[vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/-6JnYDCLKIE”][vc_column_text]The Museum of Dissidence in Cuba is an online website and public art project celebrating dissent in Cuba. It was set up in the summer of 2016 by acclaimed young artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and his partner, curator and art historian Yanelys Nuñez Leyva. Their stated aim is to reclaim the word “dissident” and to give it in Cuba a positive connotation.
This is a daring and unique project, created by representatives of a new, young generation of artists who are not afraid to challenge the still repressive regime and promote freedom of expression. The repercussions have been fierce: Nuñez was sacked from her job at state sponsored magazine Revolution and Culture for founding the site. Otero was arrested in November 2017 for organising an unofficial #00Havana Biennal through the museum and threatened with prison for being a “counter-revolutionary”.
Cuba is still a one-party communist state. Political pluralism is outlawed and dissent repressed. There are also severe restrictions on press freedom, assembly, speech and association, according to Freedom House. The project aims to bring people from inside and outside Cuba together online, but specialises in radical public art projects and installations, concentrated in the poorer districts of Havana. The founders say that because it is not on either side of the political divide it is particularly vilified and attacked.
On his Index Awards nomination, Alcántara said “having won this prize is super important, for the MDC as well as for all Cuban activism, because it’s an acknowledgement from a prestigious international institution. This legitimises the work that we’ve been doing in favour of a future of freedom on the island, makes it more visible and brings protection and a certain empowerment to keep working despite all the unfairness and insecurity that we experience here.”
In 2017 the site promoted artistic projects round the island. The museum worked with a group of graffiti artists to create murals of aliens and balaclava clad men on the dilapidated walls of Havana in September 2017 to show up the government, which only allows political slogans and pictures of Cuban revolutionaries.
In another striking project they have reexamined the work and lives of important Cuban writers who committed suicide in suspicious circumstances. A terrifying art installation by Amaury Pacheco depicted a man hanging above the street in homage to the poet Juan Carlos Flores. The museum held a series of artistic events in San Isidro, a poor neighbourhood of Old Havana to honour the poets who had killed themselves because of the repressive Cuban regime.
The project #00 Biennial of Havana is the museum’s latest action, born as an act of protest against the decision of the Ministry of Culture to postpone until 2019, the celebration of the XIII Biennial of Havana. It was this project which led to founder Otero being arrested. He is now free on bail.
With this Index Award nomination, the work is being recognised for its bravery. In response, curator Yanelys Levya notes that “living on an island makes us believe we are alone in everything that we do. To know that there’s someone, in any part of the world, that supports our struggle and that their dreams are close to ours, makes us feel safer, stronger and gives us hope.”
#IndexAwards 2018: los creadores del Museo de la Disidencia siguen ferozmente fieles a su proyecto
El Museo de la Disidencia representa a una nueva generación de jóvenes artistas que no temen desafiar al todavía represor régimen cubano
El Museo de la Disidencia en Cuba es una página web y proyecto de arte público que celebra el acto de disidir en Cuba, creado el verano de 2016 por el aclamado joven artista Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara y su pareja, la comisaria e historiadora del arte Yanelys Núñez Leyva. Su objetivo es reclamar la palabra “disidente” y otorgarle una connotación positiva en el contexto cubano.
Se trata de un proyecto atrevido y extremadamente original, creado por los representantes de una nueva generación de jóvenes artistas que no temen desafiar al régimen, aún represor, y promover la libertad de expresión. Han sufrido duras represalias: Núñez fue despedida de su trabajo en la revista Revolución y Cultura, financiada por el estado, por fundar la web. A Otero lo arrestaron en noviembre de 2017 por organizar la #00Bienal de La Habana —un evento no oficial— a través del museo, y se enfrentó a penas de prisión por “contrarrevolucionario”.
