Lynn Cruz’s Diary

Over the past few weeks, news of a Cuban political prisoner, scientist Ariel Ruiz Urquiola, has traveled the entire world. Ariel is serving an unfair sentence after a summary trial was held on May 8th in Pinar del Rio province. He was arrested at the farm he shares with his sister and mother in Vinales.

I recently attended the presentation of visual and film projects to a delegation from New York’s Modern Art Museum, at the alternative base of the Hannah Arendt Institute for Artivism, Instar, led by Tania Bruguera.

On Friday May 18th, at the Actuar Agency, the Labor Justice Committee (OJL) informed me of its recent decisions regarding the complaint I filed because this former organization, especially its director Jorge Luis Frias Armenteros, violated my artistic representation contract because of my online activity against government and Party leaders.

While high-ranking officials were driving their cars and locking themselves into air-conditioned offices, a group of artists realized a project (perhaps the most ambitious to date), the recently concluded #00 Havana Biennial. Outside of Cuba’s institutional establishment, it took place between May 5-15.

Cuban scientist sentenced to one year in prison for ‘disrespecting” government authority, was the title of an article recently published in the Miami Herald. And that is Ariel Ruiz Urquiola, a universal researcher. His work and light transcend the borders of this island.

Gerardo Mosquera, an important art critic and Cuban intellectual, invited me to read his paper: “Utopia in Havana”, as part of a theoretical event which forms part of the Havana Alternative Biennial, which was independently organized and has received quite a lot of pressure from the Cuban government and institutions.

I looked over all my assessment papers as an actress, my work contracts and it didn’t say that an artist had to be a hypocrite and dishonest anywhere. It doesn’t say in writing that an artist has to stop being free to say what to think.

People here have been talking about reggaeton lyrics for a long time. I remember the famous video which a grandfather uploaded to YouTube, where his trendsetting grandson was grinding on top of a girl like an adult to a raucous reggaeton beat.

After being expelled from the San Antonio de los Banos School of Film and TV (EICTV), the Actuar Agency has decided to not represent me anymore. I explain here how it happened and what it means.

Cubans in Miami have won themselves a piece of land in the US. Terrified of Castrismo, they fell like expatriates into the exile boat and contrary to popular belief, thought and art are buzzing here in this city.