The Militant - November 4, 2013 -- Use Guerrero exhibit to broaden support for Cuban 5

Vol. 77/No. 39 November 4, 2013

Use Guerrero exhibit to
broaden support for Cuban 5

At top, “Rec” is one of 15 watercolors by Antonio Guerrero of the Cuban Five that depict the first 17 months the five framed-up revolutionaries were locked up in the Federal Detention Center in Miami. This work shows the “recreation” cubicle where prisoners were allowed to spend one hour per day. “There was a grating that turned the cubicle into a cage,” Guerrero writes. “It was impossible to take a little pencil that they gave us and a piece of paper to write; although there were times I managed it … above all poems took form in my mind.”

The exhibit, titled “I Will Die the Way I Lived,” is a powerful tool for reaching to the tens of millions of working people in the U.S. who know firsthand, or through the experience of friends or family, the reality of the so-called justice system and can immediately identify with the frame-up and treatment of the Five. Many can be won to support the fight for their freedom by learning about who these working-class fighters are, the proletarian internationalist course to which they have dedicated their lives and the socialist revolution in Cuba they were jailed for defending.

The paintings have been exhibited in Minneapolis, New York, Washington, D.C., and Havana. “The paintings don’t have to be exhibited in an art gallery,” notes Alicia Jrapko from the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5. “They can be displayed anywhere people will see them.”

Contact the committee at info@thecuban5.org to find out how you can get files to reproduce the paintings and organize a showing.

— SETH GALINSKY