Carolina Barrero

Carolina Barrero is a Cuban political leader, human rights defender, writer, and political analyst whose work focuses on democratic change, fundamental freedoms, and Cuba’s political future. She is President and Executive Director of Ciudadanía y Libertad, where she leads efforts to strengthen independent civil society, political participation, and democratic institutions. A prominent figure of Cuba’s 27N and San Isidro pro-democracy movement, her activism led to repeated arbitrary detention, surveillance, house arrest, and ultimately forced exile in 2022. Internationally, she engages governments, policymakers, and civil society on political prisoners, civic freedoms, transnational repression, and democratic transition, and in 2024 was selected as a Sakharov Fellow of the European Parliament. Currently a Ph.D. Fellow at the University of Miami, her writing and research bridge politics, philosophy, humanism, and human rights, with particular attention to authoritarianism, civic resistance, political pluralism, and the intellectual foundations of democratic societies.