Cuba sigue siendo un régimen comunista de partido único. La pluralidad política es ilegal y la disidencia, reprimida. También existen duras restricciones a la libertad de prensa, reunión, expresión y asociación, según informa Freedom House. El proyecto busca favorecer el encuentro online de personas dentro y fuera de Cuba, pero se especializa en proyectos e instalaciones de arte público y radical, concentrados en los distritos más pobres de La Habana. Los fundadores afirman que es el hecho de no encontrarse ni a un lado ni al otro de la división política lo que hace que sean objeto de tantos ataques e intentos de descrédito.
Sobre su nominación a los Index Awards, Alcántara dijo: «haber ganado este premio es súper importante, tanto para el MDC como para todo el activismo cubano, porque supone el reconocimiento de una institución de prestigio internacional. Legitima el trabajo que hemos estado haciendo a favor de un futuro de libertad en la isla, lo visibiliza y nos facilita protección y cierto empoderamiento para seguir trabajando pese a toda la injusticia y la inseguridad que vivimos aquí».
En 2017 la web promocionó proyectos artísticos de toda la isla. En septiembre del año pasado, el museo trabajó con un grupo de artistas de grafiti en la creación de murales de extraterrestres y hombres con pasamontañas sobre los deteriorados muros de La Habana para ridiculizar al gobierno, que solo permite eslóganes políticos e imágenes de revolucionarios cubanos.
En otro de sus llamativos proyectos, han reexaminado las vidas y obras de escritores cubanos de renombre que se suicidaron en circunstancias sospechosas. Una aterradora instalación de Amaury Pacheco representó a un hombre ahorcado sobre la acera en un homenaje al poeta Juan Carlos Flores. El museo celebró una serie de eventos artísticos en San Isidro, un barrio pobre de La Habana Vieja, en honor a los poetas que se han quitado la vida a causa de la represión del régimen cubano.
El proyecto #00Bienal de La Habana, la última acción del museo, nació como un acto de protesta contra la decisión del Ministerio de Cultura de posponer hasta 2019 la celebración de la XIII Bienal de la Habana. Fue este proyecto el que resultó en el arresto de Otero, quien actualmente se encuentra en libertad bajo fianza.
La nominación a los Index Awards reconoce la valentía de esta obra. En respuesta, la comisaria Yanelys Leyva ha declarado: «vivir en una isla nos hace creer que estamos solos en todo lo que hacemos. Saber que hay alguien, en alguna parte del mundo, que apoya nuestra lucha y cuyos sueños son cercanos a los nuestros nos hace sentir más seguros y fuertes, y nos da esperanza».
Traducción de Arrate Hidalgo
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From an artist who had barely used Facebook to the face of #YoTambienExijo, the international online movement for free speech – Tania Bruguera describes how the perfect coalescence of art, social media and politics allowed the world to see the real Cuba at a crucial time in the country’s history.
The beginnings of the #YoTambienExijo movement were born on 17 December 2014, when President Obama announcement a landmark warming of the 53-year chill between the United States and Cuba.
“When I first heard about the Cuba-US reconciliation it had a great impact on me as an artist, but also as a Cuban citizen,” Tania Bruguera told Index. “I was glad about the decision, but at the same time a lot of questions came to my head. Who is going to define that different Cuba? Who is going to be in charge of creating that different Cuba?”
Writing an open letter addressed to Obama, the Pope and Cuban president Raúl Castro, Bruguera demanded for Cubans “the right to know what is being planned with our lives”, also demanding that Cuban citizens gain more from his political change than a place at the table of North American trade.
“Yo Tambien Exijo was one of the phrases in the letter – I also demand. I also demand to know. I demand as a Cuban.”
The sentiment resonated with many Cubans around the world, and after her sister Deborah Bruguera created the Facebook page, #YoTambienExijo, the site quickly attracted thousands of followers.
In the final part of her letter, Bruguera called for Castro to hand over the microphone to the people of Cuba – a reference to a performance piece of Bruguera’s which gives any audience member one minute of unhindered free speech. The idea captured the imagination of #YoTambienExijo’s online audience, who asked Bruguera to stage the performance at the Havana Biennial, an art fair taking place in Cuba’s capital that month.
