It is no secret that for 67 years the Cuban people have been oppressed under a deceptive discourse of victory and prosperity, which with each decade has only drifted further from the dream, revealing the true nightmare of the failure and misery of their so-called revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While many in earlier generations accepted the illusory utopia to survive, today\u2019s generation has awakened to the advance of technology, connectivity and the cyber world in a way that not even a dictatorship can contain. And, although failure has been tolerated and its reality evaded for almost seven decades, in just eight years young Cubans have become the protagonists of a new revolution on the island; their only weapons the truth and a mobile phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This snowball effect became internationally visible with the San Isidro Movement (MSI), which emerged in September 2018 in response to Decree 349, a law requiring artists to obtain prior permission for public and private exhibitions and performances, meant to control artistic expression. Many of the most prominent critics of that law – such as performance artist Luis Manuel Otero Alc\u00e1ntara and rapper Maykel Castillo P\u00e9rez, better known as Maykel Osorbo – unknowingly paved the way for their future arrests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Three years later, in 2021, a group of Cuban musicians living in exile and on the island produced, released, and won a Latin Grammy for the song “Patria y Vida” (Homeland and Life). Despite the detention and imprisonment of Maykel Osorbo on 18 May 2021, this anthem of freedom awakened a dormant volcano, which on 11 July of that same year erupted as Cubans across the country took to the streets of the country in a unanimous cry of “Freedom.” The other artists who had participated in the production of Patria y Vida who were still living on the island were also targeted by the government. Otero Alc\u00e1ntara was arrested and imprisoned<\/a> in July 2021, and a third, rapper Eliecer M\u00e1rquez Duany, aka \u2018El Funky\u2019, was forced into exile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n