Two Cuban amateur actors — cast members of an award-winning film — disappeared en route to New York for a film festival and have emerged in Miami, saying they will apply for political asylum in the United States. “In Cuba, we were talking about it, to stay,” actor Javier Nunez Florian told the Miami-based, Spanish-language channel America TeVe in an interview that aired late Friday, appearing alongside actress Anailin de la Rua. On a stopover in Miami on their flight Wednesday from Havana to New York for the Tribeca Film Festival, the pair, both aged 20, slipped away from their traveling companions and fled to the home of De la Rua's uncle in the city. “We wanted to stay and fight and help our parents that way,” Nunez Florian pointed out. He added that living and working in America had been a “dream” of theirs for a long time. “We are ready to do any work that is available,” said Nunez Florian. Immigration attorney Wilfredo Allen said the pair would apply for political asylum in the United States within 10 days, and that they had a “very high chance” of getting their request approved. “To seek political asylum does not mean they have been victims of political persecution in Cuba,” Allen said, “but they defected.” According to the lawyer, if they returned to Cuba, the actors could be considered “traitors” and could possibly suffer repression by the communist regime.
