Adrianna Machado, wife of visual artist and rapper Fernando Almenares Rivera, known as Nando OBDC, reported this Thursday in CiberCuba that the activist is suffering from a severe cold that has weakened him, that he is sleeping on the floor of a cell in Combinado del Este, and that he is sharing space with individuals carrying the HIV virus.
In an interview with CiberCuba, Adrianna Machado states that Nando OBDC's mother is focused on getting her only son out of prison, but she is determined to "get him out of Cuba."
Machado recalled that on December 31, 2024, Nando OBDC did not write to him before nine in the morning, which was customary for him. It was then that he had a hunch that something had happened. A relative of the artist confirmed this to him shortly afterward, contacting him to inform him that the rapper had been arrested by two officials of the Cuban political police, dressed in civilian clothes, accused of terrorism. First, they took him to the seventh Police Unit of La Lisa, then to Villa Marista, and now he is at the Combinado del Este.
According to her, her husband is accused of being linked to people from Miami who intend to carry out sabotage in Cuba. The only supposed evidence that was taken from the urban artist's home in the Havana neighborhood of San Agustín was a Cuban flag, even though the alleged State Security was searching for computers, flash drives, and documents that they never found because they do not exist and have never existed, the rapper's wife adds.
In recent months, her husband's activism had focused on denouncing the dumps in San Agustín and the effects of the "chemical", on the corners of their neighborhood, one of the areas most affected by drug trafficking and consumption in Havana.
Nando OBDC is 34 years old and before entering prison, he had been collaborating since 2020 with the Exprésate project; Fire Against Fire, the Forbidden Art exhibition, and the album Free by Right.
"If he was detained, it’s not because he is a terrorist, but because everything he was doing was quite bothersome to the dictatorship," adds Adrianna Machado, a resident of the United States for several years. She met Nando OBDC in 2023 during a family trip to Cuba. There was a connection, and since then they have maintained a long-distance marriage.
Nando OBDC was already at the Mexico border in 2016, trying to enter the United States, but Mexican authorities deported him back to Cuba.
His wife recounts that on more than one occasion, the rapper mentioned how much it pained him to see a freedom activist like him being returned to Havana, while the repressors happily enter Miami.
Adrianna Machado also recalls that when she learned her husband had been arrested in Cuba, she did everything he had told her to do in case of an arrest, which could happen at any moment. It was then that she reached out to Cubalex, the legal team led by activist Laritza Diversent, who just this Wednesday reported on social media the inhumane conditions Nando OBDC is being subjected to in prison.
Although Nando OBDC's lawyer requested a change in his conditions, the regime denied it. The only items the political police could seize from his home during the early morning raid on December 31, 2024, were a Cuban flag and photos of the graffiti painted on the wall of his room. In a regime without separation of powers, that was enough to keep him imprisoned.
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