The quartered of San Isidro

Chronicles about the artistic dissidence in Cuba

1961 – 2021

Arsenio Rodríguez Quintana

Translated by Daylin Horruitiner

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What worries me most is not my death. The change in Cuba has to be more than a leader or a movement. Every Cuban has to be a leader and agent of change which is happening already.

@Mov_sanisidro #weareconnected

Luis Manuel Otero

No one is unaware that Spain governs the island of Cuba with a bloody iron arm, not only does it not leave her security in her properties, bragging on the right to impose attributes and contributions as they please, but leaves her deprived of all civil, religious, and political freedom. Her children are expelled to remote climates or executed without trial by military commissions established in full to suit the lacking civil power deprived of the right of assembly, unless under the presidency of a military chief. They cannot ask for a remedy for their ills without being treated as rebels and given no other recourse than to shut up and obey.

10th of October Manifesto General Chief

Carlos Manuel de Cespedes Manzanillo 1868

...Fears has many eyes

And sees the things under the ground.

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Don Quijote

Introduction

“No one considers me a political writer nor I consider myself a politician. But it turns out that there are times in which politics intensely turns into an ethical activity. Or at least in the motif of an ethical vision of the world, moral motor.”

Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Mea Culpa, 1992

Book content

This book is a gathering of texts that I wrote while the 16 fearless Cubans were quartered in San Isidro on a thirst and hunger strike. It also contains declarations, petitions, and messages from those quartered. I highlight in the 1st Part, the consequences caused by solidarity from other artists from the island that today are gathered after 27N, name that represents the physical and explicit solidarity of around four-hundred artists of the same generation, and other of long trajectory like musicians Carlos Varela, Haydée Milanés, and Leoni; actors and film directors Jorge Perugorria, Fernando Pérez, Luis Alberto García, Lynn Cruz and some members of the MSI that planted themselves at the Ministry of Culture to demand a dialog with the minister to protect the rights of the MSI members as well as theirs, in a sleepless event that became active history of the artistic dissidence in Cuba.

There are texts in the 2nd Part, that were written before November 2020, meaning the last 10 years, which warn that the bursting of the MSI is just another effect of dissidence, but it’s impact, thanks to social media, has been greater.

Here is a preliminary view, though not complete, of important events of the artistic dissidence in the last 60 years of the Cuban revolution: PM, UMAP, Puente Group, Caso Padilla, Reinaldo Arenas, Arte Calle, Generación Y, Festival de Rotilla, entre otros. I want to clarify that this book is not a compilation of the political opposition in Cuba, that is a job I leave to others, I focus on the artistic dissidence. I know of the importance during these years of The Ladies in White, Osvaldo Payá, Orlando Zapata Tamaño o UNPACU, among others, but I didn’t focus my book in that direction. I also highlight the effects that the quartered has awakened within Cubans that live out of the island, and how they began to show ample solidarity by protesting in front of embassies and Cuban consulates in America and Europe.

Maybe the quartered connected many with this movement because the MSI has basic premises that others had not planned before. They don’t want to leave the country (Ileana Hernandez, and Carlos Manuel Álvarez , two of the 16 quartered, had already lived out of Cuba, and had returned), they want a new Cuba for all, they are street smart, and they don’t reject any of the more intellectual collectives, artists or disciplines, or anyone from the streets who shows solidarity.

Origins of the MSI

The Movimiento San Isidro (MSI) develops when the current president of Cuba, Miguel Diaz – Canel, promotes a series of laws that limit the acting and Cuba of Independent Artists, on his way to a constitutional reform. This mainly activate artists like Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara who doesn't have academic formation, but already in 2018 when this reform occurs, had already been widely recognized in and out of Cuba so as to demand that academic formation isn’t an impediment to be an artist, one of the new controversial points of the new law. Him and many artists that live in Cuba have something more important, they have lost fear, and if someone pursues their rights knowing the consequences and still persists, any government will have a problem, the Cuban dictatorship isn't the exception.

The new measurements promoted by Canel on August of 2018, permit or activate the formation effect on September of that year. Since that date, the San Isidro Movement led by Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, began a series of actions to protest against Decree 349, with a sign reading SIN349 (WITHOUT349), which goes viral on various platforms of photographers, writers, performing and plastic artists that didn’t form part of the MSI but shared their ideas. Even though there are other decrees, this is the one that was emphasized. Spontaneously and peacefully many join this cause.

What is Decree 349?

En Summary: The new law is an update of another decree, 266, which dates back to 1997 and regulates the cultural policy and the “benefit of artistic services”. The transformations of the Cuban society after the approval of self-employment extended cultural activities beyond the oficial institutions to ambiguous “public spaces not of the state”.

