Danilo Maldonado Machado | |
---|---|
![]() "El Sexto" Danilo Maldonado (2017) | |
Born | April 1, 1983 Camagüey, Cuba |
Education | Miami Dade College |
Occupation(s) | Artist, human rights activist |
Years active | 2008–present |
Awards | Vaclav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent |
Danilo Maldonado Machado, known as El Sexto (The Sixth), born April 1, 1983,[1] is a Cuban graffiti artist and human rights activist who has been arrested and imprisoned several times in Cuba. He was arrested in the United States in 2018 and charged with a felony, aggravated stalking, for repeatedly violating a restraining order filed by his ex-girlfriend Alexandra Martinez.[2] He pled guilty in 2019 of aggravated stalking (which involves a credible threat to harm the victim) and was released from prison where he was held for one year without possibility of bail.[3] He was also charged with threatening her with violence.[4] He was set for deportation back to Cuba but was allowed to remain in the US as a result if the likelihood of persecution in Cuba. He is a convicted felon on two years of probation.[5]
His graffiti art is a form of protest, criticizing the abuse of the Cuban people at the hands of the Castro regime,[6] and he is “frequently detained by the police under any pretext.”[7] He has been called “a graffiti artist who does not forgive the Cuban regime.”[6] A report in April 2015 stated that he was, at that time, “the most persecuted of Cuban artists.”[8]
Cuban writer and artist Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo has praised Maldonado as “a free artist widely hated for his courage and his genius.”[7] Cuban dissident Rosa María Payá has said that although born under totalitarianism, Maldonado has somehow managed to be a free spirit and “the Cuban regime does not forgive that.”[6]