MIAMI, United States. – Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, the leader of the San Isidro Movement (MSI), turns 35 this December 2. Same as his 34th birthday, the performer Cuban will spend the date in a maximum security prison in Guanajay.
After dozens of arrests, Otero Alcántara was finally imprisoned on July 11, 2021, when he was preparing to join the historic demonstrations that shook the Island that day.
After several months in jail, with no trial date announced, the young Cuban was sentenced to five years in prison, in the same trial that rapper Maykel Osorbo (sentenced to nine years in prison) was also found guilty.
According to the Prosecutor of the Cuban regime, Otero Alcántara was found guilty of the crimes of insulting the symbols of the country, contempt and public disorder; while Osorbo was sentenced for the crimes of contempt, attack, public disorder and defamation of institutions and organizations, heroes and martyrs.
The genesis of the sentence against the leader of the MSI was in the performance “Drapeau”, in which the artist intervened in the public space using the Cuban flag as a garment.
The Court “argued the express intention, sustained over time, of offending the national flag, through the publication of photos on social networks where it is used in degrading acts, accompanied by notoriously offensive and disrespectful expressions, belittling feelings of nationality and pride that the Cuban people professes to our homeland ensign”.
His confinement, however, has not dented the influence of Otero Alcántara. In September 2021, the prestigious American magazine Time chose the Cuban artivist as one of the most influential people of 2021. Whilehis year, Otero Alcántara was one of the six recipients of the 2022 Prince Claus Impact Award, delivered by the Dutch fund of the same name.
“Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara has sent us all a message from prison: he refuses to be expelled from his country. He wants to be released to his house. He demands to be treated in accordance with international human rights standards and Cuban legislation itself ”, recalled numerous Cuban artists and intellectuals in a manifesto.
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