Current Affairs

Issue

The Movimiento San Isidro, or the San Isidro Movement (MSI) by artists and activists demanding greater freedom of expression is fast grabbing the limelight.

 

Background

 

Details

• The movement started in September 2018, when the Cuban government sought to enforce Decree 349, a law that would have given powers to the nation’s Culture Ministry to restrict cultural activity it did not approve of.

• To protest against the decree, artists, poets, journalists, and activists gathered in San Isidro, a Black-majority locality that is among Havana’s poorest yet most culturally active wards, and which also forms part of the Old Havana UNESCO World Heritage Site.

• The greater access to internet, as provisioned under deal with US, allowed citizens to spread their word over the internet and grow the movement.

• When the MSI demonstrated outside Cuba’s parliament against the controversial censorship measure, the government was forced to heed to public sentiment, and agreed to suspend the decree’s enforcement.

• The Cuban leadership has continued to criticise the MSI, calling it an agent of “Yankee imperialism,” unwittingly increasing its popularity around the world. 

 

Cuba

• Cuba is a country located in the northern Caribbean where the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and Atlantic Ocean meet.

• The main island of Cuba is the largest island in Cuba and in the Caribbean. Cuba is the second-most populous country in the Caribbean after Haiti.

• The country was a point of contention during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, and a nuclear war nearly broke out during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. 

• Cuba is a sovereign state and a founding member of the United Nations, the G77, the Non-Aligned Movement, the African, Caribbean, and Pacific Group of States, ALBA, and the Organization of American States.