As crackdown continues, the Cuban government is holding visual artist hostage, activists say

Cuban visual artist Hamlet Lavastida, detained for more than two months in Villa Marista, the feared Cuban state security headquarters in Havana, could have written the script about his arbitrary arrest. Lavastida, who has exhibited his work deconstructing Cuba’s state propaganda and repressive tactics in major international galleries, earlier this year told Hypermedia magazine he found a clear connection between the Stalinist trials and the current repression against independent artists in Cuba. Cuba “is a police state,” Lavastida told the magazine. Then he got a firsthand experience of what ...