Many of these places are vital for the arts presented on the island today. Galeries and private home theaters, as well as restaurants with cultural programing, and alternative audiovisual exhibits have proliferated and are now placed under automatic suspicion. To sum it up, the law demands the approval of the authorities so that artists can present their work in public, and creates the inspector character, who can close an exhibit, or interrupt a concert if it is determined that they are not in accordance with the Revolutionary cultural policy. Other ambiguous points of this legal norm is the definition of an artist and up to what point this requires the need of the artist to register to a state institution.

Miguel Díaz-Canel and the new Minister of Culture, Alpidio Alonso, were met with the rejection of other renown artists like Silvio Rodríguez, José Angel Toirac, Luis Alberto García (actor turned popular influencer), and by internationally known “artivists” like Tania Brugera, just to name a few.

Now, the ones that in reality showed continuity in this protest of SIN349 were the MSI: Luis Manuel Otero, Yanelys Núñez, Amaury Pacheco, Iris Ruiz, Michel Matos, Sándor Perez, Adonis Milán, writers Javier Moreno and Verónica Vega, and painter Yasser Castellanos. As expected, and as it has happened in Cuba since 1959, the political police took matters in their hands and the majority of the artists and others that made public their opposition of this Decree, suffered the modus operandi of a repressive regime: threats, absurd arrests, interrogations, and of course the habitual censorship and informative silence common in these cases.

To cite two examples that surged as a response to this controversial decree, Luis Manuel Otero, was incarcerated 12 days in March for, according to the authorities, using the flag in an “outrageous” way, in a performance. Also, rapper Maykel (Osorbo) Castllo, was condemned to a year in prison in 2018 for “attempt against authority”.

Role of social networks in the dissident artists:

#estamosconectados #cubanossomostodos

What changes everything in this context is precisely the aperture of the internet in Cuba, that even with price and quality limitations, access to this source of information outside of the official one has been vital to the waking of consciousness of the Cuban people in and out of the island that had almost always shown itself as passive or “disconnected” from this reality. What the dissidence demonstrates is that prior artistic movements weren’t successful not because they were worth less, but because of lack of awareness and official misinformation.

It’s no coincidence that the phrase or hashtag preferred by the MSI is #estamosconectados (#weareconnected).

The role of social networks has been vital in promoting and gathering support to the MSI in and out of Cuba. From YouTubers like Otaola, the most popular one, who says he focuses on “gossip”, but his channel is as political and social as Eliecer Avila, who exclusively dedicates his platform to political dissidence. Without a doubt, live transmission gathers great attention since they reach anywhere from two to three thousand views during the live broadcast. People not only connect, but they share, and that has made this phenomenon of MSI a media addiction resembling a reality show where the MSI has a lead role and the political police has the second, and media like youtubers, Facebook pages and digital magazines have another. All this leads to the negative campaigns by Granma, Juventud Rebelde and Cuban TV, including their round table, to be fact checked and discredited.

Parallel to this opposition to SIN349, several digital publications that were born between 2014 and 2016 were consolidated; Periodismo de Barrio (2015), Cachivache Media (2016-2017), 14ymedio (2014), Cibercuba (2014), El Estornudo (2016) (his director, Carlos Manuel Álvarez is quartered for two days in San Isidro), El Toque (2014), Hypermedia Magazine (2016), Negolution (2016), PlayOff (2015), Postdata (2016) 1. As can be seen, almost all of them were created as of 2014, directed and written by young journalists that live the Cuban reality and have lost all sense of fear and censorship even with consequences of surveillance and arrests. In the case of Luz Escobar, or Mónica Baró, recognized outside of Cuba for her journalistic labor, are illustrative, though there are many others. All of them have supported the quartered.

This echo on social media caused by these publications has support directly from outside of Cuba, and from digital magazines already existing out of the island. Diario de Cuba o Puente a la Vista, are directed by people that haven’t lived there for a long period of time, they are triggered by this and their echo in one way or another wakes up the solidarity of Cubans abroad that usually don’t support this type of project due to fear of repression that would affect their yearly vacation visits from Europe or the United States.

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and the rest of the quartered are conscious for the first time of the strength that needs to back up the digital press created by Cubans outside of Cuba, and also the press in Spain. Miami has historically supported every protest of Cuban opposition without any doubt, that’s why to highlight that Spain, and other cities in the U.S. and Europe also offer their support adds a greater or distinct value.

It also debunks the Cuban government thesis that the opposition is nothing but agents paid by the CIA, or mercenaries, because who then pays the writers and Cubans exiled in Europe that sympathize with the quartered of San Isidro, the FBI? The element of support to these dissident artists given by BBC, France24, and EuroNews, debunks any conspiracy theory of the Cuban revolution.

