Interesting news from Havana

[Habana Mike]

From a friend...

"Things are happening here Mike that had never happened, hopefully and involve a positive change!

The government arrested a rapper for expressing his dissatisfaction with the current situation of the people, the hunger that is wearing down the Cuban people and the sacrifice and calm that our leaders ask for ...

That simple fact triggered a series of events that will change so many years of submission on the part of us Cubans to the dictator government ...

The first thing was that several artists who were friends of that rapper and who share his ideas and concerns went to demand his release and were repressed by the police and in response they began a hunger strike ... !!!

That was only 5 or 6 days ago but that fact had never happened ... the Cuban press, radio and TV under the command of the government do not cover the news but thanks to the internet it has been disseminated and has grown so much that even the Officials from the US embassy have intervened in the matter, the Cuban community around the world is making demonstrations in front of the Cuban embassies in different countries ... such as Spain, Uruguay, USA ...

the government cordoned off the area preventing anyone from entering !!! Neither journalists nor religious !!! Nobody and he cut the electricity and then to prevent the flow of information from continuing, he cut the internet for all the strikers ... !!! In addition to the military and police deployment that continues in that area ... !!!

The last thing was that the military and the police broke into the headquarters of the movement and took the strikers away by force !!! Some do not know where they are, others the most delicate are in hospitals and others returned them to the house ...
seeks the information this is known as: San Isidro Movement (MIS)
all this has outraged more people who are adding more every day for so many years of humiliation and deficiencies and hunger! Many young solodarisans will join to go to the Ministry of Culture and demand total freedom of the press that appears in our constitution but that constantly violates anyone who does not agree with the politics of this country ...
the fact is that so many people entered the ministry .. !!! The pope and several presidents have spoken to the government and there is still no response ... !!! Havana looks like a hive!
That had never happened !!! Cuba my friend is finally waking up !!!"

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article247452965.html

[Habana Mike]

And this trying to hit the link from Havana

[Habana Mike]

1 minute ago, MigsG said:

Just tried the link now and it works, Mike.

Yes, Works for me. Not my friend

[stogieluver]

Sounds like the embargo and sanctions are beginning to have the desired result. 

[La_Tigre]

We heard from friends that this is happening as well. One artist has gone on a hunger strike and sewn his lips together in resistance.

The internet and flow of information has created such a movement beginning with the artists in San Isidro.

 

[Fugu]

Plain text body (perhaps FOH isn’t blocked in Cuba  ?....):

 

Cuban police quell protest and detain young artists and academics on hunger strike

BY NORA GÁMEZ TORRES

NOVEMBER 27, 2020 11:08 AM, UPDATED NOVEMBER 27, 2020 02:50 PM

 

Open Letter on behalf of Cuban and international artists in relation to decree 349/2018 - "We want a dialogue between art professionals and the government and a reconsideration of this measure" BY ARTISTAS CUBNXS EN CONTRA DEL DECRETO 349

 

While Americans were celebrating Thanksgiving on Thursday night, in Havana Cuban police forcefully ended a hunger strike by young artists, academics, journalists and activists protesting government repression.

The protesters are members of the Movimiento San Isidro, a loose collective advocating for freedom of expression on the communist island. Several of them, including artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, started a hunger strike last week to protest the imprisonment of rapper Denis Solis, who was accused of contempt of the police and sentenced to eight months.

On Thursday night, police and what appeared to be military officials wearing medical gowns broke the door to Alcántara’s dilapidated house in the rundown neighborhood of San Isidro and detained a dozen protesters, according to videos posted in social media and the accounts of some of the activists who were freed Friday morning.

 

“Agents of the dictatorship broke into our headquarters ... took them away, and we do not know their whereabouts. We fear for their safety,” the Movimiento San Isidro tweeted on Thursday night.

The Facebook account of Razones de Cuba, a website linked to the state security agency, posted an edited video briefly showing some of the activists’ detention. The footage quickly cut to images of a government-organized demonstration — known as an act of repudiation — nearby where people could be heard screaming and chanting “Fidel.”

 

Previously, an article by a former intelligence agent who is now a journalist for the Communist Party newspaper Granma claimed without evidence that the San Isidro Movement was “orchestrated by Washington and Miami” to subvert the revolution.

On its website, Razones de Cuba published a quasi-official note explaining that authorities were forced to “extract” the people from the house because they were not following regulations to prevent the spread of COVID-19. In particular, the report blames journalist Carlos Manuel Alvarez, who had traveled from Mexico to cover the protest and allegedly broke the health protocol by staying with the protesters.

