The Cuban artivist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara is on his sixth day of hunger strike, recalled the art curator and activist Anamely Ramos, who dedicated a poem to Otero, the other political prisoners in the country, and to the families waiting for the return of their loved ones from the regime's prisons.
In a live video broadcast this Saturday, Ramos read the poem "La Presencia" by Cuban poet Ángel Escobar, as a gesture of solidarity with the leader of the San Isidro Movement, who is continuing his protest in the maximum-security prison of Guanajay, in the province of Artemisa.
"I have not abandoned you, / I am here with you. / They have tied you to a beam on the shore, / between the sea you disdain / and the land you love," recited Ramos, in a message that he also extended to the political prisoner Maykel Castillo and to the others imprisoned for opposing the dictatorship on the Island.
Before the reading, the activist provided a critical overview of the release process announced by the regime on Thursday. The Cuban government proclaimed the as a supposed humanitarian gesture for Holy Week, but at the time of the broadcast, no political prisoner had been released, Ramos emphasized.
The first releases on Friday exclusively benefited common prisoners at camps such as La Lima and Toledo II in Havana, El Yabú in Villa Clara, and Taco Taco, according to the direct count.
Ramos described the process as a strategy of the regime to cleanse its image in front of the international community, with the complicity of some foreign news agencies that covered the releases of common prisoners outside the prisons. "What the Cuban state is trying to achieve with this is to be in the headlines, to provide a new diversion, a new display of supposed changes to clean its image," he stated.
"The process," emphasized the member of the MSI, "repeats the same old pattern: 'Once again, it is done without guarantees, once again without any respect for the pain and anguish of those families and those same prisoners. And, of course, without any intention of it being a real step towards democratization or transition for the country.'"
Otero Alcántara began his partial fast on March 26, after receiving death threats from officers of Department 21 of State Security during an inspection in prison. The full hunger strike—consuming only water—began on March 30, and adds to others that the artivist has carried out, who has become a symbol of opposition to the dictatorial power on the Island. His five-year sentence ends in July 2026, but there are fears that the regime will extend it with some trick, as has happened with other political prisoners.
The political prisoner Daniel Alfaro Frías, also confined in Guanajay, warned on March 29: "political prisoners today are at risk for our lives". With no public transparency regarding the treatment they receive and a legal system completely subservient to the regime's wishes, the physical and psychological integrity of prisoners in Cuban jails is constantly threatened.
According to Prisoners Defenders, there are 1,214 political prisoners in Cuba; Justicia 11J estimates at least 760, including 358 detained following the protests on July 11, 2021. From the agreement with the Vatican on March 12, which promised 51 releases, only 27 political prisoners had been released by Friday, according to the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights.
Ramos concluded his broadcast with the final verses of Escobar's poem, which encapsulate the commitment of those who, from exile or within the Island, continue to stand in solidarity with those still bound to the timber: "I have not abandoned you./ I am here with you."
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