The Cuban philosopher and art critic Magaly Espinosa Delgado recalled this Monday, in an interview with CiberCuba, the day when Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara arrived at her third-floor apartment in Havana with unexpected news. She recounts that he told her: "The man is down there."
Upon stepping onto the balcony, Espinosa saw for the first time the sculpture of San Lázaro, a monumental piece made from waste that left her speechless.
The testimony is part of an interview that the philosopher gave to journalist Tania Costa, in which she recounts her friendship with the artist and activist, today a prisoner of conscience recognized by Amnesty International, who is serving a sentence in the maximum-security prison of Guanajay, Artemisa.
"The San Lázaro is impressive. It is an impressive sculptural work. One of the best sculptural works of Cuban art in recent times, made from waste," Espinosa asserts emphatically.
What impressed the philosopher the most was not just the piece itself, but a detail that transformed it into something more than art. As she explains, the sculpture carried money with it, and even though she left it at the base of the building, alone, no one touched it.
When Espinosa asked Luis Manuel if he feared that someone might steal it, his response was blunt: "No, professor, no one touches that."
Espinosa's reaction was immediate: "You just gave me a lesson in religion."
The philosopher didn't settle for just one anecdote. "Later, I saw Luis Manuel walking through Centro Habana on two occasions with his San Lázaro. And the San Lázaro was filled with money, and nobody touched it," she remembers.
The explanation lies in the profound popular devotion of Cubans to San Lázaro, syncretized with Babalú Ayé in santería. Touching the money placed on that figure was, for any passerby, equivalent to stealing a religious offering, something that is a cultural taboo that no penal code could ever enforce.
For Espinosa, that power is not anecdotal but theoretical. "It is a work of art, but it is a work of art with different codes, with different values, which are not those of the high culture of autotelic art, but rather the values that are integrated into social action art, into relational art," she explains.
The philosopher places the work of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara within a tradition that the very environment of the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Cuba helped to name before the concept existed internationally. "When the category of relational aesthetics did not exist, we in Cuba invented the category of socially engaged art."
Espinosa señala que artistas como René Francisco y otros ya practicaban ese arte relacional «sin saber que eso era eso. Sin saber que era un arte que movía el tejido social y que se hacía arte cuando convertías el tejido social en algo activo».
For the philosopher, those codes have not disappeared. "These elements are still very much alive in Cuba," she asserts, adding that she hopes there are young artists who will continue that tradition on the Island.
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara was arrested on July 11, 2021, during the 11J protests in Cuba and sentenced in June 2022 to five years in prison for contempt of national symbols, contempt, and public disorder. In March 2026, Cubalex filed a legal motion for his immediate release which the Supreme Court rejected in April of the same year.
Espinosa, who is considering writing a piece about Luis Manuel that includes this anecdote, concludes his reflection with a certainty: "These codes have been developing from popular culture. And these elements remain very much alive in Cuba."
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