This is not a performance: Cuban artist and dissident Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara kidnapped and tortured by Castro dictatorship for 20 days

“Luis Manuel must not spend one more day under state custody. He has been detained solely because of his consciously held beliefs and must be released immediately and unconditionally. It is time for the Cuban authorities to recognize that they cannot silence all the independent voices in the country,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International.

Concept taken from Norges Rodriguez

 

Today, May 22, 2021, marks 20 days since state security agents forced their way into Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara's home at 5:00am on May 2nd, and took him to Calixto Garcia Hospital. They refused to meet his demands, and feared the consequences, at the time, of the Cuban artist and dissident dying on a hunger and thirst strike.

Amnesty International on May 21, 2021 recognized  Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara as a prisoner of conscience for the third time since 2018. A day earlier on May 20, 2021 they issued an urgent action calling on members to write letters to the Cuban government demanding Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara's immediate and unconditional release and to condemn his detention.

 What is the immediate cause of this crisis and the urgency in demanding his release? 

#SOSCuba “Que No Se Apague La Llama Libertad“
Acción Performance colectiva de Osiris Cisneros & Olga Más con ProActivo Miami & Kiele Alessandra Cabrera & MSI en Miami & Dariel Fernandez 7 ADN Cuba por La Libertad de #Cuba Celebrando el 20 de Mayo #DiaDeLaIndependenciaNacional pic.twitter.com/fHg1ZIHXJC

— ProActivo Miami (@ProactivoM) May 21, 2021

 

On April 25, 2021, Otero Alcántara initiated a hunger and thirst strike to protest the seizure and destruction of his works of art on April 16, 2021, his de facto house arrest, and the ongoing persecution of artists. Officials arbitrarily detained activists, like rapper and poet AfrikReina who tried to visit Luis Manuel at his home, and forcibly isolated him.

News reports are emerging with sources claiming that Luis Manuel is being subjected to electroshock therapy. There is reason to be concerned with these emerging claims of psychiatric instruments being applied against the Cuban dissident.

In 1991 Freedom House and Of Human Rights published The Politics of Psychiatry in Revolutionary Cuba by Charles J. Brown and Armando M. Lago that reported on the political abuse of psychiatry in Cuba under the Castro regime. The preface was written by Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky in which he described how the Soviet Union used psychiatry as a weapon. Bukovsky observed that "Cuba in this regard is unique only by the hasty pace of the disease: it covered in thirty-two years what the Soviet Union achieved in seventy-three. Within a single generation, Cuba advanced from 'revolutionary justice' to 'socialist legality,' from liquidation of 'class enemies' to 'political re-education' and psychiatric treatment of those 'apathetic to socialism'."

Not only have regime agents used psychiatry as a weapon to destroy the psyches of dissidents, but  Calixto García Hospital has a track record of suspicious deaths of dissidents in a militarized environment.

Ministry of the Interior agents at the same hospital oversaw the untimely death of Ladies in White leader Laura Pollán in October 2011. She was isolated, relatives and friends not allowed to see her, and she died and was quickly cremated. There are numerous other cases of unexplained deaths in hospitals on the Island under the custody of State Security. Another one was that of the blind dissident Sergio Díaz Larrastegui in April 2012. In both cases, that of Pollán and that of Díaz Larrastegui, whose homes were headquarters in Havana of important human rights organizations, their deaths meant the closure of the headquarters and a severe blow to the civic movement.

In the case of Otero Alcántara, his home is the headquarters of the San Isidro Movement, an organization that in recent months has raised its voice in favor of freedom of expression on the Island, achieving numerous spontaneous and organized demonstrations in favor of their demands. The dictatorship that brought this activist to the brink of death cannot be trusted to now want to save him. We must demand that he be freed immediately and returned to family and friends.

 

Observing Cuba's First Independence Day in 1902: Reflection on the Democratic Republic's first 50 years and what followed

A great day in Cuban history. 

Independence Day in Havana, Cuba on May 20, 1902

One hundred and nineteen years ago today at noon the flag of the United States was brought down and the Cuban flag raised over Havana as Cuba became an independent republic and its first president, Tomas Estrada de Palma, took power and would serve four years and leave office. Prior to the Castro brothers taking over, the Cuban Republic had 12 presidents over its first 58 years which averages out to 4.8 years in office per president. Meanwhile since 1959 two brothers have run Cuba into the ground through an absolutist, totalitarian, communist dictatorship.

