otero Alcántara that demonstrated the way Otero Alcántara used clothing and makeup to protest government censorship, including dressing in revealing, traditionally feminine clothing.  Other documentary clips that Álvarez shared showcased the culmination of the protests in 2021 with Acuartelamiento, an event in which over a dozen protestors — including Otero Alcántara and rapper Denis Solis — barricaded themselves in a house in the San Isidro neighborhood of Havana. The footage showed the moment the Cuban government violently entered the house and detained Otero Alcántara alongside fellow artists. Months after the event, the largest protests in Cuba in over six decades took place, with thousands of Cubans participating.

During the Q&A that followed his talk, Álvarez opened up about his own background, including his thoughts on the current state of Cuba and its possible futures. Despite having grown up in a communist family who once believed in the vision of Castro’s regime, Álvarez lost enthusiasm after seeing the regime’s inability to provide for the Cuban people. He said that he now considers himself a Marxist, and sees the “political reality” of Cuba as being that of a country divided by class and race struggles due to governmental oppression.

In his classroom talk the following day, Álvarez discussed his collection of short stories, La Tribu, with Professor Carolyn Wolfenzon Niego’s Spanish Non-Fiction Writing Workshop. In the collection, he references life in Cuba from 2014 through 2016 through various stories relating to famous and ordinary Cubans alike. One story, "El Pitcher Negro de las Medias Blancas" (“The Black Pitcher for the White Sox"), recounts the story of José Ariel Contreras, a Cuban pitcher who defected to the U.S. in the early 2000s to play in Major League Baseball — to the disappointment of his communist father. It follows Ariel Contreras’ subsequent return to Cuba in 2016 to attend to his mother’s medical issues. Another story, “Alcides, el Inédito” ("Alcides the Unpublished"), tells the story of Rafael Alcides, a prolific Cuban poet who self-exiled to a reclusive life due to government censorship. Both stories offer up a sentiment of Cuba during these years — through the stories of those exiled and those who stayed but were isolated in their own world.

Álvarez also offered advice to Wolfenzón Niego’s students (who will soon write chronicles of their own as final projects in the course), sharing strategies that he has employed to create meaningful and impactful artistic works. Students asked Álvarez questions about his writing process, and he shared his experiences while also offering suggestions to students about their creative processes. Lastly, Álvarez emphasized the importance of having an open mind and letting the story unfold. He highlighted the worth of a good storyteller by riffing on the popular framework proposed by German author Walter Benjamin: regardless of whether the storyteller is a mariner who has seen the world, or a peasant who has remained in one place their whole life — whichever storyteller you choose to follow, Álvarez emphasized, there is always a story.