But arriving in the country days later, Bruguera found her words had not been met with the same level of support by the Cuba government. “I was pretty naïve,” says Bruguera. “When I entered the country, I start behaving as if human rights were being respected. And that clashed with reality.”
A smear campaign was launched against Bruguera, with government-sponsored blogs characterizing the artist as a provocateur acting under the influence of foreign pressure, and even labeling her as a drug smuggler. It’s not uncommon for the Cuban government to attempt to undermine dissenting voices as CIA or right wing, the artist says: “I think one good thing is I’ve worked for 20 years. So people know who I am. Sometime when you are dissident or you are an activist just starting working, in Cuba they are very good at putting in people’s mind the image of that person they want for the rest of the people.”
But in spite of continued pressure from government officials to cancel the performance, Bruguera refused. “I always say I have no money, I have nothing. I have only my word. So I have to defend that. In this case I gave my word to the 12,000 people who were waiting for this.”
Organising collective action is difficult in Cuba, where low internet connectivity and high levels of state security tend to impede any political protest. So the #YoTambienExijo team put out an online plea for Cubans around the world to call their families and tell them about the performance – which many did.
On the day of the performance Bruguera was arrested, along with several dissidents who had expressed solidarity with Bruguera’s project. But the attempt to stop the performance failed; news of the #YoTambienExijo page and the performance had already spread to Cuban people.
Imprisoned for the whole performance (she was subsequently released and then rearrested twice), Bruguera only learnt later of the arrests of several audience members. As these events unfolded, reporting from the #YoTambienExijo team spread online, gathering international support for Bruguera, and after 14 prominent artists wrote a letter to The Guardian condemning Bruguera’s arrest, the hashtag #FreeTaniaBruguera soon began trending, and another online letter began circulating. “In 24 hours, more than 3,000 people from the international art world signed, including directors from MoMa and the Tate.” Bruguera refused to allow her own release until all audience members were freed along with her. The mounting pressure from the global community meant that, eventually, the every person arrested in connection with the performance was released.
These events were an important wake-up call, Bruguera believes. “Cuba was trying to sell itself to the world as the next opportunity for business, and as a good person, as a victim for 50 years. This unveiled the truth.” In reality, Cuban government’s control over media public discussion and the arts has been absolute for over five decades.
But what happened also showed Bruguera a way forward for Cuba. “It was for me a very difficult experience – the most difficult I have ever had in my life. But it really put us in a way that we are all together, and we understood that we can make a change in Cuba. Because we were able to mobilize not only that many Cubans, but we were able to mobilize also a big group of international artists.”
The international reaction to Bruguera’s story turned #YoTambienExijo into a movement capturing more than just the Cuban experience. Around the world performances were staged in solidarity, with arts organisations including Creative Time in New York, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Netherlands’ Van Abbe Museum, and the Tate Modern, all giving audiences one minute of free speech. It also became a form of protest in countries around the world where citizens and artists face censorship.
“It became Cuba focused and then it became more about totalitarianism in the world in general,” said Bruguera. “And it became also about the role of an artist who wants to deal with political issues in contemporary art.”
Last year Bruguera was shortlisted for the Hugo Boss prize and named one of Foreign Policy’s Global thinkers of 2015. She is now planning to return to Cuba to set up a space in Havana, the Hannah Arendt International Institute of Art and Artivism, a place for the Cuban people to advance their freedom of expression.
August 2015: opening of the Cuban Film Posters exhibition Soy Cuba as part of World Cinema Amsterdam. Credit: Shutterstock / Cloud Mine Amsterdam
“[T]he fault of many of our intellectuals and artists is to be found in their ‘original sin’: they are not authentically revolutionary.”
— Che Guevara, Man and Socialism in Cuba, 1965
Last year was a good one for Cuban artists. With renewed diplomatic relations with the US, a boom in Latin American art and Cuba’s exceptional artistic talent — fostered through institutions such as the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana — works by prominent Cuban artists fetched top dollar at international auctions, and the Cuban film industry was firmly in the international spotlight.
