BY FRANCES ROBLES

Jorge Luis García's home in the Central Cuban town of Placetas is easy to spot: It's the one with the big Cuban flag draped over the front gate -- on the block surrounded by security agents and cops.

It's also the one that visitors can't reach because the Cuban National Police won't allow it.

The former political prisoner, better known as ''Antúnez,'' his wife, Iris Pérez Aguilera, and three friends have been fasting for 38 days as of Thursday. They are lying on cots on the front porch in a publicly Quixotic mission for demands that even another member of Cuba's opposition calls ''utopian'': adequate housing for all Cubans, particularly Antúnez's sister; the end of torture for his political prisoner brother-in-law Mario Alberto Pérez; and the ratification and publication of human rights accords.

Antúnez has not eaten solid food since Feb. 17. He said his robust 200-pound frame has shrunk by at least 40 pounds. He has not weighed himself in two weeks because the person who used to come by with a scale hasn't been able to get past security.

''We are conscious of the risks and dangers to the human body,'' Antúnez said by telephone. "But you are talking to a person who spent 17 years in prison in a country where there are no legal channels to pursue.''

On Wednesday, the Democratic Directorate, an exile organization in Miami, reported that police sprayed the house with tear gas overnight. In the five weeks since the hunger strike began, several supporters have been arrested and some of the five hunger strikers have been rushed to the hospital.

The activists lament that even while they say many in Cuba support their cause, the hunger strike has been largely met by a collective yawn, otherwise. Antúnez said none of the foreign press agencies accredited to work in Cuba have visited his house about 200 miles east of Havana since the strike began, and only a few have filed stories from Havana.

''If there was a march here in favor of the revolution, the foreign press would be here,'' Antúnez said.

Stymied by the lack of reliable information on the hunger strike, members of the controversial rock band Porno Para Ricardo tried to visit Antúnez.

''Luckily, he doesn't live that far from the bus station, and anyway his house was not too hard to find: There was a big flag on it and police all around it,'' said singer/guitarist Ciro Díaz. ``I didn't know going to visit someone's house was a crime.''

Díaz and photographer Claudio Fuentes planned to film a documentary about the protest but were arrested Monday when they reached Antúnez's street corner. They were released without charges and driven back to Havana by state security agents on Tuesday morning.

''I was curious to find out whether it's true that he is on a hunger strike until there's adequate housing for all Cubans, because that strikes me as a little utopian,'' said Fuentes, who has never met Antúnez. "But any person who takes measures to change this country has my support, although at times those measures may seem to others as being wrong or not very effective.''

HISTORY OF ACTIONS

Antúnez has been on hunger strikes before, especially while serving a 17-year sentence for ''enemy propaganda'' and sabotage resulting in a public protest in a plaza and his subsequent attempt at prison escape.

He was released from prison in 2007 after serving his full term. A year later, the Cuban government revealed that he had accepted funds from a Miami organization founded by Santiago Alvarez, a hard-line Miami exile activist with ties to terrorism who is serving a prison sentence for arms trafficking.

Earlier this year, Antúnez was quoted criticizing programming on the U.S. government's Radio and TV Martí but later balked when he felt his comments were misconstrued to suggest he does not support the anti-Castro broadcasts.

His most recent protest began last month, after he and his family ran out of legal avenues to appeal for help rebuilding his sister Caridad García's home, damaged in last summer's hurricanes.

In the name of her cause and what he says is the torture of his imprisoned brother-in-law, he and his wife stopped eating. After a month, they began drinking juice and other fluids.

His brother-in-law is an activist jailed in 2007 on what the family says were trumped-up robbery charges.

INTEREST IN U.S.

Antúnez's cause was brought up twice this week in Congress by Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey.

''I spoke to Antúnez on the telephone, and he had incredible spirit and determination to create change and speak out,'' Menendez said from Washington. 'He told me: `We don't want to die. We love life. We are not going to maintain silence just to live.' ''

''That's easy for me to say on the Senate floor,'' Menendez said, choking up. "It's much harder for him to say with his house surrounded by state security.''