The beginning of the Cuban republic on May 20, 1902 had an asterisk – The Platt Amendment: which allowed the United States to intervene in Cuban affairs if U.S. interests were threatened. This Amendment was gotten rid of in 1933 but left a bad taste in the mouth of Cuban nationalists.

Future first Cuban president Tomas Estrada de Palma on way to Havana

Between 1902 and 1952 Cuba progressed socially and economically but faced challenges on the political front. For example in the late 1920s Gerardo Machado, the democratically elected president did not want to leave power becoming a dictator. He was driven from office and into exile in 1933 by a general strike. This was followed by a revolution led by university students and enlisted men in what became known as the sergeants revolt. This put Fulgencio Batista into the national spotlight and by 1934 he was the strong man behind the scenes even though democratic formalities were restored.

In 1940 all the political tendencies in Cuba met to draft what became known as the 1940 Constitution and a presidential election was held and Fulgencio Batista elected. He served out his term as president from 1940 to 1944. Due to a clause in the new Constitution he was unable to run for re-election. In the election of 1944 the opposition candidate, Ramon Grau San Martin, won and served a term as president from 1944-1948 and in the election of 1948, Batista’s political party again lost at the general elections and Carlos Prios Socarras was elected president.

Cuba's republic during this democratic period played an important role in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations.

This democratic renaissance was brought to an end within days of the 1952 presidential elections, when on March 10th Fulgencio Batista organized a coup against the last democratically elected president.

A little over a year later on July 26, 1953, Fidel Castro organized an armed assault on the Moncada Military barracks that was a military disaster but a public relations success. Although most of the men involved with Fidel Castro in the assault were killed, Fidel Castro became a national figure at his trial for the attack. At the trial he portrayed himself as a democrat that wanted to restore the previous democratic order and attacked the Batista dictatorship for its usurpation of the democratic order.

How the totalitarian darkness arrived in Cuba 

Upon Batista’s departure from Cuba on December 31, 1958, Fidel Castro began his triumphal trek across Cuba to Havana where he began to consolidate power while continuing publicly to claim that he was a democrat but privately began to infiltrate his movement with communists, alienating many who had fought with him, and began to approach the mass media threatening them with violence if they reported anything critical. As the months passed all independent media were taken over. Mass televised executions imposed fear in the populace.

Ramiro Valdez oversaw the installation of the totalitarian communist apparatus in Cuba beginning in 1959. He is now probably doing the same thing in Venezuela.  It was on his watch that the East German Stasi trained Cuban State Security.

This is how the darkness of totalitarianism took over Cuba and 57 years later remains entrenched there. Cuba gained its independence on May 20, 1902 after centuries of Spanish colonial rule and four years of U.S. occupation following the Spanish American war.

Over half of Cuba's post colonial history, thus far, has been under the boot of totalitarian caudillos whose father, ironically, fought for the Spanish crown in the war of independence to preserve Cuba as a Spanish colony.

 

On this day in 1895 José Martí was killed by Spanish troops in Cuba. The struggle for Cuban freedom continues.

"There is no forgiveness for acts of hatred. Daggers thrust in the name of liberty are thrust into liberty's heart." - José Martí

José Julián Martí Pérez: January 28, 1853 - May 19, 1895

 

Earlier version taken from CubaBrief

José Julián Martí Pérez was killed 126 years ago today in battle against Spanish troops at the Battle of Dos Ríos, near the confluence of the rivers Contramaestre and Cauto, on May 19, 1895. He is buried in the Santa Efigenia Cemetery in Santiago de Cuba. Cubans the world over honor his memory and Cuban independence follows a day later. Seven years and one day after Martí's death Cuba formally obtained its independence on May 20, 1902. Dr. Suchlicki in his essay "THE DEATH OF A HERO" describes him as Cuba’s greatest hero and most influential writer.

Cubans across the ideological divide claim José Martí as their own. The claims of the dictatorship, led by the Castro family, that Martí is the intellectual author of their political project is ironic considering that the life and writings of this Cuban journalist, poet, and independence leader are the antithesis of the Castro regime.

