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.

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.[citation needed] “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.

According to one source, many observers felt that this was “yet another of the government's attempts to squelch counterrevolutionary sentiment.” Writer and photographer Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo reported on Facebook that Maldonado's mother and sister had tried to visit him, but had not been allowed to do so.

“I explained that I was an opponent of the Castro regime and that gentleman that he was engraved on his skin was to blame that I was a prisoner.” The man said that he was “son of the motherland,” that Fidel had given him a house, and that such things did not happen anywhere else in the world.

[1] On March 28, a solidarity concert was held in Havana “from sunset until late at night.” Among the performers were Tania Bruguera, Maikel Extremo, Wichy Vedado, El Opuesto, Raper Isac, and Porno para Ricardo.

Meeting with Cuban leader Raúl Castro at the Summit of the Americas in Panama in April 2015, U.S. President Barack Obama brought up Maldonado's case.

In the same month, artists and activists paid tribute to Maldonado and fellow prisoners with an interactive spoken-word performance in Times Square in New York City.

[18] 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.

[8] In September 2012, Maldonado was tattooed with an image of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas (1952–2012), the founder of the Christian liberation movement who sought to reform the Castro system.