Artist in free speech row returns honor to Cuban government

Artist in free speech row returns honor to Cuban government

Havana (AFP) - Performance artist Tania Bruguera, detained for trying to
stage an open mic event in Cuba, resigned Monday from the artists' union
and returned an award given to her by the communist government.

The 46-year-old artist was detained twice last week along with 50 other
dissidents as authorities moved to stop her show in Havana's Revolution
Square.

Bruguera had organized the "participatory performance" for Cubans to
share hopes and fears for their future and the island's.

But she has said the mass arrests ended up telling a different story.

"The government did the work for me," she told AFP during an interview
Thursday.

"They changed the meaning of the work, giving a lesson in intolerance...
All they did was create chaos."

Bruguera, who divides her time between Cuba, the United States and
France, now faces charges of holding a "performance aimed at inciting
public disorder and resistance to the police."

She said she must remain on the island, because Cuban authorities
confiscated her passport.

Monday, she quit the government-approved Union of Cuban Writers and
Artists. And she returned to the Americas' only communist government an
award she had won in 2002.

In a letter to deputy Culture minister Fernando Rojas, she said she
could not "keep a recognition from or be part of cultural institutions
which, instead of opening dialogue and a space for analysis...turn
people into criminals, judge and put them on trial."

Source: Artist in free speech row returns honor to Cuban government -
Yahoo News -
http://news.yahoo.com/artist-free-speech-row-returns-honor-cuban-government-001759758.html;_ylt=AwrBEiG806tU71EAg4TQtDMD