Killed 126 years ago today riding into battle on horseback

It is doubly ironic because both Francisco Franco's father and Fidel and Raul Castro's father had been soldiers who fought in Cuba to preserve its colonial status within the Spanish empire. Castro's father, Angel, according to the 2016 documentary, "Franco and Fidel: A Strange Friendship", had a photo of Franco on his nightstand. This historical link translated into a "special relationship" between the two dictators and is available online.

Both José Julián Martí Pérez's writings and actions taken by him in life point to a man who prized liberty, independence based in popular sovereignty, and freedom of speech, thought and association as fundamental to his sense of being. He was a prisoner of conscience, before Amnesty International coined the term, jailed for writing a disapproving letter to a classmate who joined the Spanish army.

Jailed for her journalism since April 30th: Mary Karla Ares

Today, Cuban journalist Mary Karla Ares has been jailed since April 30, 2021 for covering a non-violent protest in Havana, Cuba on Obispo Street. The Committee to Protect Journalists on May 3, 2021 said "Cuban authorities must immediately release journalist Mary Karla Ares, drop the criminal investigation into her work, and allow the press to report freely." Castro officials have ignored their request, and she remains jailed for filming a protest.

Under the Castro regime freedom of expression can end in prison for engaging in "enemy propaganda," and freedom of thought can also lead you to prison for the crime of "dangerousness." This is an affront to José Marti's belief that "liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy." Hypocrisy, under the Castro regime, is a currency for survival.

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas

Cuba under the Castros is not the vision advanced by Cuba's greatest hero. This tradition of freedom and respect for freedom of thought and speech existed during the Republic (1902 - 1952) and still exists today, underground, among dissidents in the island, and on more than one occasion cost the lives of other heroes to defend. One of Marti's modern day counterparts is Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, who addressed the European Parliament on December 17, 2002:

"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together.’"

Oswaldo was extra-judicially executed by the secret police on July 22, 2012. Other modern counterparts can also be found in the 27N and San Isidro movements, and the artists, journalists and intellectuals that nonviolently gathered in front of the Ministry of Culture to read the works of José Martí on January 27, 2021, and were beaten up by the Castro dictatorship's Minister of Culture, and arrested by the regime's political police.

The legacy of José Martí in Cuba today is found among the persecuted dissidents defending free speech, freedom of expression and demanding a free and independent Cuba. Although the Castro regime uses the name and image of the Cuban journalist and poet they have done everything to pervert and destroy his true message of liberation.

"I think they kill my child every time they deprive a person of their right to think." - José Martí 

Burial site for Apostol of Cuba

 

On this day Pablo Morales Barbas was born in 1966. He was murdered by the Castro regime on February 24, 1996.

 "Only through non violent means can we cleanse the Cuban nation from the hatred instilled by the dictatorship in Cuban hearts. The nonviolent methods have proven to be the most effective and humanitarian means of resistance against Castro's totalitarian state." - Jose Basulto, Our Struggle, March 2, 1996

May 16, 1966 - Feb 24, 1996

Four men were killed when the two planes they were flying in were shot down on a Saturday afternoon at 3:21 and 3:27 on February 24, 1996 over international airspace while engaged in a search and rescue flight for Cuban rafters. Their planes were destroyed by air-to-air missiles fired by a Cuban MiG-29 aircraft on the orders of Raul and Fidel Castro.  

Eva Barbas mourns her son's passing.

Pablo Morales Barbas was born in Havana, Cuba, on May 16, 1966 and was the same age as Carlos Costa but with a different life experience. He studied cartography and obtained a degree as a geodesics technician. In August 1992, Pablo fled Cuba on a raft and after three days at sea, was spotted in the ocean by Brothers to the Rescue. This experience motivated him to join the previously mentioned organization. He was a passenger in the aircraft with Carlos Costa when they were shot down on February 24, 1996. 

Pablo's mom Eva Barba holds a Bible open with a photo of her son.

Pablo was survived by his mother Eva Barbas, who passed away in 2013, a sister, and a brother. He was a Cuban citizen at the time of his death with residency in the United States and was just 29 years old. He would have turned fifty five years old today.

