Cuban artist and former political prisoner Luis Manuel Otero arrives in Miami on July 19, following his release and banishment. Photo: Pavel Urkiza / Diario de Cuba

Exiled Cuban artist Luis Manuel Otero believes the pain of incarceration was something he had to go through.

Por Diario de Cuba

HAVANA TIMES – In an interview with Luz Escobar from the independent Cuban media outlet 14ymedio, Cuban artist and former political prisoner Luis Manuel Otero offered his firm conviction that the struggle for freedom in Cuba must be creative. Otero spoke with the reporter after arriving as an exile to the US on Saturday, July 19th.

Luis Manuel Otero completed his five-year prison sentence for supposedly desecrating the national symbols on July 9th; however, instead of being released he was deprived of liberty and held in secret for nine additional days, before being forced him into exile. Despite this, the Cuban government has tried to present Otero’s banishment as an option the artist, and the US government, freely accepted.

A banished artist looks towards his own and Cuba’s future

“I believe that the struggle for Cuba’s freedom must be creative and constantly revamped in the light of new challenges,” Otero stated when asked where he believes the struggle for the island’s freedom stands today, given that many members of the San Isidro Movement (MSI), which he founded, and participants in the July 2021 anti-government protests are now abroad.

“Fifteen years ago, I was afraid to place a sculpture in the middle of a park. I would go to the Capitol grounds, set up an elephant, and be absolutely terrified. As the repression intensified, I continued to evolve, but that creativity of mine never ceased to exist,” he explained.

“There was a moment when I was locked up under house arrest and unable to perform in public, but my paintings of chocolates stirred such strong reactions that they had to come in and destroy them. [Note: during this period, the artist produced a series of colorful paintings depicting the wrappers of sweets such as M & M’s, Nesquik, and Adams’ chiclets that were unavailable in Cuba] Later, I had a stay at the Calixto Garcia Hospital, (where he was forcibly taken by agents of the Cuban regime after embarking on a hunger strike to protest the destruction of his works) and later to prison, always proposing creative experiences,” he added.

“We are living at a time when the situation and repression in Cuba are extremely difficult, and we, as creative individuals, must respond creatively. I am now in exile: exile will speak to me, and I will respond; the reality of Cuba will speak to me from here, and I will respond; and all of that will be a new experience,” said the artist. He doesn’t believe in repeating “the same things we did during the San Isidro Movement, because we are not living in the times when San Isidro was born.”

In terms of that movement, Otero emphasized that what remains are the human beings, who at some point will reunite in exile. “The time will come when I sit down with the founders of San Isidro, and we’ll see what remains of that feeling and energy that united us. It may be that we decide San Isidro has fulfilled its mission and can’t go any further; or it may be that it evolves. It’s a decision that we—the people who built it—will make, because I’m not going to claim ownership over San Isidro or anything else. San Isidro was an energy that emerged from the collective,” he said.

Regarding the future of his art, he reaffirmed that he will continue “the path of activism”; and he explained that while he was in prison, “there were moments when I couldn’t sleep; things were happening around me that compelled me to tell their stories because they were voiceless beings.”

“In Guanajay [maximum security prison], there were deaths and crimes that remained there and that no one knows about—innocent people who were propelled there by their circumstances,” he asserted.

“There are a lot of experiences for which I feel responsible and I’m not going to leave them behind. My paintings aren’t just going to be for selling; they’re going to be meant to make people think and change many social attitudes,” the artist stated.

The founder of the San Isidro Movement was subjected to several short-term arrests and human rights violations prior to July 11, 2021, when he attempted to join the protests that erupted in dozens of cities and communities across Cuba and was detained. He was not tried until nearly a year later, when he received a five-year prison sentence that he completed on July 9, although he was not released that day.

During his interview with 14ymedio, Otero revealed that he could have chosen the path of exile from the moment he was imprisoned, but he made a choice to endure the presidio politico, as Cuban national hero José Marti termed it in his 1871 testimony of forced labor and harsh imprisonment under Spanish colonial rule. “When I was imprisoned, they gave me the option to leave. I could have left the very next day, but I decided against it—I felt this was an experience of civic resistance I had to go through. Who are you to avoid political imprisonment?” he recalled asking himself.

“Having made the decision during the first months not to leave, and then going through all that, helped me comprehend a reality. If we ask ourselves on a spiritual level why we must be there… I understood that it was to understand the suffering of being locked up and of the prisoner – political as well as common prisoners,” Otero added.

First published in Spanish by Diario de Cuba and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.

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