The Cuban artist Alexis Leiva Machado – known as Kcho – has ruled against the imprisonment of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara.
“Let’s stop this now! We do not need it and the future of Cuba is not censorship is freedom! I still remember the trial of Rene and Ponjuan at UNEAC! And that is not the way. The artists have a universal poetic license! ”, The artist wrote in the comments to a publication by René Francisco Rodríguez, National Prize of Plastic Arts, who also came out in defense of Luis Manuel Otero.
The statement has surprised to come from a Cuban plastic artist very close to the Cuban regime, who was even a member of the Cuban Parliament.
Kcho is considered one of the favorite artists of the Cuban regime, visited the tomb of Fidel Castro on March 8, 2018 in the cemetery of Santa Ifigenia, in Santiago de Cuba, where it even squared with a military salute.
Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara was arrested on Sunday, March 1 when I tried to attend a kiss in protest at the censorship of a gay scene in a film broadcast on Cuban television.
At the time of his arrest, his girlfriend, art curator Claudia Genlui, was beaten on the ground by an Interior Ministry officer trying to snatch the phone, so he would not continue recording the arrest.
Since then, numerous voices of artists, activists and journalists they have joined in a petition for the freedom of Otero, several of them from inside the Island; how Mario Guerra, Pedro Luis Ferrer, René Francisco, Haydée Milanés, Eduardo del Llano and even the controversial singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez.
On Saturday, members of the San Isidro Movement – to which Otero belongs – brought a habeas corpus resource before the artist in favor of the artist.
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