What was Pablo doing in Brothers to the Rescue?

He risked his live in the Florida Straits to rescue Cuban rafters and at the same time the organization he belonged to, Brothers to the Rescue, challenged the Cuban exile community to abandon both violent resistance and appeasement approaches in order to embrace strategic nonviolence.  This path followed the way of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi with both civil disobedience and a constructive program. 

 

What was the end result? Brothers to the Rescue saved more than 4,200 men, women, and children ranging from a five-day old infant to a 79 year old man, and rescued thousands more during the 1994 refugee crisis. This humanitarian movement also brought together Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits. This the Castro regime could not abide, and did all it could to destroy this grassroots movement, including murder and terrorism.

He did not die in vain and his martyrdom is remembered inside and outside of Cuba and will continue to be so wherever free Cubans gather. This is also true of the other three men who died with him on February 24, 1996.

 

 

The four who were killed represented all aspects of the Cuban diaspora: Armando Alejandre Jr, a child who arrived with his parents from Cuba in 1960, Carlos Costa, born in Miami Beach in 1966 and Mario Manuel de la Peña, born in New Jersey in 1971 the children of Cuban exiles. 

 

Pablo Morales was born in Cuba in 1966, raised there and was saved by Brothers to the Rescue when he was 26 years old while fleeing the island on a raft. Two were from Havana, one was from New Jersey and the other from Miami Beach.  

Today we remember Pablo Morales on the 55th anniversary of his birth, and the cost of nonviolent resistance that saved thousands of lives, and for the span of five years brought Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits together.

On This Day: Orlando Zapata Tamayo was born 54 years ago today and martyred 11 years ago

"Long live human rights, with my blood I wrote to you so that this be saved as evidence of the savagery we are subjected to that are victims of the Pedro Luis Boitel political prisoners [movement]" - Orlando Zapata Tamayo, letter smuggled out April of 2004*

Orlando Zapata Tamayo May 15, 1967 - February 23, 2010

Orlando Zapata Tamayo was born on May 15, 1967 in Santiago de Cuba and died following a prolonged hunger strike on February 23, 2010 in Havana, Cuba under suspicious circumstances.  Amnesty International recognized the pro-democracy activist and human rights defender as a prisoner of conscience.

Orlando Zapata was a human rights defender unjustly imprisoned in the Spring of 2003 and tortured by Cuban prison officials and state security agents over the next six years and ten months. He died on February 23, 2010 following a prolonged hunger strike, aggravated by prison guards refusing him water in an effort to break his spirit. He is a victim of Cuban communism.

Christian Liberation Movement leader Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, who was extrajudicially executed two and a half years later on July 22, 2012 together with Harold Cepero Escalante, the movement's youth leader, issued a statement the same day that Orlando died and appeared in a photograph holding up a photocopy of the martyred human rights defender's name and image. 

"Orlando Zapata Tamayo, died this afternoon, February 23, 2010, after suffering many indignities, racist slights, beatings and abuse by prison guards and State Security. Zapata was killed slowly over many days and many months in every prison in which he was confined. Zapata was imprisoned for denouncing human rights violations and for daring to speak openly of the Varela Project in Havana's Central Park. He was not a terrorist, or conspirator, or used violence. Initially he was sentenced to three years in prison, but after successive provocations and maneuvers staged by his executioners, he was sentenced to more than thirty years in prison." 

 

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas with photocopy image of Orlando Zapata Tamayo

Orlando Zapata Tamayo was born in Santiago, Cuba on May 15, 1967. He was by vocation a brick layer and also a human rights activist, a member of the Movimiento Alternativa Republicana, Alternative Republican Movement, and of the Consejo Nacional de Resistencia Cívica, National Civic Resistance Committee. Orlando gathered signatures for the Varela Project, a citizen initiative to amend the Cuban constitution using legal means with the aim of bringing Cuba in line with international human rights standards.

Amnesty International had documented how Orlando had been arrested several times in the past. For example he was temporarily detained on 3 July 2002 and 28 October 2002. In November of 2002 after taking part in a workshop on human rights in the central Havana park, José Martí, he and eight other government opponents were arrested and later released. He was also arrested on December 6, 2002 along with fellow prisoners of conscience Oscar Elías Biscet and Raúl Arencibia Fajardo.   