“I’m on a hunger strike. They pushed me and took my phone. What doctor seizes your phone?” Anamely Ramos, one of the protesters, can be heard yelling as she is being detained, the video published by Razones de Cuba shows. “This is arbitrary, and you all know it.”

In a video posted later on Facebook, Ramos, a doctoral student at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico and a former University of the Arts professor in Havana, said she was taken to a police station and then taken back to her house. Alcántara, who has become known for his daring public performances and has been detained several times, was not allowed to return to his house in San Isidro, she said.

“If they do this with us — we who have visibility in Cuba and abroad — what will not happen with Denis Solis? Think of all the people who are political prisoners right now and about whom we know nothing. What about those people?” said Ramos on the video.

 

Shortly after posting the video, Ramos was again detained, independent journalist Maykel González Vivero confirmed to the Miami Herald. In another video showing her second detention, she is seeing walking out of the house and immediately being arrested by two Ministry of Interior agents.

“They cannot continue to violate the rights of people like this, with impunity, without absolutely nothing happening, and then start inventing lies to justify those illegalities,” Ramos said shortly before being detained again. “I refuse to live in such a country.”

According to González Vivero, before being arrested, Ramos told him she would continue the hunger strike. The journalist, who runs the LGBTQ-focused website Tremenda Nota, reported first on the detentions. He talked to neighbors who confirmed the police broke into Alcántara’s house and forcefully removed the protesters.

González Vivero told the Herald that Alcántara was arrested again on Friday morning because he insisted on returning to his house in San Isidro, but the police intervened. “Right now they [the protesters] are dispersed around the city; we have to wait to see how all this ends,” he said.

 

Attempts to communicate with Alcántara were unsuccessful. González Vivero said the government confiscated the cellphones of the protesters.

THE CUBAN GOVERNMENT TARGETS YOUNG ARTISTS

The arrests ended what has been a week of harassment and intimidation by state security forces that surrounded the house with the excuse of an alleged COVID-19 outbreak and prevented any visitors, including U.S. diplomats, from checking on the health of the activists.

The whole showdown unfolded on social media, where the protesters documented the harassment by police and neighbors cooperating with state security agents. With the acknowledgment of the police, whose agents stood a few yards away, a neighbor threw glass bottles at Alcántara’s house and hit him on the head, Alcántara said in a video, where he is seen with bruises and blood on his forehead. The video shows how someone was trying to destroy the house door from the outside.

During the arrests, the government temporarily blocked social media platforms such as Facebook, according to reports by activists and independent journalists. This week, the government also blocked access to several news outlets, including el Nuevo Herald and the Miami Herald.

Under Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel, state security agencies have grown more aggressive, harassing and arresting dissidents, journalists and activists, regardless of broader political considerations. The latest wave of repression, this time against young artists, musicians, academics and activists, will make it harder for the incoming Joe Biden administration to ease sanctions against the Cuban government and the military to pursue the engagement policies promoted by the Obama administration.

“We urge the Cuban regime to cease harassment of San Isidro Movement protesters and to release musician Denis Solís, who was unjustly sentenced to eight months in prison,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Twitter. “Freedom of expression is a human right. The United States stands with Cuba’s people.”

The Movimiento San Isidro has become a challenge for the embattled Díaz-Canel government, which is confronting a severe economic crisis and increasing discontent among the population. While it has gotten support from other dissidents, the Movimiento San Isidro is not linked to the traditional opposition, and the fact that its members are young artists or professionals who are social media savvy has won it a larger audience.

Cuban government Decree 349, which legalizes censorship and has been enforced since December 2018, galvanized independent young Cuban artists and activists, who started using visual arts, performances, music and poetry to oppose government policies. Alcántara made headlines last year when he was arrested for wearing a Cuban flag, a public performance he made to question notions of identity and to demystify the use of the flag. Flag displays are also regulated by a government decree about national symbols, he told the Herald at the time.

In March last year, he was arrested when he was on his way to another public performance and was told he would be put on trial. After several Cuban artists and intellectuals, international organizations and foreign governments publicly condemned the arbitrary arrest, the government eventually released him.

After stifling criticism by sending dissident intellectuals to prison or exile and declaring that all cultural production should be within the limits imposed by the revolution, Fidel Castro actively used artists, writers and musicians to sustain his revolution.

But in recent years, that support has faded, and even established artists have criticized the government’s policies.

