The letter is signed by Leonardo Padura, Fito Páez and Fernando Pérez, among others.
EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, July 3, 2024 — More than 220 writers and artists signed an open letter in which they denounce the “police violence” with which the intellectual Alina Bárbara López and the anthropologist Jenny Pantoja were recently treated.
The letter, released on Tuesday by the independent website CubaXCuba (CXC), is signed among others by the writer Leonardo Padura, the Argentine musician and singer-songwriter Fito Páez and the film director Fernando Pérez.
“The use of force, the criminalization of dissent and imprisonment do not solve our real problems. All Cubans have the right to propose our ideas to get out of this crisis,” the signatories said.
“All Cubans have the right to propose our ideas to get out of this crisis”
The criticism refers to the treatment received by López, a member of the board of directors of CXC, and Pantoja, during their arrest while traveling from Matanzas to Havana to make a public protest.
According to the account of both intellectuals, the police hit them, threw them to the floor, forcibly put them in the patrol car and held them for hours in a police station.
López, 58, told EFE this Wednesday, two weeks later, that she continues to suffer severe pain in one shoulder and dizziness.
The signatories of the letter emphasize that Cuban artists and intellectuals “have the right to assume their role in this context, because culture is the stage on which the problems of any society are advanced and resolved in time.”
According to CXC, among the first signatories to the complaint are those who are also recognized figures of Cuban cinema such as the filmmakers and screenwriters Ernesto Daranas and Kiki Alvarez; the actors Luis Alberto García and Héctor Noas; the professor and critic Gustavo Arcos, and the researcher and critic Juan Antonio García Borrero.
Also among the signatories are the national prize winner of Plastic Arts of Cuba, Lázaro Saavedra, and the national prize winners of Literature, Luís Álvarez and Maggie Mateo.
López, a professor, historian and editor, has been arrested on several occasions in recent months for making symbolic protests, and as a result of these actions she was sentenced at the end of last year to pay a fine for a crime of disobedience.
Also among the signatories are the national prize winner of Plastic Arts of Cuba, Lázaro Saavedra and the national prize winners of Literature, Luís Álvarez and Maggie Mateo
The intellectual has declared herself in “contempt” of the sentence and refused to pay the fine, aware that she could go to jail, as she has written in different articles on social networks.
The NGO Prisoners Defenders, based in Madrid, said that this trial “without guarantees” had “political motivations” and sought only to “repress the exercise of the fundamental rights” of López, whom they described as a “victim of conscience.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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