Dr. Biscet just released from prison a month earlier had sought to form a grassroots project for the promotion of human rights called "Friends of Human Rights." State security prevented them from entering the home of Raúl Arencibia Fajardo, Oscar Biscet, Orlando Zapata Tamayo,Virgilio Marante Güelmes and 12 others held a sit-in in the street in protest and chanted "long live human rights" and "freedom for political prisoners." They were then arrested and taken to the Tenth Unit of the National Revolutionary Police, Décima Unidad de La Policía Nacional Revolucionaria (PNR).

Orlando Zapata Tamayo together with other activists

Orlando Zapata Tamayo was released three months later on March 8, 2003, but Oscar Elias Biscet, Virgilio Marante Güelmes, and Raúl Arencibia Fajardo remained imprisoned. On the morning of March 20, 2003 whilst taking part in a fast at the Fundación Jesús Yánez Pelletier, Jesús Yánez Pelletier Foundation, in Havana, to demand the release of Oscar Biscet and the other political prisoners. Orlando was taken to the Villa Marista State Security Headquarters.

He was moved around several prisons, including Quivicán Prison, Guanajay Prison, and Combinado del Este Prison in Havana. Where according to Amnesty International on October 20, 2003 Orlando was dragged along the floor of Combinado del Este Prison by prison officials after requesting medical attention, leaving his back full of lacerations. Orlando managed to smuggle a letter out following a brutal beating it was published in April of 2004:

"My dear brothers in the internal opposition in Cuba. I have many things to say to you, but I did not want to do it with paper and ink, because I hope to go to you one day when our country is free without the Castro dictatorship. Long live human rights, with my blood I wrote to you so that this be saved as evidence of the savagery we are subjected to that are victims of the Pedro Luis Boitel political prisoners [movement]."*

On May 18, 2004 Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Virgilio Marante Güelmes, and Raúl Arencibia Fajardo were each sentenced to three years in prison for contempt for authority, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest in a one-day trial. Orlando Zapata Tamayo would continue his rebelliousness and his non-violent resistance posture while in prison and suffer numerous beatings and new charges of disobedience and disrespect leading to decades added to his prison sentence in eight additional trials. 

Protests for Orlando Zapata Tamayo continue
Eleven years have passed but the martyred Cuban human rights defender is not forgotten. From the beginning the regime sought to put down and silence protests and acts of remembrance for him, but failed. 

In March of 2010 at the second Geneva Summit for Human Rights former prisoner of conscience Jose Gabriel Ramon Castillo testified to what had happened to Orlando Zapata. In Norway, regime agents became violent and created international controversy after a Cuban diplomat bit a young Norwegian-Cuban woman for trying to record her mom engaged in a protest remembering Orlando Zapata Tamayo in front of the Cuban Embassy in Oslo in May of 2010.

On September 30, 2010 the Canadian punk rock band I.H.A.D. released a song linking what happened to Orlando Zapata Tamayo to the indifference of Canadian tourists visiting Cuba asking the question: Where were you the day Orlando Zapata died? On May 10, 2012 the Free Cuba Foundation published a video accompanying the song, after receiving the band's permission, with images and song lyrics.

On February 23, 2016 at the 8th edition of the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy Rosa María Payá gave the last presentation in which she remembered and honored the memory of Orlando Zapata Tamayo on the sixth anniversary of his passing.  

Today we remember the day this courageous activist was born in Cuba 54 years ago, and look forward to the day that his sacrifice is remembered in Cuba's history books. 

 

*Source: "Queridos hermanos míos de la oposición interna de Cuba", escribió Zapata en su misiva, "tengo muchas cosas que decirles, pero no he querido hacerlo por papel y tinta, pues espero ir a ustedes un día cuando nuestra patria sea libre y sin dictadura castrista. Vivan los derechos humanos, con mi sangre les escribí, para que la guarden como parte del salvajismo de que somos víctima el presidio político Pedro Luis Boitel". - "Golpiza y celda tapiada para Orlando Zapata"  La Habana, 22 de abril 2004 (María López, Lux Info Press / www.cubanet.org