Cuban singer Haydeé Milanés, the daughter of singer-songwriter Pablo Milanés, who was once a prominent cultural icon of the revolution, sharply criticized how Cuban authorities responded to the plea of the Movimiento San Isidro.

“They have violently removed all the people who have been in the San Isidro headquarters for several days, several on hunger strike. Peaceful people. We have asked for dialogue. Is this the way out that they have found?” she said on Twitter. “I feel shame and horror.”

Follow Nora Gámez Torres on Twitter: @ngameztorres

La policía irrumpe en la sede del Movimiento San Isidro y arresta a los activistas. FACEBOOK.

NORA GÁMEZ TORRES

 

 

 

305-376-2169

Nora Gámez Torres estudió periodismo y comunicación en La Habana y Londres. Tiene un doctorado en sociología y desde el 2014 cubre temas cubanos para el Nuevo Herald y el Miami Herald. También reporta sobre la política de Estados Unidos hacia América Latina. Su trabajo ha sido reconocido con premios de Florida Society of News Editors y Society for Profesional Journalists.Nora Gámez Torres is the Cuba/U.S.-Latin American policy reporter for el Nuevo Herald and the Miami Herald. She studied journalism and media and communications in Havana and London. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from City, University of London. Her work has won awards by the Florida Society of News Editors and the Society for Professional Journalists.

[chris12381]

If you want to see what protests and unrest in Havana really look like, just Google "Maleconazo".  

[Nino]

6 hours ago, La_Tigre said:

One artist has gone on a hunger strike and sewn his lips together in resistance.

 

This has happened before, and nothing followed - just like you can watch the Damas de blanco - Ladies in white - march down 5ta Avenida every Sunday, be harrassed by the police and nothing follows.

2 hours ago, chris12381 said:

If you want to see what protests and unrest in Havana really look like, just Google "Maleconazo".  

Yes, that is what happens when the "masses" are fed up of not being fed - no Internet required to bring them to the streets like in August of 94, but that was it. Nothing serious followed.

 

[Nino]

The Movimiento San Isidro is a protest by artists and intellectuals against the repression of the arts and culture. They have managed to pressure the Culture minister to agree to some points of liberalization after 300 people staged a sit-in in front of the ministerium in Vedado demanding a dialogue.

Now they will set up a Facebook page to continue to press for more and check the progress of the "dialogue" as the minister was away and could not receive them.

A date has been set for early December for a meeting.

https://www.14ymedio.com/opinion/chispa-prendio-artistas-ministerio_de_cultura_0_2993700604.html

[La_Tigre]

Interesting world...Some fighting against Socialism for a Republic while others fighting against a Republic for Socialism and some who are just fighting to have a cause (for their ego).... 

[chris12381]

14 hours ago, nino said:

Yes, that is what happens when the "masses" are fed up of not being fed - no Internet required to bring them to the streets like in August of 94, but that was it. Nothing serious followed.

 

After the riots and in typical Castro fashion, he held a press conference and said Cuba could no longer afford to be the guardian of North American shores and simply allowed Cubans to take to the seas.  He created a problem for the US to handle, for the US to solve and eventually drove them to negotiate a new immigration accord and implement the Wet Foot, Dry Foot Policy in early 1995.  By then, 35,000 Cubans had made it to Florida.  God knows how many drowned. 

In the process, the Cuban government once again used immigration to the US as a safety valve on significant political organization coming from within the country. 

But that's just one guy's opinion.  ?

[Habana Mike]

