Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara is a Cuban independent activist and artist born in Cuba on December 2, 1987. Known for his performances that criticize the government's management and policies, he is a leader and member of the San Isidro Movement. This movement, made up of a collective of artists and creators, aims to promote, protect, and defend civil and cultural rights in Cuba.
Otero has suffered, like many Cuban activists, numerous detentions by the Cuban police and State Security. He has recently made headlines due to the hacking of the Facebook account of the San Isidro Movement (August 2020) and the publication of intimate photos of the artist intended to tarnish his image, which has led to multiple displays of support from his followers.
In February 2020, Otero traveled around the city to highlight the structural degradation it was facing and staged a performance aimed at drawing attention to the collapses, including the tragic death of three girls after a balcony collapsed on them in the Jesús María neighborhood of Old Havana. As a result of this action, Otero was detained.
In March of that same year, he was arrested while heading to a "kiss-in" outside the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television in protest against the censorship of a gay kiss in the film Love, Simon. On this occasion, dozens of artists (Silvio Rodríguez, Pedro Luis Ferrer, Carlos Varela, Athanai, Yotuel (Orishas), the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Michael G. Kozak, and Amnesty International, among others) joined the call for the Cuban's release after he had been imprisoned for over two weeks, facing the threat of a sentence of two to five years in prison for the alleged crime of property damage. Regarding these calls for release, Diaz Canel stated that "Cuban artists must be part of the revolution."
In 2019, Otero Alcántara was summoned by State Security on the very day that the King and Queen of Spain began their official visit to the Island, and he was arrested on charges of "public disorder."
Alcántara has often been the target of attacks from the pro-government Cuban press, a group of artists who support the government, and from the president of the National Council of Plastic Arts, Norma Rodríguez Derivet.
