(Havana) One of the personalities of 2021 according to Timea mercenary in the service of the United States for the Cuban government: Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, a 34-year-old dissident artist, has been in prison for seven months and Washington is insistently demanding his release.
Posted yesterday at 10:24 a.m.
His girlfriend Claudia Genlui, a 31-year-old art curator, recalls the day he was arrested: July 11, 2021, when thousands of Cubans poured into the streets of the island shouting “We’re hungry. and “Freedom”.
“He came out of my house to support the rest of the Cubans in the protests,” she told AFP from Miami, where she has been since October.
Luis Manuel will not have time to join them: already in the crosshairs of the authorities, he is arrested on the way. Since then, he has been in the high security prison of Guanajay, 40 kilometers west of Havana.
Justice accuses him of various offenses (incitement to commit an offense, aggravated contempt, public disorder, etc.), all prior to July 11.
Because for the past few years, he has defined himself as an “artivist” – a contraction of artist and activist – has multiplied provocative performances: to protest against a decree framing the work of artists, he tries to cover himself in excrement in front of the Capitol.
He also enjoys carrying the Cuban flag on his shoulders for a month, which earned him prosecution for insulting the symbols of the country.
The magazine Time selected him among the 100 personalities of 2021, the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei acknowledging that “art requires courage, which he has demonstrated on many occasions”.
” An example “
The last time Claudia was able to reach him on the phone was January 18. He has since declared himself on a hunger strike.
In mid-February, she received a call from a relative of a fellow prisoner: “He told me that (Luis Manuel) was doing very badly, that he had lost a lot of weight, that he had almost no more of strength to walk and hardly spoke”.
For Washington, it is the alarm bell and the State Department is increasing calls for his release.
“Seven months after having peacefully defended human rights and fundamental freedoms, Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara is awaiting a trial that seems never to happen”, denounced the Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“We are extremely concerned that the Cuban authorities have unfairly made an example of Otero Alcantara,” the State Department told AFP in a written response.
For the Cuban government, Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara is not an artist, but an agent in the service of the United States to try to destabilize it.
“It’s an argument that the government always uses” to discredit critical voices, sighs Anamely Ramos, 37, an Alcantara friend and activist who was denied entry to Cuba last week, returning from Miami .
“Soldiers in a War”
Arturo Lopez-Levy, a Cuban researcher at Holy Names University in California, retorts that “the evidence is clear”, citing “telephone conversations” broadcast on the television news which are “the illustration of a subordination of (Luis Manuel and Anamely) to American politics”.
If he recognizes that the rights of the latter have been violated, he adds: “the harm caused by the United States (by its sanctions against Cuba) is in my opinion much more serious”.
In this context, “the Cuban government perceives this part of the Cuban opposition as a continuation of the hostile policy of the United States towards Cuba, they are soldiers in a war” and “it wants them to go away”. .
This showdown comes as Washington has recently hinted at possible gestures of appeasement, such as the reopening of its consular section in Cuba or the facilitation of remittances from abroad to the island, after years of reinforcement. of the embargo.
For Anamely Ramos, “Luis Manuel is already a symbol and I think that Cuba, above all, wants to make it a bargaining chip” against concessions. But he “does not accept that”.
According to Claudia Genlui, the authorities have repeatedly offered Luis Manuel freedom in exchange for exile, but he refuses. “His goal, which is ours, is the freedom of Cuba.”
Designated a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, he is also the face of a new generation within the opposition, which is demanding that he and two other opponents be awarded the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of thought.