Havana, Cuba
If I don't write these words
i would be denying myself and my story. I don't personally know any of the San Isidro boys, but that's not what matters today. Any human being who is willing to die for a cause, whatever, deserves to be heard with respect.
I'm human, don't ask me to look away then. I will not be complicit in the silence of the choir.
I see with great sadness and shame where we have come to. What happened to us?
Over the lines of my songs travel many invisible wounds. Several decades ago, when those San Isidro boys were just children or unborn, my songs and I were already going through something like this. They also wanted to turn me off, delete me, marginalize me, censor me and, like a large part of my generation that didn't stand the pressure, invite me to leave Cuba. The amazing thing is that many of those who from the same power accused and pursued me, finally ended up getting out of here. And then? I never accused anyone of a mercenary for leaving, for betraying what they allegedly defended. Just kept being me, ′′ sitting in the neighborhood contag ", doing my work.
You can't go around claiming that Cubans are the bravest, ′′ the new and supportive man ", the model human being who dreams and wants a better world, if first we don't dream and fight to have a better country. A country that truly includes us all, wherever you are, think as you think. It's time to sit down and dialogue and listen, because everyone, live where we live, think as we think, we remain part of this
nation. San Isidro are part of this country too. Have ideological differences, generate change, think different paths
to build a country's polyphony of voices, it's legit and healthy. That shouldn't be decided, nor limited, much less regulated by a government in the name of one ideology. By what right can someone decide who is an artist and who is not? Who is Cuban and who is not?
Being critical in the society in which one lives has to be an untouchable right. If everyone who has critical, opposite and different ideas threatens, assaults, censors, regulates and locks up, then
we will end up prisoners of conscience many millions of people.
Just because a people are silent doesn't mean they don't think.
You can no longer cut the wings of freedom of expression, freedom of thought and individual freedom that is in the
st century, a fundamental right of every human being.
That's not the Cuba I dreamed of.
Everything that is happening may become conflicting
with the poster and slogan of ′′ Cuba Salva ".
Acts of repudiation between Cubans, men and women insulting, beating and insulting should never have happened. These infamous gestures will remain a national shame. Acts of repudiation must stop once and for all. That bigotry to it
different, that fear of debate, the alternative and opposite we have inoculated in our blood and it is a real stain on our identity. Thousands of Cubans who participated in the acts of repudiation of the eighties and nineties now live far from this island. Some muddy with shame, many today think differently, but know there is only one guilty: fear. Fear can move masses, just follow the history of mankind closely.
Whatever happens in Cuba and Cubans wherever they are hurts me, hurts and hurts me.
Like I've said before, I don't know the San Isidro boys, but that's not what matters today. Them
they are also young and rebellious in their own way and if they are now going on a hunger strike to defend their right to think differently and express it freely you must listen to them.
It's time to sit down and dialogue.
Is that so hard? Were the monologues so long that we forgot to listen?
They are defending their rights which are also those of many who are hiding behind silence today. Same rights I've fought for for for 35 years writing songs; the right to think and express myself freely.
Is that even a crime?
Will we have to delete the word DIALOGO from the Cubanism dictionary at once?
If I don't write these words
i would be denying my need to defend and bet on dialogue as the best way to fight violence.
Surrounded by threats and guesses, good part of my songs were born, in the heat of censorship and silence of others.
When will the grandchildren of Guillermo Tell be heard?
Now they have the floor.
#CarlosVarela

[chris12381]

Carlos knows.

[BoliDan]

The masses have been to this point before. There is still to not much that we are seeing that is extreme enough to consider changing. I don't see this as a movement yet, instead it is a minor indifference that the current state can easily control. Weve seen more way more dissent aand violence in US, Canada and Europe over much lesser political concerns. I dont see this going any where unfortunately. 

[Nino]

8 hours ago, chris12381 said:

After the riots and in typical Castro fashion, he held a press conference and said Cuba could no longer afford to be the guardian of North American shores and simply allowed Cubans to take to the seas.  He created a problem for the US to handle, for the US to solve and eventually drove them to negotiate a new immigration accord and implement the Wet Foot, Dry Foot Policy in early 1995.  By then, 35,000 Cubans had made it to Florida.  God knows how many drowned. 

In the process, the Cuban government once again used immigration to the US as a safety valve on significant political organization coming from within the country. 

But that's just one guy's opinion.  ?

Happens to be my opinion as well.

Letting pressure out of the pot has been a Castro regime signature dish for decades, from  Mariel in 1980 to 1995 to present day - it's been happy to see Cubans flee the island, get rid of internal opposition and still make money from them via remittances, passport fees, visits, and many other ways, including political pressure in US elections.

Win-win for the Castro regime.

 

[Nino]

Didn't take long ...

https://ca.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-politics-opposition-idCAKBN28A00J

November 30, 2020   1:15 AM 

Cuban government backtracks on deal with protesters

By Marc Frank

HAVANA (Reuters) - Communist-run Cuba over the weekend launched an all-out rhetorical assault through state-run media on a rare protest that took place Friday for freedom of expression, branding it part of an ongoing effort by the United States to create an uprising.

The Friday stakeout around the culture ministry of around 300 creatives was sparked by authorities’ crackdown on the San Isidro Movement of dissident artists and activists that formed two years ago to protest curbs on freedom of expression.

The protest ended before dawn on Saturday only after officials met with 30 of the demonstrators and agreed to continue talking and to urgently review the case of a detained member of the San Isidro crew and a rapper sentenced this month to eight months in jail on charges of contempt. It also agreed to ensure independent artists in the future were not harassed.

