The Castro dictatorship’s campaign of harassment and oppression against an independent Cuban artist

In socialist Cuba you either conform to the will of the Communist Party or you pay the consequences. Independent Cuban artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara refuses to conform.

Via Hyperallergic:

Cuba’s Campaign Against Artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, a self-taught artist of color from a humble background in Cuba, has been the target of an ongoing campaign of intimidation and harassment for the past two years. The independent artist, who is targeted for challenging the Cuban government, has been forcibly disappeared by Cuban police on numerous occasions, sometimes for hours and other times for days. Most recently, on the night of September 12, Otero Alcantara was arrested while standing outside the Taller Gorría Gallery near his home. According to neighbors who witnessed the arrest, several police officers and plain-clothed security agents beat him as they took him away. He was held incommunicado for four days and notified upon his release that he would be charged with misuse of patriotic symbols and  “descato” (“disrespect”)  toward the president,  and that he would be subject to a curfew denying him the right to leave his house at night. Up until now, his many detentions had not resulted in formal charges being brought against him — on some occasions, police admitted to him that they did not know what he was being arrested for but they were taking orders from the Ministry of the Interior to detain him. This new charge signifies another level of pressure, not only against him, but also against the entire artistic community in Cuba.

Otero Alcántara’s art practice is overtly political, in that he deals with issues of freedom of expression and works with revolutionary slogans, iconic images, and national symbols. His practice includes performance, street intervention, and sculpture. He has exhibited widely abroad, and he and his collaborator Yanelys Nuñez Leyva won the 2018 Freedom of Expression Award from Index on Censorship in the UK for their public art and online projects that recuperate histories of dissent on the island.

In 2017 when the 5-star Hotel Kempinski opened in downtown Havana, Otero Alcántara wrote a letter to Raul Castro, then-president of Cuba, asking why the bust of the Cuban Communist Party founder and national hero Julio Antonio Mella had been removed from the site of the hotel. Otero Alcántara then staged a street performance outside the hotel in which he covered his face with an image of Mella and carried a sign that said “Where is Mella?” and was arrested by state security within minutes. That same year, he co-founded Havana’s first alternative art biennial and was deemed an oppositional mercenary for daring to organize an international event without state involvement. In 2018, he spearheaded a social media campaign and a series of protests against the imposition of Decree 349, the new law in Cuba criminalizing cultural activity that is not authorized by the state. Since the Cuban government established new restrictions on the use of patriotic symbols by the Cuban people in the summer of 2019, he has engaged in several performances using the Cuban flag entitled The Flag Belongs to Everyone to assert the right of all Cubans to engage with their country’s symbols as they see fit.

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