14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 21 April2021 — The artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara has been besieged for more than two weeks in his home in Old Havana, headquarters of the San Isidro Movement (MSI). “I have been here for 17 days without being able to leave my house. I try to leave and the political police detain me,” he explains to 14ymedio.
Since last Saturday, a day after State Security raided his home on Damas Street and detained him for 16 hours, the artist has been arrested every day at four in the afternoon when he tries to go out to demand the return of the works of art that the officers took away.
“Today they are still on the corner and do not let anyone in, it is still the same here,” he explained to this newspaper this Wednesday and insists that the increase in repression leads him to demand more from the authorities. “The first demand is that I want $500,000 for damage to my works.”
The seized and damaged works are part of the series Despite being a good boy, I did not know the Three Wise Men, in which the artist illustrates in large format coverage of some of the sweets that he ate in his childhood, at a time in which jams intended for children’s have disappeared from stores in national currency.
Otero Alcántara already has an idea of what to do with those resources: “I am going to spend that money on remodeling the houses of the people here in San Isidro. So don’t tell me that the situation is difficult, if you want them to take money from the hotels they are building on all sides.”
Last Monday, while he was detained in the El Wajay police unit, south of Havana, he was interrogated by Lieutenant Colonel Kenia María Morales, an officer accused of participating in the repression against independent artists. Morales showed him photocopies of some of the works. “We have them and we will return them to you if a judge decides,” he said.
Last Monday, while he was detained in the El Wajay police unit, south of Havana, he was interrogated by Lieutenant Colonel Kenia María Morales, an officer accused of participating in the repression against independent artists. Morales showed him photocopies of some of the works. “We have them and we will return them to you if a judge decides,” he said.
The artist recalls: “I was inside my house, they came in and took me out and put me in a patrol car and I didn’t know anything else until I returned the next day. Those works of art are my children.” Since then he has not had mobile data service on his cell phone either.
This Tuesday he was arrested again and, this time, he was taken to the Cotorro police unit and they kept him in the cells there until 10:30 at night when they took him home. The operation that surrounds his house prevents him from going out and talking to the neighbors. A situation that they consider intolerable.
“After this, what can I put up with? That they shoot a colleague? No, this is something unacceptable, after they enter your house and take your works of art, what can you expect tomorrow? I can’t move, I can’t draw, nothing, and if they’re looking for me to leave the country, they’re wrong, I’m not going to go anywhere,” he insists.
“It is very unfair everything that the neighbors here are going through too. On the day of the raid they took a neighbor’s son into custody because he was filming, but they already released him,” he details. His perceptions of Damas Street these days, where he lives, is that “it has been half phantasmagoric, with few people on the street but as of yesterday it has already begun to regain its normal rhythm.”
This Tuesday, on social networks, several Internet users denounced the presence of the State Security bus parked on the same corner as the MSI headquarters. It is the same bus that State Security used on January 27 to arrest artists and journalists who were protesting in front of the Ministry of Culture, a complaint that was confirmed by an investigation carried out by the independent Inventory project .
The bus was identified as being of the Chinese Yutong make and with the number 5604, belonging to the Provincial Transportation Company of Havana, an image that was shared on Facebook by the artist Salomé García.
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