In an interview compiled through various sporadic conversations, Cuban dissident artist and prisoner of conscience Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara describes the horrors of life in a communist gulag. Imprisoned since the July 11, 2021 protests in Cuba, Otero Alcantara is dealing with life as a political prisoner in a totalitarian state as best he can.
Via Martí Noticias (my translation):
Otero Alcantara describes a day in prison: ‘What can be left for a prisoner?’
Do you have friends in prison? How does the time pass in there? What do you dream about? What do you eat? Do other prisoners respect your thoughts, your ideas? Do you feel abandoned? Cuban political prisoner Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, an artist and activist, answers these and other questions in a lengthy interview published this Monday by the independent magazine El Estornudo.
The interview is a sort of fragmented conversation between journalist Carlos Manuel Álvarez and Otero Alcántara, “through the scarce phone calls that he is occasionally allowed to make” from prison. The last of these calls took place on March 14th.
For the incarcerated artist, a day in prison is like a theatrical performance where “every day is the same, where every day is the same.” He wakes up “at six in the morning with a repeat of a bell ringing that sounds like the scream of a madman,” and from there, fixed schedules, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
It’s not like Otero Alcántara or the other prisoners have much to eat. “Imagine, in a country where children currently don’t have milk, they don’t have bread, what can be left for a prisoner?” he told El Estornudo.
The artist recounted that sometimes he fills the hours by drawing, focusing on his art. Sad faces come to mind, he said, “depressed people, worn out people, people without hope, many young people who today are serving or facing ten, fifteen, twenty years,” and he tries to channel those visions by drawing the faces of those characters who, he emphasized, “get darker every day.”
Regarding how he perceives time in prison, a topic he has turned into art with his work “Portrait in charcoal of Schrödinger’s cat,” he pointed out that one of the things that happens in prison is that sometimes “one believes that one’s time is worthless.”
“But if one has that conviction, if one is sure, one knows that time has value. The ten minutes before talking on the phone take longer, the five minutes before the visit arrives take longer. It’s the longing. There are days that are worth nothing or that you’re playing dominoes and the whole day goes by there. This brings about a crisis over time,” he reflected.
Otero Alcántara told El Estornudo that, although he converses and interacts with other inmates and maintains a respectful relationship with the guards, he always feels watched. He also asserts that both prisoners and guards know his story.
“Everyone knows who you are, whether they walk with you or not, whether they talk to you or not. Half of them are informing the State Security, the other half are afraid, although some dare too. That’s more or less how the dynamic works,” he pointed out.
In his perception, the guards and even some inmates are there to take care of him.
“If something happens, the police come immediately, the doctors come. They don’t want me dead, understand? They don’t want me mistreated. When I stop talking on the phone, you realize immediately that they worry. When I don’t want visits, because I get depressed and don’t want to see anyone, they worry and get alarmed. Yes, I think they have a concern for my physical integrity, for now,” he said.
Night is a space of creativity for the political prisoner. “At bedtime, what pursues me is art, I can’t stop making art. In fact, when I close my eyes, many images of spiritualities that are here, around me, trapped in this place that is like a cathedral of evil, a cathedral of wickedness, come to me.”
And what does Otero Alcántara dream of in the minimal space of his cell?
“Dreams are freedom, being on the street, meeting my friends,” he confessed. “Yesterday I dreamed I was in some kind of theater… My mom was there, for example. My dad was also there a lot, and all my friends were on stage. It was like a collective performance for my birthday, kind of crazy.”
Otero Alcántara, founder of the San Isidro Movement, was imprisoned on July 11, 2021, when he tried to join the anti-government protests that shook the island that day. The following year he was sentenced to 5 years in prison for public disorder, contempt, and disrespect of the symbols of the homeland. Since then, he has remained imprisoned in the maximum-security prison of Guanajay.
Last February, the Provincial People’s Court of Artemisa dismissed a request for parole for the political prisoner.
in a sense, all of Cuba is a Castro prison. The more time passes, the worse the “revolutionaries” look.