The artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara reaffirms that “he will not accept exile as an option under any circumstances” to leave Cuba, according to unveiled this Friday the art curator Claudia Genlui Hidalgo, after a visit by the family in the jail where he has been imprisoned since last July 11 (11J).
However, the leader of the San Isidro Movement (MSI), to which Genlui also belongs, continues to express “his willingness to leave the country to participate in the residencies and artistic programs that were already planned and in which he had agreed to participate.”
Genlui’s clarification occurs a few weeks after the Cuban government’s intention to remove Otero Alcántara from the island as part of the negotiations was known. announced by Tania Bruguera, and that facilitated the departure of the artists Hamlet Lavastida and Katherine Bisquet, who traveled to Poland after he was released in exchange for his exile.
“His willingness to leave the country to participate in the residencies and artistic programs that were already planned and in which he had agreed to participate”
“Yesterday the family of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara was able to visit him in the Guanajay maximum security prison, where he has been accused of the alleged crimes of aggravated contempt, public disorder and instigation to commit a crime since July 11,” Genlui wrote on his profile From Facebook. “On him weighs, in addition, the accusation of outrage to the national symbols, opened since last year for carrying out the work You drapeau“he added.
The family also informed Genlui that “he is fine, he plays sports and is in good spirits, but he is very worried about Maykel Castillo’s health, of which he was informed at that time. “
In addition, he said that the artist is informed of everything that has happened on the island in recent days and “reaffirms his commitment to the people of Cuba.” “The San Isidro Movement continues to watch over him and all the political prisoners,” he concludes.
One of the relatives who visited him told 14ymedio that Otero Alcántara continues with the same convictions. “At no time do you notice a lost person or that the events that he is living have made him change his vision, at all”. The source also specified that visits to the prison will be every two weeks.
During the time that Otero Alcántara has been in prison, he caught COVID-19 and, between September and October, he went on a hunger and thirst strike for several days to demand his release and that of all political prisoners, according to a statement from the MSI.
“At no time do you notice a lost person or that the events that he is living have made him change his vision, at all”
The activist has been detained on numerous occasions since 2018, although the repression against him intensified in November 2020, when he began a hunger and thirst strike together with several activists to demand the release of rapper Denis Solís. The action ended with the appearance of the police on November 26 at the headquarters of the San Isidro Movement in Old Havana, where the members of the group were entrenched, and the arrest of the 14 activists who were inside the building.
At the end of last April, Otero Alcántara once again declared a hunger and thirst strike to demand an end to the police siege of his home. State Security entered his home at dawn and transferred him to the Calixto García Hospital, where he remained, without explanation, for a month controlled by the security forces. On that occasion the organization Amnesty International declared it “prisoner of conscience”.
In mid-September, Otero Alcántara was considered one of the 100 most influential people of the year by the magazine Time.
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