Cuban artists behind rare protest met with shoves, insults after new try at dialogue
A group of young Cuban artists gathered in front of the Ministry of Culture Wednesday for the first time since an unprecedented protest late last year, but said they were pushed away violently by a crowd led by the minister himself, in another example of growing tensions between the government and arts community.
“It all happened in a matter of seconds,” Cuban visual artist Julio Llópiz-Casal told the Miami Herald in a phone interview. “A mob cornered us against a building in front of the ministry. They were shouting all kinds of expletives at us, shouting slogans, being violent with us. A bus came immediately, and they forced us to get on it.”
Llópiz-Casal said the group of around 30 artists, writers, and a few independent journalists standing in front of the ministry were then taken to a police station in Havana and later released.
The artists are members of the 27N Movement, a loose network stemming from an unusual public protest last November in which about 300 people advocated for freedom of expression and the release of artists and activists of the San Isidro Movement who had been detained.
The protest marked the first time in decades that Cubans gathered to peacefully demand greater civil liberties. The government initially vowed to hold talks, but soon after shut down all dialogue, with Cuban authorities, including Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel, accusing them of being mercenaries paid by the United States.
On Wednesday, two months after the first protest, members of the 27N group approached the ministry and tried to talk to cultural officials, a statement from the collective said. There was a meeting scheduled between three artist representatives and Vice Minister Fernando Rojas, both sides confirmed.
Other 27N members were paying homage in a park nearby to Cuban independence icon José Martí, whose birth is celebrated on Thursday. After learning that artist Tania Burguera, poet Katherine Bisquet and independent journalist Camila Acosta had been detained, they decided to go to the ministry to advocate for their release, two participants in the events told the Herald.
All three were freed later on Wednesday, the 27N group said. Other artists, activists, and journalists who planned to attend Wednesday’s gathering, including journalist Luz Escobar, could not leave their houses due to police surveillance, she told the Herald.
“Today we come once again to insist on dialogue, but also to demand to be heard, to exercise our freedom as citizens,” the 27N artists said in a statement. “The rights to freedom of creation, expression, and association, to dissent, and political freedoms.”
Videos published by some of the protesters and independent media outlets show Rojas refusing to meet with them if they did not first clear the street in front of the ministry.
“We are offering you to come inside,” Rojas is heard saying in the videos. But some of those gathered said the police would need to leave first. “There can be no police around. This is not a dialogue,” replied a young woman in reference to the police deployment around the ministry’s headquarters, which included barriers and police cars. Another young man asked, “Why so much repression? We are artists.”
Around noon, Minister of Culture Alpidio Alonso, other officials, and apparent ministry workers approached the protesters, several videos show. The recordings show the minister then snatching a cellphone from a participant. Diario de Cuba, a news website based in Spain, said it was one of their correspondents, Mauricio Mendoza.
“When that happened, the mob charged against us. The police force and state security officials intervened and they carried us very violently” towards the bus, said Alfredo Martínez, a reporter with Cuban LGBTI-focused media outlet Tremenda Nota. “They broke my finger; they beat people. When we got on the bus, the violence still continued. I was trying to film, and they ripped my bag.”
Both Llópiz-Casal and Martínez said that at one point police or state security officials used a restraint maneuver around their neck to carry them to the bus.
“My first reaction was to protect Mauricio, because they wanted to punch him,” Llópiz-Casal said, adding he was taken aback by the “physical violence and the symbolic violence. We have never seen a minister of culture doing that.”
“It’s not just symbolic violence against a sector of the creative community,” he added. “It is directed against the most basic civic values of a nation.”
Llópiz-Casal said they gathered to manifest peacefully, at times reading poetry.
“It’s disgusting the way they treat us like criminals. We are pacifist people who seek dialogue,” Martínez said.
The Ministry of Culture later offered its version of events in a statement, accusing the members of 27N of approaching the agency with a “provocative” and “irresponsible” attitude.
According to the statement, the protesters refused the ministry’s offer to conduct a dialogue. Ministry employees “gathered in front of the provocateurs and urged them to disperse. Given their refusal, and the evident intention to make a media show out of it, the workers confronted them and cleared the area.”
The Inter American Press Association and Amnesty International condemned the treatment of the protesters and journalists.
The State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor put out a statement urging the Cuban government “to listen to and dialogue with its people instead of resorting to arrests, violence, and cutting off internet.”
The latest protest comes a week after President Joe Biden took office. He’s expected to loosen Trump-era restrictions on travel and remittances. His administration says human rights will drive foreign policy decisions.
The authorities’ reaction sparked criticism from artists and human rights defenders, who have called for Alonso’s resignation.
“This is beyond limits,” wrote Miami-based actor and presenter Alexis Valdés on Facebook. “All decent Cuban artists must call for the immediate resignation of the Minister and Vice Minister of Culture. And if this is not the case, everyone should go to the ministry of culture to demand it.”
Llópiz-Casal said that despite his “disenchantment,” he still believes in dialogue with the Cuban authorities.
“My bullets are my words and my ability to generate images as an artist,” he said. “If tomorrow I have Alpidio Alonso in front of me, I will not do the same as he did.”
Follow Nora Gámez Torres on Twitter: @ngameztorres
This story was originally published January 28, 2021 at 6:48 PM with the headline "Cuban artists behind rare protest met with shoves, insults after new try at dialogue."