14ymedio, Havana, 2 December 2016 — Danilo Maldonado, known as ‘El Sexto’ (The Sixth), began to eat the food, his mother, Maria Victoria Machado, told this newspaper. A week after his arrest for painting graffiti on a central Havana street corner and posting a video on his Facebook profile, the artist is still waiting to be released or presented with charges.
Machado explained that she was able to see her son today, and bring him some food at the Zapata and C Police Station in Vedado, where Maldonado is being detained.
The prosecution has not acted to date, although it is expected that El Sexto will be released on Sunday, according to his mother.
“He has refused to eat the food they give him in the station,” Machado said. On Tuesday, relatives of the artist reported that he had been severely beaten and was holding firm against what he considers an injustice.
“Mamá, I have had a lot of aché (luck/blessing) to be a Cuban artist the day that bloody tyrant died and to be able to express myself. I’ll get out of here,” Machado said her son told her, from the detention center in Guanabacoa, a township east of the Cuban capital.
“When I asked the official what my son’s sentence would be for this crime, he told me just a fine, but then he started to talk about ‘historic conditions’ the country is going through and right there I told him that for me the state property demagoguery wouldn’t work,” she explained.
According to his mother, Maldonado has been beaten on several occasions since his arrest. “He told me himself. In Guanabacoa two officers beat him up,” she explained.
Alexandra Martinez, Maldonado’s girlfriend who lives in Miami, said that El Sexto’s detention “shows the cruelty of the Castro regime that continues to violate its people.
“The regime must release Danilo immediately. His life, his health and his safety are in play and we need him,” she said.