But just hours later the government called in the top U.S. diplomat on the island, charge de affairs Timothy Zúñiga-Brown, for a scolding over “grave interference in Cuba’s internal affairs” as state television ran a 90-minute special attacking the rapper and other dissident artists and broadcasting visuals of their interactions with U.S. diplomats and Miami exiles.

“Sovereign Cuba accepts no interference ... The revolutionary ones will fight back,” President Miguel Diaz-Canel said in one of a series of Twitter posts accusing the San Isidro movement of being a “reality show” on social media created by “U.S. imperialists.”

Diaz-Canel said much the same at a pro-government rally Sunday of a few thousand young people.

“In less than 24 hours the Culture Ministry has broken three of the five accords,” performance artists Tania Bruguera said at a Sunday news conference held by some of those who participated in the talks with the government.

Most present at the press conference denounced continued harassment of dissent and the branding of their efforts as a CIA plot, though they also expressed hope the dialogue would continue as promised.

Friday’s protest came after authorities besieged the movement’s headquarters in Old Havana’s San Isidro district on Thursday, breaking up a hunger strike there that had started to gain international attention.

Security forces forcibly removed and briefly detained the five members on hunger strike and nine other people in the house, citing violations of coronavirus protocols.

“We support the Cuban people in their struggle for liberty,” Jake Sullivan, U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s national security adviser wrote on Twitter.

“The Cuban people must be allowed to exercise the universal right to freedom of expression,” he said.

[Nino]

A good overview of the protest so far by the NYT :

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/world/americas/cuba-protest-san-isidro.html?campaign_id=2&emc=edit_th_20201210&instance_id=24885&nl=todaysheadlines&regi_id=83141946&segment_id=46529&user_id=20e2ef107d129c8068f6a6f86ee4c0a5

‘On Social Media, There Are Thousands’: In Cuba, Internet Fuels Rare Protests

Artists gathered by the hundreds in Cuba’s largest protest in decades after seeing videos of police detentions that were filmed on cellphones and circulated online

Hundreds of artists and young Cubans met in front of the Ministry of Culture last month to protest recent arrests and demand greater freedom of expression.Credit...Ismael Francisco/Associated Press

By Ed Augustin, Natalie Kitroeff and Frances Robles

• Dec. 9, 2020

Leer en español

HAVANA — In another era, the detention of a young Cuban dissident may have gone completely unnoticed. But when the rapper Denis Solís was arrested by the police, he did something that has only recently become possible on the island: He filmed the encounter on his cellphone and streamed it live on Facebook.

The stream last month prompted his friends in an artist collective to go on a hunger strike, which the police broke up after a week, arresting members of the group. But their detentions were also caught on cellphone videos and shared widely over social media, leading hundreds of artists and intellectuals to stage a demonstration outside the Culture Ministry the next day.

This swift mobilization of protesters was a rare instance of Cubans openly confronting their government — and a stark example of how having widespread access to the internet through cellphones is testing the power balance between the communist regime and its citizens.

“The videos had a huge impact on us,” said Tania Bruguera, one of the artists involved in the protests. “We saw that any artist in Cuba who decides to speak up, or question what the government says, or make art that asks uncomfortable questions, could receive the same treatment.”

It isn’t clear yet whether this incipient protest movement will gather the momentum and discipline needed to fundamentally transform a political system that has quashed decades of challenges — or will simply fade away. But the mere fact that such a large protest happened at all — and led to the creation of a formal movement with a name and a Facebook page — is in itself extraordinary in a country where the opposition is barely existent.

And as protesters’ demands have shifted from ending limits on artistic expression to pushing for more fundamental political freedoms, they have earned the attention of a growing swell of young Cubans not normally inclined toward activism.

“What is happening in Cuba is unprecedented,” said José Miguel Vivanco, the director of the Americas program at Human Rights Watch. “It’s an awakening.”

When President Trump came into office, he quickly rolled back the Obama administration’s reopening of relations between the two countries, which he called a “terrible and misguided deal.”

Yet one of the conditions baked into that deal — that Cuba broaden internet access — has continued to play out on the island, leading to greater pressure on the government.

Cuba first made it possible to get internet on cellphones two years ago, and now four million people can get online that way. A total of seven million Cubans — about two-thirds of the population — have some kind of access to the web, government data shows.

Making a video call on a cell phone in Havana.Credit...Ramon Espinosa/Associated Press

The government has blocked several critical websites, including Radio Martí, an anti-Castro news outlet funded by the U.S. government. But it allows access to major U.S. newspapers and Facebook, WhatsApp, and YouTube.

