An excerpt from a piece written by Alexis Romay at the Cuba Inside Out website (my translation):
Alexis Romay: The art of the escape
[…] People are always asking me when I left Cuba. I automatically respond that for Cubans, it is not possible to leave Cuba for the same reason it was not possible for slaves to leave plantations. You do not leave a country that prohibits your exit, you escape it. As I read this text in New York before an audience in which all the Cubans there, whether they recognize it or not, are by an actual edict fugitives, I admit that although perhaps original, there is nothing extraordinary about my personal odyssey. I just wanted to leave written proof and in simple block letters express what is truly indisputable: Among the so many other things, Cuba’s history for the the second half of the 20th century has been a treatise, a compendium, an exquisite manual on the art of the escape.
H/T Enrisco