Help Save Luis Otero

URGENT APPEAL Let's help save Cuban artist on hunger strike, Luis Manuel Otero   April 27, 2021. Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who creates modern sculptures for performance art, declared himself on hunger strike on Sunday, April 25th, to demand that Cuban authorities: lift the state of siege surrounding his home since November 2020; return his confiscated works of art and compensate him for damages; respect the full exercise of artistic freedom in Cuba.   Otero is the leading figure of the San Isidro Movement (MSI for its Spanish acronym), a group of young artists, musicians, writers, and researchers that came together to protest Decree 349 of April 2018. The new law prohibits all artists, musicians, and performers from operating in public or private spaces without prior approval by the Ministry of Culture, which tightened longstanding restrictions on artistic expression.   Their peaceful protests have been responded to with mounting abuses of the protesters by Cuban authorities: arbitrary detentions, beatings, home confinements, acts of repudiation by mobs, blocked communications, stolen cell phones, confiscation of work and materials, surveillance, threats, and harassment. Since last November repression has escalated. On November 12th 2020, rapper Denis Solis was sentenced to eight months of prison for “disrespect” for verbally protesting the illegal entry of his home by police. In protest, several members of the MSI initiated a collective hunger strike at Otero's home. The  State Security raided the house on November 26th and arrest the protesters --they were forced to depose their fast and eventually released. This led to a spontaneous nonviolent protest by several hundred Cuban artists and intellectuals at the entrance to the Ministry of Culture and the emergence of a greater movement, “27N,” in support of the MSI’s demands. It helped inspire the video for the musical hit Patria y Vida, which shows Otero holding the Cuban flag; the video has almost 5 million views since its YouTube release of last February 16th.   Otero declared today that he is at peace with his decision to go without food or liquids and “ready to leave this body, an imprisoned mass the regime can threaten and even beat, prevent from painting a work, and forbid from being an artist.” (Translated from Spanish.)   Otero must live and continue waging the peaceful battle for freedom in Cuba! Hunger strikes have tragically taken the lives of too many Cubans who feel this radical form of protest is what’s left to them in demanding their fundamental rights. Cuba Archive has documented 24 such deaths --see our database and our report of fatalities among political prisoners.  Over the past 62 years and under Cuba’s Communist constitution, freedom of expression, including artistic and cultural, has been amply repressed. Coincidentally, today is the 50thanniversary of "the Padilla affair," the Stalinist mea culpa forced on Cuban poet Heberto Padilla (1932-2000) after a month of imprisonment. This case made Cuban totalitarianism clear to many intellectuals worldwide who had romanticized the Cuban revolution.   *For more information on restrictions of artistic expression in Cuba, see “Art under pressure: decree 349 restricts creative freedom in Cuba," PEN America / Cubalex, Mar. 4, 2019.   You can make a difference! Please take a few minutes to support Otero’s demands and help save his life. Write to Cuban President Miguel Díaz Canel at despacho@presidencia.gob.cu.  Also, ask international media, especially outlets with correspondents in Cuba, to bypass the censorship and control to let the world know of Luis Manuel Otero’s demands and the lack of freedom of expression in Cuba. Write or call Reuters, CNN, The New York Times, and others.

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