The right wing newspapers in Spain as well as the progressives (calling El País leftist is a joke) follow closely everything that happens to the San Isidro quartered in the past two years, and without a doubt the Cuban political police, and its leader Fernando Rojas, are fully aware of this. That’s why the detentions of Luis Manuel become visits to the station, always unpleasant, but not like how it was when this viral visibility didn’t exist on social media.

The cause that propels the quartered to plant themselves

On November 9th, 2020. Denis Solís, publishes a video where a Cuban police officer takes the liberty of entering his home without consent to issue a citation. The virality of this video on social media provoked at first the empathy of many and the rejection of a few. Maybe because arbitration in Cuba has been in place since 62 years ago, and many people see it as “normal” that a police officer invades their home without permission, arrest order, or any ID, and violates your right to intimacy and the normal thing is to remain quiet.

Denis Solís, insults this police officer and kicks him out of the house with a language truly profane, surely the same any Cuban would have used to expel an intruder from their home, that is if they didn’t physically attack them first.

His language, and not the violation of private space on behalf of the police officer, is the excuse of MSI detractors to not empathize with Denis, without realizing that violating rights, which is habitual, is the cause of the altercation, and not the language.

When Denis Solís is arrested, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and other civilians quartered themselves in his home located at Damas 955 (MSI headquarters) to ask for the liberation of Denis Solís.

On the 17th of november 2020, the San Isidro Movement summoned to a "poetic whisper" in Old Havana to demand the immediate release of rapper Denis Solís González, activist of the group that was unjustly incarcerated for expressing his political ideas. "The habaneros (people from Havana) are invited to accompany us at the headquarters of the movement, located in Damas 955 between San Isidro and Avenida del Puerto", they wrote. "Here we will be for several days, a group of artists and friends, sharing our favorite works, singing, acting and imagining a more fulfilling Cuba for all. We want all those who understand that by demanding the release of Denis, we are demanding our own freedom as well, to be a part of poetic whisper."

Being surrounded by the political police at Damas 955 in Old Havana, San Isidro corner, and after having food intercepted, nine of the 15 members of the group began a hunger strike on November 18th. There were only three members of the San Isidro Movement involved in the hunger strike: Luis Manuel Otero, Maykel Osorbo, and Yasser Castellano. The remaining thirteen were civilians that ranged from poets to housewives or self-employed individuals.

A few days later, on November 26th, after several episodes of oficialist terrorism, the movement headquarters was assaulted by agents of State Security disguised as pulic health workers, and the strike participants and their friends were arrested and separated. Luis Manuel Otero was not allowed to return to his home, and even though he was not officially incarcerated, he can't go back, somewhat of a semi-kidnapping situation. This happens to Tania Bruguera as well, even though she was not within the quartered.

All social media in Cuba was disconnected prior to the assault. Electricity was also disconnected to prevent the filming or photographs of the assault that eventually surfaced.

Something like this had never happened in another generation. They are dissidents, artists and you can say politicians at the same time. One of these concepts is not bigger than the other. They carry the seed of change, and they have engraved on their skin that we are all Cuba.

When Mick Jagger, in his historic concert in Havana in 2015 asked Cubans: “Things are changing in Cuba, right? And everyone responded “Yessss”, maybe not everyone was conscious of this, but it's probable that something began to circulate in that moment that was embedded in the collective memory of a generation that has started change, and The San Isidro Movement is only phase one.

The purpose of this book is not to reflect a success, it is to leave a photograph of an event that has greatly impacted artists and Cubans that live on the island and don't have ties to art outside of Cuba.

He who believes that the government admitting its dissidence is a success is fooling themselves. Opposition exists in every democratic country, that is normal. In Cuba is only a step after sixty years without movement; the success will come when people can have free elections with the parties presented, and control is no longer fully in the hands of the state.

Getting the government to tolerate dissidence is not common, that's why this book should serve as a warning not to fall for a trap of promises that won't lead to full freedom of rights. The change can be a reality if everyone gets on board leaving personal desires for the common good including those who have a different way of thinking.

That ethical motor that is today represented by the quartered in San Isidro, took me to gather my ideas of artistic dissidence in Cuba on these pages. I hope that most will see the composition of links that always lead to plant new rights and liberties.

Arsenio Rodríguez Quintana

Sant Cugat del Vallés, Barcelona, 2020

1. Almost all emerging Cuban media has been the subject of threats or any other form of intimidation. Some journalists living in Cuba have been interrogated by the Department of State Security, and others have been harassed on social media by false or anonymous profiles. Elaine Díaz, Blogger, January 11, 2018.