Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara is an independent Cuban activist and artist, born in Cuba on December 2, 1987. He is known for his performances that denounce government actions and policies, and he is a leader and member of the San Isidro Movement. This movement, composed 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 San Isidro Movement's Facebook account (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 toured the city to highlight its worsening structural conditions and staged a performance aimed at drawing attention to the collapses, specifically the tragic death of three girls after a balcony fell 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" in front of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television to protest the censorship of a gay kiss in the film Love, Simon. On this occasion, dozens of artists, including Silvio Rodríguez, Pedro Luis Ferrer, Carlos Varela, Athanai, Yotuel (of 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 incarcerated for over two weeks and faced the threat of a sentence ranging from two to five years in prison for the alleged crime of property damage. In response to these calls for his 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 the charge of "public disorder."

Alcántara has been the target of attacks on many occasions from the official Cuban press, a group of artists who support the government, and by the president of the National Council of Plastic Arts, Norma Rodríguez Derivet.