While the end of the embargo brought with it hope for political liberalisation on the island, as with previous periods of promise in Cuban history cases of repression and censorship of dissident artists were rife in 2015.
So let’s begin again: Last year was a good one for Cuban artists who adhere to the country’s long-established revolutionary narrative and don’t embarrass the regime.
The fear of censorship for art that is critical of the government has been fostered through decades of laws and repression that limit freedom of expression. This can mean stigmatisation, the loss of employment and even imprisonment. Charges such as “social dangerousness” and insulting national symbols are so vague they make convictions very easy.
“Artists are among the most privileged people in Cuban society — they make money in hard currency, travel, have frequent interaction with foreigners and they don’t have boring jobs,” explains Coco Fusco, a Cuban-American artist, 2016 Index Freedom of Expression Awards nominee and author of Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba. “Artists function as a window display in Cuba; proof of the success of the system.”
But if an artist engages in political confrontations, they can draw unwanted attention, says Fusco.
One artist accused of doing just that is critically-acclaimed Cuban director and fellow nominee for this year’s Index Awards Juan Carlos Cremata. In 2015, he staged a production of Eugene Ionesco’s Exit the King, about an ageing ruler who refuses to give up power. The play lasted two performances before being shut down by the National Council of Theatre Arts and the Centre for Theatre in Havana.
“Exit the King was banned because according to the minister of culture and the secret police we were mocking Fidel Castro,” Cremata told Index on Censorship. “This wasn’t really true; what they fear is real revolutionary speech in theatre.”
When he spoke out against the move, Cuban authorities terminated his theatre contract, effectively dissolving his company, El Ingenio.
Cremata, whose career spans three decades, confesses the shutting down of Exit the King took him by surprise. “We are living in the 21st century, and according to the official propaganda, Cuba is changing and people can talk about anything,” he says. “This, as it turns out, is a big lie by people who are still dreaming of the revolution.”
“With their censorship, they show how stupid, retrograde and archaic their politics are,” he says.
As so much funding for artists comes from the state, non-conformist artists often find themselves in difficult financial situations. “I’ve had to reinvent my life,” Cremata says. “I’m trying to receive some help from friends who offer to work with me for free, but this will not be eternal, as they have families.”
Cremata himself has an adopted daughter and has her future to think about. “I truly believe life will change and better times will come with or without their approval, but it is very, very hard.”
Art has always been at the centre of Cuban culture, but under Fidel Castro it became a tool for spreading socialist ideas and censorship a tool for tackling dissent. Evidently, Cuba isn’t entirely post-Fidel, explains Fusco. “Fidel is still alive, his brother is in charge and his dynasty is firmly ensconced in the power, with sons, nieces and nephews in key positions,” she says. “Although I don’t think anyone over the age of 10 in Cuba believes the rhetoric anymore.”
Very few may believe the rhetoric, but going against it can still land you in prison, as was the case with Index Awards nominee Danilo Maldonado, the graffiti artist also known as El Sexto. Maldonado organised a performance called Animal Farm for Christmas 2014, where he intended to release two pigs with the names of Raúl and Fidel Castro painted on them. He was arrested on his way to carry out the performance and spent 10 months in prison without trial.
International human rights organisations condemned his imprisonment — during which he was on a month-long hunger strike — as an attack on freedom of expression.
The prospect for improving political freedoms doesn’t look good, and anyone who expected any different due to Cuba’s normalisation of relations with the US is naive, says Fusco.
“Washington is not promoting policy changes to improve human rights,” she says. “Washington is promoting policy changes to 1. develop better ways to exert political influence in Cuba; 2. to revise immigration policies and control the steep increase in Cuban illegal migration to the US; 3. to give US businesses and investment opportunity that they need (particularly agribusiness); 4. to avoid a tumultuous transition at the end of Raul Castro’s term in power that would produce more regional instability (i.e. the US does not want another Iraq, Libya or Syria).”
