Organized by a team of six local curators affiliated with the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam, including its director, Hilda María Rodríguez Enríquez, the eighth Bienal de Habana faced difficulties on several fronts—political, financial, and conceptual. After the Cuban government arrested seventy-five Cuban intellectuals in the months prior to the exhibition and the biennial failed to distance itself from the government’s actions, the organization found itself severely compromised, as key European foundations withdrew their support. A statement by the president of the biennial’s board