In early April, amid mounting U.S. pressure, the Cuban government announced that it was releasing over 2,000 prisoners in what the Cuban Embassy in Washington called a “humanitarian and sovereign gesture.” The embassy said the amnesty would not extend to those who had committed “crimes against authority,” a term generally applied to political dissidents. In other words, it did not extend to me.
I’ve been in prison in Cuba for almost five years. I was arrested in July 2021, along with hundreds of other people whose mostly peaceful demonstrations, expressions of dissent, criticism of public officials and marches in the street have been treated as crimes in Cuba. The Cuban government has denied holding political prisoners. But many of us remain behind bars.
My sentence is supposed to be up in early July. I’ve been hearing a lot of rumors within the prison: that the state won’t free me, that the island is running out of food and fuel, that President Trump is going to bomb Cuba. Even though the Trump administration has demanded the release of Cuba’s political prisoners, I don’t know if I will be allowed to go free, or what will happen to me or my country.
But I do know that when the government says that Cuba’s political system is not up for debate in potential negotiations with the United States, it means that political dissent will almost certainly not be decriminalized and that people like me will continue to go to jail.
In 2018, I co-founded the San Isidro Movement, a group of artists, journalists and academics fighting for greater civil liberties in Cuba. In my art, much of which consisted of performances, I tried to address the contradictions between my government’s high-minded revolutionary rhetoric and the everyday repression, racism and scarcity Cubans endure.
I used social media to speak to fellow Cubans about the need for change. The more popular and more visible I became, the more the state perceived me as a threat; I was increasingly surveilled, harassed and detained on charges like “defiling patriotic symbols.”
In 2021, I was arrested ahead of one of the largest protests in my country in decades. Technically, my arrest was for my use of the Cuban flag in some of my performances, which was forbidden according to a law regulating how national symbols can be displayed. That, public disorder and contempt of authority are the charges on which I’ve spent years locked up in a maximum-security prison, surrounded by men who have committed political crimes and others who have committed violent ones.
My life inside the prison is far from perfect. Every day is an exercise in monotony: the same early morning wake-up bell, the same head counts and surveillance cameras, the same Russian or Cuban state television channels, the same scant meals.
But it’s a life of relative tranquillity. We have gas generators, so the power typically doesn’t go out here the way it often does in the rest of the country. Even if water for our showers comes at irregular times, it still arrives. I can make monitored phone calls for about 10 minutes at a time (which is how I was able to write and relay this essay, with the help of my friend Coco Fusco).
The guards allow our friends and families to bring us additional food from the outside world. After much discussion, they agreed to let us keep our own hair styles, rather than get the typical prison buzz cut, so that we can look more ourselves when we have visitors. Sometimes the guards let us watch a movie.
Most important, I’m allowed to paint. It’s what’s kept me alive. I think that the state knows that if I couldn’t make art, I would die, and that’s why the guards let me do it — so I don’t turn into a martyr. I spend hours and hours a day painting on cardboard, on the floors, on the walls. I paint my desperation, my isolation, my frustration. My paintings are like an almanac: a guide to every day that I’ve spent locked away.
I know that as far as being a prisoner in Cuba goes, I’ve been lucky. The authorities are aware that I’m well known outside the prison, and they don’t hurt me. Those of us in the prison have worked hard — through dialogue and by example — to make this a space where people can get along, which other inmates have told me is not always the case in other prisons around the island.
I know that the guards are not to blame for my being here. Our destructive, dysfunctional political system isn’t their fault.
But the system remains. After the 2021 protests, the Cuban government enacted a new penal code and the so-called Social Communication Law, which further restricted free speech. Now, one anti-government social media post can put a person behind bars for months or years.
Scores of artists, activists and independent journalists have fled the country, while many who stay and express their discontent and desire for a better future have been harassed, detained or imprisoned. Even as conditions here have worsened under U.S. pressure, the government has made it clear that its hold on power is nonnegotiable.
What this tells me is that the government is still scared of people like me, who have not been afraid to challenge the state’s authority. The leniencies that I’ve seen granted to many other prisoners — parole eligibility, sentence reductions, home visits — have been denied to me. I don’t know how many hunger strikes I’ve gone on to express my anger, to show the state that I have not succumbed to efforts to crush my will, to try to make the world listen.
In my darker or more uncertain moments, I try to remember that my survival and my ongoing work as an artist are symbols of hope and sacrifice for other Cubans. I think of it as trading my time, as if every day I spend in prison wasn’t a day wasted, but another day trying to make my country freer and more just. Like another of my performance pieces — but one that should have ended long ago.
Source:
www.nytimes.com