Even within Cuba there is an absence of discussion about civil liberties, strong voices of criticism of state controls and collective artist-based efforts to promote liberalisation.
“Artists are generally afraid to mingle with dissidents,” says Fusco. “There are a few bloggers who post stories about confrontations with police and political prisoners, a few older human rights activists who collect information about detentions and prison conditions, a handful of opposition groups who advocate for political reforms, but they have virtually no influence on the government.”
In the past, Cuban authorities used the US embargo as an excuse to justify restrictions on freedom of expression. Now that the excuses are running out, it is time for the Cuban government allow its dissidents the same freedoms as its conformists.
Ryan McChrystal is the assistant editor, online at Index on Censorship
If you live in Cuba, Iran or Sudan, and are using the increasingly popular online education tool Coursera, you are likely encounter some access difficulties from this week onwards. Coursera has been included in the US export sanctions regime.
The changes have only come about now, as Coursera believed they and other MOOCs — Massive Open Online Courses — didn’t fall under American export bans to the countries. However, as the company explained in a statement on their official blog: “We recently received information that has led to the understanding that the services offered on Coursera are not in compliance with the law as it stands.”
Coursera, in partnership with over 100 universities and organisations, from Yale to the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology to the Word Bank, offers online courses in everything from Economics and Finance to Music, Film and Audio — free of charge. Over four million students across the world are currently enrolled.
“We envision a future where everyone has access to a world-class education that has so far been available to a select few. We aim to empower people with education that will improve their lives, the lives of their families, and the communities they live in,” they say.
But this noble aim is now being derailed by US economic sanctions policy. People in Cuba, Iran and Sudan will be able to browse the website, but existing students won’t be able to log onto their course pages, and new students won’t be allowed to sign up. Syria was initially included on the list, but was later removed under an exception allowing services that support NGO efforts.
Amid clear-cut cases of censorship, peaceful protesters being attacked and journalists thrown in jail, it is easy forget that access — or rather lack of it — also constitutes a threat to freedom of expression. Lack of access to freedom of expression leads to people being denied an equal voice, influence and active and meaningful participation in political processes and their wider society.
In these connected times, it can be a simple as being denied reliable internet access. Coursera is trying to tackle this problem. They “started building up a mobile-devices team so that students in emerging markets — who may not have round-the-clock access to computers with internet connectivity — can still get some of their coursework done via smartphones or tablets,” reported Forbes.
But this won’t be of much help to students affected by the sanctions, as their access is being restricted not by technological shortcomings, but by misguided policy. Education plays a vital part in helping provide people with the tools to speak out, play an active part in their society and challenge the powers that be. Taking an education opportunity away from people in Cuba, Iran and Sudan is another blow to freedom of expression in countries with already poor records in this particular field.
Furthermore, these sanctions are in part enforced in a bid to stand up for human rights. This loses some of its power, when the people on the ground in the sanctioned countries are being denied a chance to further educate themselves, gaining knowledge that could help them be their own agents of change and stand up for their own rights.
Ironically, this counterproductive move comes not long after a Sudanese civil society group called for a change to US technology sanction.
“We want to be clear that this is not an appeal to lift all sanctions from the Sudanese regime that continues to commit human rights atrocities. This is an appeal to empower Sudanese citizens through improved access to ICTs so that they can be more proactive on issues linked to democratic transformation, humanitarian assistance and technology education — an appeal to make the sanctions smarter,” said campaign coordinator Mohammed Hashim Kambal.
Coursera says they are working to “reinstate site access” to the users affects, adding that: “The Department of State and Coursera are aligned in our goals and we are working tirelessly to ensure that blockage is not permanent.”
For now, students in Iran, Cuba and Sudan could access Coursera through a VPN network.
Hopefully this barrier to freedom of expression in countries where it is sorely needed, will soon be reversed.
