Danilo Maldonado Machado

Danilo Maldonado Machado (born April 1, 1983), also known as El Sexto (The Sixth), 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. 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. He was also charged with threatening her with violence. He was set for deportation back to Cuba but was allowed to remain in the US as a result of the likelihood of persecution in Cuba. He is a convicted felon on two years of probation.

His graffiti art is a form of protest, criticizing the abuse of the Cuban people at the hands of the Castro regime, and he is “frequently detained by the police under any pretext.” He has been called “a graffiti artist who does not forgive the Cuban regime.”

Cuban writer and artist Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo has praised Maldonado as “a free artist widely hated for his courage and his genius.”

Maldonado studied at Miami Dade College (MDC) during the spring 2014 semester, when that institution hosted 15 students from Cuba as part of a new program sponsored by the Miami-based Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba (FHRC). While at MDC, Maldonado studied sociology, computers, psychology, business, and English. In an article by Maldonado that appeared in the student newspaper on February 13, 2014, entitled “Thank You Miami Dade College,” he “marveled at the differences between the two countries and the freedom of expression” in the U.S.

“Shock is what I felt when I learned that here you only need five students in order to form a group of some sort,” Maldonado wrote, “while in my country, the only group for the youth to join is the UJC, the Union of Young Communists, assuming they are not expelled from school, like San Miguel Molina, who got thrown out of medical school for having contrasting political views.” He left Miami in mid 2014. Juan Blanco, executive director at the office of the president of Miami Dade College, later described Maldonado as “the kind of person that is very hard to not like....Very cooperative and willing to give a hand [to those] who need it. [He] felt committed to changing the Cuban system through his art.”

July 2014 arrest He was detained and without communications for several days. His imprisonment was protested by organizations such as the Ladies in White. Maldonado's grandmother stated that her grandson “was sleeping on the floor for two months because for him, as for many other prisoners, there was no bed.” as his charges. He was held without trial for a total of 10 months.

On November 26, 2016 following Fidel Castro's death, Maldonado was arrested for a video mocking his death. Maldonado was never officially charged for any offense and it was determined that the government illegally imprisoned him. On December 16, 2016 American Attorney Kimberley Motley traveled to Cuba to represent Maldonado and was subsequently arrested. President of the Human Rights Foundation, Thor Halvorssen, called for Motley's and Maldonado's immediate release and called the arrest an “...outrageous abuse is the sad reality of Cuba’s ongoing totalitarianism. They first arrest prodemocracy activist El Sexto for criticizing and mocking the deceased ex-president, and now they arrest the lawyer that has traveled to Cuba to defend him,".

Maldonado emigrated to the United States in January 2017.

Honors and awards It was reported on April 15, 2015, that Maldonado had been selected as a winner of the year's Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent, awarded by the Human Rights Foundation at the annual Oslo Freedom Forum.

He also has a tattoo of Laura Pollan, the founder of Ladies in White, the Cuban opposition group.