Artists who went to # 00Bienal were arrested in Havana and deported

Seeing the boom that # 00Bienal has taken, the Cuban authorities should be thinking that it would have been better not to suspend the official Biennial with the excuse of Hurricane Irma. Now they have Cuban-American artists at airports trying to enter Cuba to participate in the alternative Biennial.

These visits represent more work for regime officials who must stop and force artists to return to the United States, as has been the custom in Cuba, according to the Nuevo Herald.

Among the most recent cases include the artists Coco Fusco, Gean Moreno and journalist Arlena Amaro, news anchor of the Telemundo network in San Antonio, Texas.

The first two went to the Alternative Art Biennial held in Havana since May 5. The journalist planned to visit her family. He arrived at the Santa Clara airport, but was told he could not get in and a few hours later he was on his way back to Miami on the same plane where he had arrived.

Artists

The case of the artist Coco Fusco, a professor at the University of Florida, was similar, but at the Havana airport. It started as a lesson from an immigration agent to an employee they were training. It culminated with the mandatory return of the artist to Miami.

The academic, born in the United States of Cuban parents, has traveled frequently to Cuba for 34 years. She had never been arrested until last year, when she was asked if she intended to visit the artist Tania Bruguera. On that occasion they allowed her to continue with her visit to the island, despite the fact that Fusco told them that indeed "as a scholar of Cuban art, she intended to stay with Bruguera."

Almost inside

For his part, Gean Moreno, artist and curator of the Institute of Contemporary Art of Miami (ICA), to Havana without setbacks. He left the plane and went to collect his luggage in the carousel, but could not pick it up.

Something that came inside caught the attention of the authorities, who detained him and interrogated him for 10 hours before forcing him to return to Miami.

Moreno carried in the suitcase a work by the artist Ernesto Oroza, who also resides in Miami and informational pamphlets with the # 00Bienal logo. The Cuban authorities confiscated them.

According to Cuban laws, this crime can be punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

On the other hand, the Cuban creators are threatened with taking away their artist credentials, which allows them to dedicate themselves fully to art and not have to work in another trade.

Source: Cubanos por el Mundo