Otero on hunger strike. Cuban artivist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara began this Sunday, April 25, a hunger and thirst strike due to the state of siege that the regime of Miguel Díaz-Canel has maintained in San Isidro since last November. "I don't want to live like this, and this is the last resort one has within one's morality."
"Now I have been under siege for a month, unable to leave my house, the violence has been increasing with impunity against activists, members of the San Isidro Movement, my friends, my family," Otero Alcántara denounced in exclusive statements to CubaNet.
"Nothing makes the regime reduce violence," he said, "and one is not a machine, one has feelings, it hurts me that in my block people are uncomfortable with the police presence, 24 by 24. Physical violence, verbal violence, towards me, towards others, torture in such an enclosed space." All this makes him wonder what the government's limit is, "to shoot you, to kill you? Because in the end this is going to lead us to madness, to dementia. The regime wants me to die, perfect, in the end the way we are going we could end up crazy, walking the streets, because nobody can stand this stress", he said.
Luis Manuel Otero assured CubaNet that he prefers his life to escape little by little in his house, painting, in a spiritual way and connected with his friends, his family and his neighborhood. "We have already endured enough."
He also explained that he will not give in, "I was born to make art, I live in Cuba, and I will live in Cuba today, tomorrow and always. But I can't stand the dictatorship in this country, I can't stand that my children are afraid, that my friends are afraid, that the neighbors have a camera next to their house" with which, in addition to watching him, they are watching everyone.
"This time, really, it is out of a feeling of solidarity with my neighbors, with all my friends, and if my body has to serve to feed the fish, then it will serve, but my spirit will be free, like my art, as I have always said".
Luis Manuel Otero, who since last November, when together with 14 other people barracked in his house, headquarters of the San Isidro Movement, to demand the release of the protesting rapper Denis Solis through, also, a hunger strike, has been the target of violence and repression by the Castro regime for his activism and his radical stance against the government.
"You won't even let me paint inside my house, you won't let me go out to claim my rights at the Capitol, to deliver a letter, you want me to be a zombie, what do you expect me to do, to give me a rope, I'm not going to do it", he reaffirmed to the government.
"The hunger strike is the last resort, and it is my right to die, talking to my friends. Worse is to lose your mind and then you die as they want, and that's not. We're going all out. I'd rather die here and now than be a zombie or emigrate. Look how many Cubans cannot separate themselves from that reality."
"I, who have a love, I don't know where it comes from, for this fucking country, for the Cuban reality, imagine if I emigrate, I will be a double zombie. The dominoes are locked, there is no other way out", he concluded.
