Draft:Maykel Osorbo

Maykel Castillo Perez  A.K.A. "Maykel Osorbo"  is a Cuban Rapper and Latin Grammy Award  winning artist currently incarcerated by the tribunals of the communist government that rules the republic of Cuba since January 1959.

Maykel is one of the founding members and leaders of San Isidro Movement (Spanish: Movimiento San Isidro abbreviated MSI), a group of dissident intellectuals, graphic artists , independent journalists and musicians formed in September 2018.

The San Isidro Movement formed as a protest to the Decree 349 that increased censorship of  the artistic expression in Cuba by the communist regime. Such increase in censorship materialized through a wave of mass  arrests and retaliatory actions from the  government against all the  artists daring to  manifest dissent or criticize the revolutionary laws , the revolution leaders, the Cuban Communist Party( Spanish: Partido Comunista de Cuba, Abbreviated  PCC) and communism itself.

Political Prisoner

The communist government of Cuba does not recognize the existence of peaceful protesters , conscientious objectors nor  dissidents as political prisoners; therefore Maykel Osorbo is confined in a maximum security facility that houses all kinds of violent criminals including murderers.

Since his incarceration, after being arbitrarily arrested on May 18th of 2021, Osorbo has suffered repeated beatings by the prison staff and by common criminal  inmates responding to staff directions, along with extended periods of solitary confinement under inhuman and degrading conditions and the intentional negligence of the prison's medical personal.

Several international organizations such as Amnesty International, the U.S. Foreign Relations Committee, Artists at Risk Connection (ARC) , the IACHR Inter American Commission on Human Rights and Prisoners Defenders among many others have denounced  Maykel Osorbo's case as one of the many violations of human rights committed by the communist regime led by Fidel and  Raul Castro first and now by the incumbent  Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez .

Problematic  Songs for the Regime

While censored in the state owned mainstream media, Osorbo's songs were secretly listened and enjoyed by the most humble , low income population of the poorest neighbourhoods in Havana and  becoming the voice of their frustration and despair. The spread of dissident graphic arts and music specially in the San Isidro area, where MSI  was very active leading the protest movement against the regime, proved to be problematic to the communist authorities who retaliated with arbitrary arrests of the artists , seizing paintings as well as conducting raids on private recording studios with the confiscation of computers , microphones and other recording equipment.

The political police  also took advantage of the "Home Confinement Regulations" that were in place all over the world during COVID 19 pandemic , and enforced them to the extreme in an effort to prevent MSI from continuing their artistic endeavours and political activism against the communist government.

Despite all the repression conducted by the state , on December 2020, Maykel Osorbo along with fellow rapper Styler "El Funky" managed to record and release internationally a song titled " DiazCarao" in which they address directly to the incumbent president Miguel M.  Diaz-Canel Bermudez.

The word DiazCarao is a portmanteau of  "Diaz" , the first half of the alluded politician's last name and "Carao", the morpheme of the adjective "Descarao".  "Descarao" is the slang for "Descarado", a word associated in Cuban street lingo with a cheeky man capable of lying to the face of another man with no shame or remorse; it is also a term addressed to cowards , liars in general  and people lacking the courage to do what's right.

The chorus of the song says: DiazCarao ve bajando ! , which in Cuban slang would mean: Get outta here you punk !

The very first verse starts like this :

"Títere con corbata

Asesino a sueldo

Una copia de Fidel barata

Comunista , chapucero"

Puppet with suit and tie

henchman, murderer

A cheap copy of Fidel

Communist  bungler

On February 16 2021, a group of Cuban artists released the song "Patria Y Vida" (Homeland and Life) criticizing the more than sixty years of communist rule in the country and very specially the national motto : Patria o Muerte! (Homeland or Death) coined by Fidel Castro in 1960.

Despite all the efforts of the regime in discrediting this musical work , labelling its authors as "rats" in the state owned mass media , the song won Song of the Year and Best Urban Song at the 22nd Annual Latin Grammy Awards in 2021, becoming very quickly the anthem of the dissidents and critics of the revolution inside the island  and abroad with notable anti communist political activists like José Daniel Ferrer using  Patria Y Vida as a slogan in short videos denouncing the abuses  of the political police and the widespread corruption of the institutions and PCC representatives .

Maykel Osorbo's verse starts at minute 02:39 and it mentions the hunger strike that fifteen members of MSI were previously holding in protest for the arrest of other artists. The strike was having a loud repercussion abroad as they documented it through video in MSI's social networks and even the moment in which the political police (dressed as physicians and nurses) break into the group's headquarters shows briefly at minute 2:55 in the music video. Osorbo's lyrics  also refers to the " Plantados", a term  that identified the incarcerated opposers to Fidel Castro in the early years of the revolution. The original "Plantados" also held group hunger strikes and some of them died of inanition in jail, being the poet Pedro Luis Boitel  one of the most notable  cases.

Maykel Osorbo's verse says:

Aquí vivimos

con la incertidumbre del pasado

Plantados

Quince amigos puestos

Listos pa'morirnos

Izamos la bandera todavía

La represión de régimen al día

Anameli Ramos firme con su poesía

Omara Ruiz Urquiola dándonos aliento de vida

Rompieron nuestra puerta

Violaron nuestro templo

Y el mundo esta consciente de que

El Movimiento San Isidro continua puesto !

Here we live

with the uncertainty of the past

Planted

Fifteen friends posted

Ready to die

We still raise the flag

Regime repression up to date

Anameli Ramos firm with her poetry

Omara Ruiz Urquiola giving us breath of life

They broke our door

They violated our temple

And the world is aware that

The San Isidro Movement remains in place!

Arrest and Later Incarceration

Maykel Osorbo was arrested on May 18th 2021. Almost two months later, on July 11th , a series of massive demonstrations against the cuban communist regime erupted in the western part of the island , spreading throughout the country to the east .This protests were the most massive demonstrations against the government ever seen in Cuba since the "Maleconazo".

Maykel Osorbo is currently serving a 9 year prison sentence, charged with contempt , defamation of institutions and organizations and heroes and martyrs along with public disorder.

All the documents related to his trial and sentence can be consulted in the Prisoners Defenders website.

References

Category:Cuba Category:Cuban artists Category:Musicians