(Havana) The dissident Cuban artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara on Monday promised to “continue the fight” after 29 days in the hospital where he says he was deprived of communication with the outside, which sparked a movement of solidarity other artists.
Posted on May 31, 2021 at 5:01 p.m.
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“After a month in the hands of the beast, we will see how things are going in the street, to continue the fight”, he declared shortly after his release, in a video broadcast by the opposition media Cubanet .
” I do not have [mon] telephone, state security has it, [j’ai été] a month literally without communications and with little access to my family, ”he said in another video, promising to“ tell all that happened to me soon ”.
Underlining the “full recovery” of this man, accused by the government of being funded by the United States and described as a “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International, the Calixto Garcia hospital in Havana had earlier announced the ‘to have’ authorized[é] get out “.
“Every moment he reiterated his gratitude to the staff who took care of him, who respected the patient’s wishes. […], which is evidenced by his signature in the medical file, ”assured the hospital.
33-year-old performer Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara was hospitalized on May 2, eight days after declaring himself on a hunger strike following the seizure and deterioration by the police of his works.
The first days, the authorities, to prove that he was in perfect health, had disseminated elements of his medical file. Then several videos of him, apparently filmed by doctors, had filtered on social networks.
But his relatives denounced the impossibility of communicating with him and claimed that he was being held against his will.
The US government had called for his “immediate” release.
“Dark hours”
As a sign of solidarity, twenty Cuban artists had demanded last week that their works at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana no longer be accessible to the public.
The museum had rejected this request, which was not “compliant […] in the public interest ”.
“Cuban art lives dark hours […], the criminalization of difference is not – and will not be – a path to coexistence, ”lamented on Facebook one of them, Tomas Sanchez, a 73-year-old painter who exhibited his dreamlike landscapes of forests in France, Mexico and the United States.
Who is Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara? For the Communist authorities, he is a “mercenary” paid by Washington to engage in political agitation.
He is one of “those Cuban citizens that [le gouvernement américain] finances, guides and promotes in a systematic and very visible manner, ”said Johana Tablada, a head of the United States department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
This serves to “fabricate illegal actions of destabilization and generate a false image of Cuba, pretexts with which it tries to justify its criminal policy of economic blockade”.
“Victory of civil society”
Unknown to the general public until last year, the face of Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara now appears regularly on the television news, which accuses the dissident of being funded by the National Democratic Institute in the United States, a think tank led by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
The authorities “lie”, retorted the person concerned to AFP in early April. “What an artist does is question […] and I do it as an artist and through my works ”.
Coming from a poor background, the one who defines himself as “artivist” – contraction of artist and activist – has multiplied the performances, often provocative, in recent years, such as wearing a construction helmet 24 hours a day after death. of three little girls in the collapsed balcony of a dilapidated house.
In November, he took refuge with members and supporters of his collective, the San Isidro Movement, in his house in Havana, after the arrest of a rapper, filming their fight for 10 days via the internet.
Their expulsion triggered a historic mobilization of 300 artists against the Ministry of Culture on November 27.
If some of the artists share neither the convictions nor the methods of Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, many display growing unease about the limits imposed on them.
His discharge from hospital “is a victory for Cuban civil society and artists, who have shown a maturity and a knowledge of their rights that can no longer be taken away from them”, greeted AFP Tania Bruguera, a 52-year-old visual artist who exhibited at Tate Modern in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York (Moma) and also requested the temporary withdrawal of her works.
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