The upshot: There is a growing army of Cubans who can easily get online and use social media to organize around common causes.

Sometimes their campaigns are acceptable to the government, as was the case with the online animal rights advocates who got permission from authorities to hold a march against animal cruelty. Others, like the gay rights activists who were detained after using Facebook to organize a protest last year, were not as welcome.

The marches were small, but were among the first independently organized demonstrations on the island in decades.

“It is this awakening of civil society, facilitated by the spread of the internet and social media, which is posing this challenge to the government,” said William LeoGrande, a Cuba specialist at American University. “To what extent does a political system which prides itself on control allow the kind of civil society expression that we’ve seen growing?”

If not for Facebook, it may have been easy for the government to dismiss complaints from Mr. Solís, the detained rapper, and his artist friends.

 

Protesters in Madrid, Spain, asked for the release of the imprisoned Cuban rapper Denis Solís.Credit...Fernando Alvarado/EPA, via Shutterstock

In a country hammered by U.S. sanctions, the politics of some in the group have raised eyebrows. Mr. Solís is a die-hard Trump supporter: In the video he posted of his arrest, he screamed: “Donald Trump 2020! That’s my president.”

Some members of his artists’ collective, known as the San Isidro Movement, have been seen with U.S. embassy officials, a link the government has used to label them “mercenaries” intent on destabilizing Cuba.

Still, the clips of the police detaining Mr. Solís — who was later sentenced to eight months in jail for insulting law enforcement — and then cracking down on the artists’ peaceful hunger strike, did not sit well with many Cubans.

The night when the hunger strike was shut down, a much broader coalition of artists began messaging each other on WhatsApp and Facebook, and the next morning people started gathering in front of the Culture Ministry.

“We didn’t go there to defend those artists’ views,” said Ms. Bruguera, the visual artist who has been protesting. “We went there to defend the right of all artists to dissent.”

What started as anger over the arrests morphed into conversations among the artists about their frustration with limits to free expression on the island. They commiserated over their fear of government censorship or outright repression because of the art, theater or movies they produce.

“I want to do free art, without state security parked on my corner,” said Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, a performance artist who led the hunger strike last month.

By nightfall, hundreds had gathered for the spontaneous protest against the government — something not seen in Cuba since the nation plunged into economic crisis after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Troubadours, artists, playwrights, rappers and reggaetoneras played music, read poetry and sang the national anthem. When the ministry allowed a group of demonstrators into the building to negotiate, those gathered outside clapped every 10 minutes or so to express support.

Artists have a particular cachet in Cuba, a deeply patriotic nation that has long prided itself, including under communism, on the prowess of its cultural institutions.

And the government may have found it harder to outright reject this particular group of protesters, which included some of the nation’s most prominent artists. Jorge Perugorría, one of the most famous Cuban actors, and Fernando Pérez, a celebrated film director, both showed up that night.

“I will always go where I feel my presence can help,” Mr. Pérez said, adding he believed the protests “come from a great love of Cuba.”

The crowd also drew younger stars, like Yunior García, 38, who has worked for institutions linked to the state all his life, writing plays, short films and telenovelas for Cuban television.

“The fact that I’ve been permitted to create doesn’t mean I can stand by while others are censored,” he said.

But communication between the protesters and the ministry broke down after their initial meeting in late November. Protesters are now at an impasse with the government, and many now say they are being intimidated by the state’s security apparatus.

Several artists who were present say police vehicles are parked outside their homes, a tactic that some described as a form of house arrest. Ms. Bruguera has been detained twice by police when she ventured outside and said officers suggested she and others could be charged with “sedition and civil disobedience.”

The Cuban artist Tania Bruguera, center, taking part in a protest in front of the culture ministry to show solidarity with dissident artists.Credit...Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters

In a report released this week, Human Rights Watch documented 34 instances in which the Cuban government has punished dissidents, including some involved with the artists’ movement, by accusing them of violating restrictions intended to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Nine were accused of not wearing a face mask properly.

Even holed up in their homes, however, many of the artists have continued to publicize what they say is harassment by the government in videos and posts on Facebook.

And the government has not stopped the flow of messages on WhatsApp group chats, which the protesters say is keeping the broader movement alive.

“The spark that we lit with the protest, that energy hasn’t left us,” said Luz Escobar, a journalist who attended the demonstration. “We feel that there were hundreds of people connected to it, and that was just on the streets.”

“On social media,” she added, “there are thousands.”