To promote a peaceful transition to a Cuba that respects human rights
and political and economic freedoms
May 31, 2021 - Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara freed and defiant. Baseball game between Cuba and Venezuela stopped by young woman demanding a free Cuba. A good day.
May 31, 2021 was a good day for those who aspire that Cuba be freed from dictatorship. The Castro regime lost a Pre-Olympic qualifying baseball game to Maduro's Venezuelan team, but that was not what angered the dictatorship, or their greatest loss. Hundreds of Cubans and Venezuelans came together to protest their respective dictatorships and join together in their rejection of communism. Furthermore the image of an elderly Cuban exile was shattered with "protesters [that] numbered in the hundreds and transcended class, gender and age," reported Declan Walsh of The Palm Beach Post.
Maykel Castillo 'Osorbo' shows dangling handcuff after San Isidro neighbors stopped his arrest
Kiele Alessandra Cabrera momentarily stopped the game between Cuba and Venezuela for two minutes, during the Pre-Olympic Tournament of the Americas. She jumped onto the field with a poster that read: “Free Cuba” and had an image of an extended arm with a fist with a handcuff hanging off the wrist. Kiele Alessandra is Cuban-American and 23 years old. She is a graduate of Florida State University and supports the struggle against the Castro dictatorship in Cuba. Her protest was seen around the world and in Cuba.
The significance of the poster references an image made viral weeks ago when the police tried to arrest Cuban rapper Maykel Castillo 'Osorbo' on April 4, 2021 but the San Isidro neighborhood turned against the regime agents and they had to flee. Maykel raised the one arm the police had managed to cuff in a gesture of defiance, and the image was recorded and ended up circling the world. Below is video of the attempted arrest and the reaction of the neighbors.
Kiele Alessandra Cabrera momentarily stopped the baseball game demanding a free Cuba, and freedom for political prisoners.
This young courageous woman risked her own safety to send a message of solidarity and freedom to Cubans, and she was taken away by the police and later released. She is 23 years old and born in the United States, but together with many young Cubans yesterday at the baseball stadium they stood up for a free Cuba, and shatter the stereotypes of the Castro regime against the Cuban exile community.
The public relations disaster for the dictatorship continued into the afternoon in Havana.
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara returned home the same day at 4:00pm after being kidnapped on May 2, 2021 and held for a month against his will at the Calixto Garcia Hospital, where too many dissidents have died under suspicious circumstances he made a statement. He spoke plainly about what had been done to him reported AFP:
“After a month in the hands of the beast, we’ll see how things go in the streets to continue the struggle,” Otero Alcantara said in a video published by opposition media Cubanet. He said state security forces had taken his mobile telephone and left him “literally a month without communication and with little access to my family,” adding that he would soon “recount everything that happened to me.”
Mary Anastasia O'Grady in The Wall Street Journal on May 31, 2021 reported the good news, "Cuba Frees Otero Alcántara: A founder of an artists’ movement is released thanks to unprecedented international and local pressure," and today another manifestation of this unprecedented pressure appeared in a joint statement from institutions at Harvard University that deal both with Latin America and African and African American research.
Luis Manuel Otero at home on May 31, 2021
The "Statement from the David Rockefeller Center for Latin Americans Studies, the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, and the Afro-Latin American Research Institute, Harvard University, on human rights in Cuba" made public on June 1, 2021 expresses their "strong condemnation of recent repression by the Cuban government against artists and activists seeking artistic freedom and freedom of expression. Activists, including Harvard visiting artists such as Tania Bruguera, are being discredited in Cuban state media as “mercenaries” or agents of foreign and hostile governments and organizations."
This statement describes the "nature, quality, and intensity of the state violence unleashed against its residents resembles forms of radicalized state violence in other countries across the Americas, including the United States, which we have also denounced vigorously from our platforms. Cuban Black lives also matter," and concludes asking Havana to " to stop this repression, to release those detained or imprisoned immediately, and to heed the San Isidro Movement’s calls for a peaceful national dialogue."
Thankfully they are not just focused on Luis Manuel but also other " young men of African descent, including artists such as rappers Denis Solís González, Maykel Castillo 'Osorbo,' and Eliecer Márquez Duany 'El Funky,' who are currently imprisoned or detained under dubious charges of 'contempt' or 'disobedience' against public officials."
The San Isidro Movement over twitter today provided a more extensive listing of their friends who are unjustly still imprisoned: Maykel Castillo, Esteban Rodríguez López, Thais Mailén Franco, Inti Soto Romero, Yuisan Cancio Vera, Luis Angel Cuba Alfonso, Adrián Gongora Santiesteban, Taimir García, Damian Hechevarria, Yeilis Torrez Cruz, and Yoandi Montiel (El Gato).
Monday, May 31, 2021 was a good day for those who wish to see a free Cuba. May this mark the start of many more such good days.
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