The Cuban security forces needed a health pretext to put an abrupt end to ten days of unprecedented protests in the very heart of Old Havana. Arguing a “Violation of the health protocol for international travelers”, in reference to the arrival at the scene of Cuban journalist and writer Carlos Manuel Alvarez, collaborator at Washington post and at New York Times, several dozen police officers evacuated, on the night of Thursday, November 26, the premises of the San Isidro Movement (MSI), a collective of artists and dissident intellectuals. Six people started a hunger strike there to protest the imprisonment of rapper Denis Solis earlier this month.
The intervention, violent and spectacular by the means engaged, according to the first testimonies, was preceded by a general cut-off of the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram networks throughout the island. It was through them that the strikers and eight other activists communicated, entrenched together since November 10 in this house belonging to the artist and figurehead of the movement Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara. Just before the police intervention, three doctors knocked on the door to check, according to them, the validity of Carlos Manuel Alvarez’s Covid-19 test. Late at night, the majority of those arrested let it be known on social networks, which were again functional, that they had been released.
Little known to the general public until then, the MSI, created in 2018 against artistic censorship, has largely gained notoriety in recent days, even beyond borders, with this mobilization widely relayed online. To the point that, for many observers, it appears as the most important action of civil disobedience since May 2019, when activists challenged the authorities by organizing a Gay Pride, despite its ban, in the heart of the Cuban capital. . The march ended with the brutal arrest of three activists, a few meters from the Malecon, the famous avenue by the sea.
“Dialogue impossible”
The MSI initiative began on November 9. That day, rapper Denis Solis, a young singer critical of the regime, was arrested and sentenced to eight months in prison for “Contempt” to authority. A rather rare fact in Cuba, where opponents are generally released after a few hours in police custody. Denis Solis is accused of having insulted, three days previously, a police officer (nicknamed “chicken in uniform”) who had entered his home by force and without an arrest warrant. The rapper filmed the scene with his phone, before broadcasting the sequence on the Internet, where we see the masked agent also taking pictures.
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