To promote a peaceful transition to a Cuba that respects human rights
and political and economic freedoms
The Velvet Revolution, and the San Isidro Movement protest for Denis Solis’ freedom, both nonviolent moments began on this day
Both the San Isidro Movement protests for Denis Solis’ freedom that rocked the Cuban regime in 2020 and the Velvet Revolution, which were large-scale demonstrations that brought an end to communism in Czechoslovakia in 1989, started on November 17th, albeit geographically and 31 years apart. Both, however, resulted from each regime’s brutal response to a nonviolent demonstration, which were greeted by increasing waves of nonviolent protest.
Travel writer and photographer Anna Spysz in her 2017 article “Panic! on the Streets of Prague” described how the November 17, 1989 protests, and the repressive response led to a domino effect.
“On the first day of the revolution, a peaceful student demonstration to commemorate International Students’ Day began in Prague and ended with violence on Narodni Street, when riot police blocked off escape routes and severely beat students. That first domino began an avalanche, as almost every day afterwards until the end of December brought more protests with more and more people participating. By November 20 an estimated half-million of peaceful protesters took to the streets, up from the 200,000 of the day before. A general two-hour strike that involved all citizens of Czechoslovakia was held on November 27th (various video clips from these protests and from the Warsaw Pact invasion of 1968 can be seen at the Museum of Communism in Prague). After that, demonstrations were being held almost daily in Prague’s Wenceles Square as well as in Bratislava.”
Thirty one years later, in a poor Havana neighborhood called San Isidro, a group of artists came together in a home and studio in defense of their unjustly imprisoned friend. They were protesting the arrest on November 9th, and summary trial on November 11th of their colleague Denis Solís González who was sentenced to eight months in prison for “contempt” (desacato), for speaking critically of a police officer searching his home. In this July 2022 podcast Denis describes how he resisted, and overcame the Cuban dictatorship’s indoctrination.
Denis served his sentence at Valle Grande, a maximum-security prison just outside Havana, and later went into exile. Below is a 2018 music video by him, while he was still in Cuba, that contains political themes critical of the Cuban dictatorship.
“The San Isidro Movement is calling for a poetic action in Old Havana on November 17 at 4:30 PM to demand the immediate release of Denis Solís González, unjustly imprisoned for expressing his political ideas. It is a gesture that arose in front of the police station on Cuba and Chacón and that we want to maintain as a poetic encouragement while Denis is incarcerated. We will read texts by authors such as Federico García Lorca, Nicanor Parra, Francisco de Quevedo, Dylan Thomas or Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz;and by Cuban authors such as Rafael Alcides, Virgilio Piñera, Lezama Lima, Dulce María Loynaz, Grupo Diáspora(s), Omar Pérez, and many others. Denis Solís is serving an 8-month prison sentence in the Valle Grande detention center. Havana residents are invited to join us at the headquarters of the San Isidro Movement, located at Damas 955 between San Isidro and Avenida del Puerto. Here we will be for several days, a group of artists and friends sharing our favorite works, singing, acting and imagining a more complete Cuba for everyone. We want all who understands that, by demanding Denis’s liberation, we are also demanding our own liberation, to join in the poetic action. We also ask Cubans, wherever they are, to join in reading. Send us your videos, post them on your social networks with the hashtag #FreeDenis, here or there, from Brussels or Soriano, because Cuba is in us, and it is a “curve of sighs and mud.”#notopoliceviolence #FreeDenis #aCubayChacónforDenis”
Activist and reporter for CiberCuba Iliana Hernández, one of the strikers, recalls what happened next in her “Chronicles of the barracks in San Isidro” in which she mentions artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and musician Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo Pérez.
“The idea was to read poems at the MSI headquarters; go to Denis Solís’s house and continue the reading there with his family; do the same at the corner where he was detained and beaten; and finish the pilgrimage reading poems at the Cuba and Chacón station. But conditions changed. The repressors were waiting for us to come out so they could attack us, arrest us and separate us as they always do. Seeing that going out was dangerous, we decided to carry out the activity inside the house, but not before making fun of the situation created by the regime. Luis Manuel and Maykel went outside and started dancing in front of the house. Immediately, the neighbors of San Isidro gathered around the corner to see what was happening, they felt identified with what the boys were doing. Humberto Mena also joined in, and there they were, the three of them dancing, ridiculing the gang of criminals who surrounded the area as if we were terrorists. The people of San Isidro laughed, enjoyed themselves and felt part of the performance, even I went out and took my steps, although I was afraid that some kind of chase would form and we wouldn’t have time to get to the door.”
The artists and activists decided for reasons of caution to hold their event at the San Isidro Movement (MSI ) headquarters, and they called on Cubans to join them there to take part in the action. The Cuban dictatorship responded by setting up a cordon, and did not allow persons to enter. On November 18, 2020 when it became clear that officials would not allow anyone to deliver them food, and in the early morning hours of that day had used a chemical agent to poison their water supply, nine of them decided to go on hunger strike, and four of them took the additional step to also start a thirst strike. This was done to conserve food and water for those among them in a more vulnerable situation.
This began a series of actions of escalating violence by the dictatorship, and disciplined nonviolence by the San Isidro Movement that contributed to mass protests in 2020 in Havana, and in 2021 across the island, and the liberation anthem: Patria y Vida. Both Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo Pérez are today prisoners of conscience in Cuba, but they continue their nonviolent struggle behind bars, and are still making an international impact. On the fourth anniversary of the decision to remain in protest in the San Isidro headquarters in Havana, Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo Pérez sent this message from prison.
Dear and esteemed friends:
First of all, I do not consider myself even remotely a superman, only a very humble human being, capable of understanding that we are only a small breath of life in the hands of a time that will never stop to wait for us. In the face of this everything that surrounds us every minute, we are only an ephemeral part of a nothing.
Therefore, today I let you know that you, my friends, brothers and followers, are the everything that filled the void of the nothingness that was forgotten. When I met you, I wanted you with my rebellion and you followed me, that is, each one of you are, and always will be, the reason for the everything that came to fill my nothingness.
Do not doubt for a moment that each one of you is greater and much more important than me.
Without more,
Maykel Osorbo
Days earlier, Luis Manuel in a phone call from prison made a call to action: “To the artists, theorists, collectors and art lovers who will visit the 2024 biennial, I invite you to see my work and become part of it. It’s called Proof of Life. One special person will be chosen to visit me in prison and spend one or two hours with me in conversation about art and other things. The biennial began as an opportunity for artists from the periphery, and those that have been displaced. Since I can’t go to the event, why not bring [the biennial] to the artist?”
On November 9, 2024 at the Rafto Conference in Bergen, Norway the case of 2024 Rafto Prize winner Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara was highlighted, and followed on November 10th with a torchlight procession in his honor through the streets of this Norwegian town.
Photo by Rafto Foundation
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