Voces Presas Renews Calls for the Immediate Release of Cuban Artists

23 July 2024: New campaign action engages the international community and underscores the stories of unjustly incarcerated Cuban creatives.

Today, PEN International, Artists at Risk Connection (ARC), and Civil Rights Defenders (CRD), announced the launch of a new phase of their Voces Presas campaign through a series of videos that showcase the stories of artists unjustly imprisoned in Cuba. The organisations urge the international community to call for the release of the five individuals featured in the campaign.

Read more about the campaign in Spanish.

Voces Presas began in November 2022 amid heightened repression and concern for a growing number of artists detained because of their free expression. The profiles and illustrations created for the campaign humanise and explore the stories of poet María Cristina Garrido Rodríguez, musician Randy Arteaga Rivera, multidisciplinary artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, rapper Maykel Castillo Pérez, and tattoo and graffiti artist Jessica Lisbeth Torres Calvo.

In addition to criminalising the independent and dissident artistic community, Cuban authorities have expanded the harassment and intimidation of artists and writers in recent years, as documented in PEN International, ARC and Cubalex’s Método Cuba: Independent Artists’ Testimonies of Forced Exile. The report compiles testimonies from 17 Cuban artists in exile and other expert perspectives detailing the experiences of the independent Cuban artistic community. Similarly, War, Censorship, and Persecution: PEN International Case List 2023/2024, documents diverse attacks against more than a dozen Cuban creatives in retaliation for their expression.

The organisations renew the campaign’s demands that:

-        The Cuban government immediately releases all imprisoned artists and guarantees freedom of expression, artistic freedom and peaceful demonstrations in the country.

-        The embassies of the European Union and the Americas in Cuba call on the Cuban government to allow them to visit the imprisoned artists to verify their conditions and subsequently issue reports with the findings of these visits.

-        Organisations and individuals call on the Cuban government to eliminate the stigmatising concept of “non-state public spaces” and to remove the requirement for state approval, one of the most repressive measures of Decree 349, for artists to freely exhibit their work.

Note to Editors:

For more information, please contact Alicia Quiñones, Head of the Americas Region, at PEN International, email: alicia.quinones@pen-international.org

For media queries, please contact Sabrina Tucci, PEN International Communications and Campaigns Manager,  Sabrina.Tucci@pen-international.org 

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