“It is not enough because I have plenty of strength to continue bleeding, I understand why they repress me and I will continue to endure. A couple of days, nine months or thirty years are not enough, if in the end since I was born, you have hurt me”. These are the last rapped texts by Maykel Osorbo, one of the leaders of the Cuban dissidence, who he has sewn his mouth shut to protest the punishments he is being subjected to in the Pinar del Río prison, where he is serving a nine-year sentence for the crimes of contempt, attack, public disorder and defamation of institutions and organizations, heroes and martyrs.
Retaliation against rapper Osorbo, one of the creators of the libertarian anthem Homeland and Life, they have increased two years after the popular uprising of 11J. “In the last week his situation has worsened. His mouth was sewn up, the threads were removed, he was taken to the punishment cell, they continue to threaten him. Everything to shut up. But Maykel is not silent,” denounced the activist Anamely Ramos.
Currently there are 1,043 political prisoners that are kept in Cuban jails, including 130 women. The majority, almost 700, are sentenced or imprisoned for peacefully demonstrating two years ago. Among them are the main leaders of internal dissidence, such as Jose Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu); the historical prisoner Felix Navarro and the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, who has been on a hunger strike for a week and who leads, together with Osorbo, the San Isidro Movement.
The rapper had been incarcerated for two months before 9/11 not only for his fundamental participation in the lyrics and in the video of homeland and life, secretly recorded in Old Havana. in your must is having become a symbol of democratic resistance against Castroism thanks to his image, fist raised and with one of his wrists seized by a police handcuff. The residents of Centro Habana, close to the headquarters of her movement, prevented her arrest, which triggered government anger. Osorbo was already jailed in 2018 for opposing Decree 349, which criminalizes independent authors. But if something bothered the president excessively Miguel Diaz-Canel They were his memes on social networks, full of wit and forcefulness.
“Remember, the trees die standing up. Homeland and life always!” Osorbo, winner of the Grammy for best song of the year, rapped after the latest barrage of punishments suffered in prison. The hunger strikes and the harsh conditions of his burial have had an impact on the health of the rapper, who has previously sewn his mouth shut. His family and friends fear for his life after several lumps were discovered on his body, caused by a serious failure of his lymphatic system.