I confess that I didn’t remember the full text known as “Words to the Intellectuals,” delivered by Fidel Castro on June 30, 1961, at the National Library to a group of intellectuals. I think that, like many people, the only thing I remembered from the text was his famous declaration of principles, “Within the revolution everything, against the Revolution, nothing” which, without doubt, sums up the essence of the document.

In the debate that is taking place at this time among a group of people - not only by intellectuals – by e-mail (which limits, of course, a larger participation), they started asking questions about a number of problems, past and present, of national culture, upon the surprising reappearance of three officials – simple executors of a cultural policy drawn and guided by the highest leadership of the country, who, in the decade of the ’70s, were at the forefront of major cultural institutions: former Lt. Luis Pavón (President of the National Council for Culture, 1971-1976), former commander Serguera Papito (director of Cuban Television, 1966-1973) and Armando Quesada, who, among other things, was responsible for destroying the Cuban theater during those years. These functionaries were former military officers who had been part of Raul Castro’s team. Given the current situation in the country, in which the Minister of the Armed Forces has assumed the leadership of the government, many thought that the “resurrection” of Pavón, Serguera and Quesada was a sign that there would be a return to the past.

During the “reign” of these gentlemen, a veritable witch-hunt was unleashed in the country against gay writers and artists; books were censored (the ”Padilla case,” 1971), what was called “ideological deviations” (having long hair, wearing blue jeans, listening to the Beatles and other groups and singers not well-regarded by the government, having “wrong sexual preferences,” professing any religion, etc.) were severely punished; the poet and novelist Jose Lezama Lima, who died in 1976, was condemned to an intellectual silence, etc.

Although the persecution worsened in these five years, it had started in the early ’60s (censorship of the film, P.M.; UMAP; charges against Padilla and Arrufat in 1968; the destruction of the collection of poems by Delphin Prats, Lenguaje de mudos (1968); the banning on radio and television of broadcasts about artists who had gone abroad, they began purging the country’s universities, etc.) and this would continue, with different nuances, sometimes more, sometimes less, until today.

Examples abound: the censorship in the artistic movement of the late ’80s, the relentless criticism of the film Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas (1991); the imprisonment of María Elena Cruz Varela (1993); criticism of the film Guantanamera (1997, at a meeting in the Palacio de las Convenciones, after Eliseo Alberto, co-screenwriter of the film and author of the book, informed against me, he won the Alfaguara Novel Prize), the impossibility of mentioning writers and artists living abroad who don’t have a position that is “comfortable” for the system, the “disactivation” (no longer belonging to UNEAC) of the writer Antonio José Ponte upon finding out that he was part of the editorial board of the magazine Encuentro (2002), the jailing of poet Raúl Rivero and others for the crime of expressing their opinions openly, although they were accused of being “enemy agents” in hasty trials (2003); the censorship of documentaries and critical short films, like the recent case of Monte Rouge (2005), etc.

Pavón, Serguera and Quesada disappeared from the cultural “landscape” in 1976 when the Ministry of Culture was founded and started a new stage that, no doubt, wished to correct the mistakes and tried to foster an environment of trust and respect, which was achieved in many ways. To reappear in the final months of 2006, thirty years later, in three different programs on Cuban television. Those who suffered firsthand the injustices committed during those years reacted angrily, with good reason, and decided to show it through the limited space of email.

The controversy has transcended national borders, many Cubans living abroad have expressed their views. Others – inside and outside - want the debate to include other key issues (a justified demand since, as the economists of the nineteenth century including Karl Marx, said, “the economic base defines the superstructure,” from where it naturally follows that we must seek answers about the culture in the economy). Unfortunately, some use abusive language, bring out the “dirty laundry” and tarnish a discussion that could and should be deep, serious and inclusive of all opinions.

The tone of the debate has ranged from complex and measured analysis to actual attacks, furious and unpleasant. I think for the good of all and the country, it would be advisable that we all try to listen with tolerance and respect to each other’s opinions. In a country where for years the only prevailing view has been the official standard - with very limited space for debate - it’s not easy to develop a balanced dialogue, without offense or impassioned responses.

In the “Declaration of the Secretariat of UNEAC,” insufficient and misguided for many – no one understands why it was drafted like that, if they had plenty of time to write something more elaborate and consistent with everything that had been proposed – it states: “Cultural policy reflects Martí; it’s the anti-dogmatic, creative and participatory policy of Fidel and Raúl, founded on ‘Words to the intellectuals,’ and irreversible.” Alfredo Guevara also endorses this statement. And this is the point I want to analyze.

In the first place, Fidel defined the cultural policy in his words. Raúl Castro had nothing to do with it, among other things, because it’s not his specialty. The fact that his name is added to the declaration of UNEAC responds to the current situation, not to his actual participation in its development. The meeting with the intellectuals came two months after the Bay of Pigs invasion, in an extremely difficult time for the Revolution, with strong and real threats from the United States and a huge political tension that would peak in October the next year. The main topic of discussion, according to Fidel himself, was freedom of expression.

No one questions the form, just the content, and it sets out clearly a disturbing indictment: he who has doubts is not a true revolutionary. I think, with all due respect, this approach is not correct, not true, and it’s this criterion that led to a series of injustices against artists. It generated an official thinking that was rigid, narrow and reminiscent of the excesses and mistakes of the Soviet Union beginning with the era of Stalin. Why could a revolution that had the support and love of the majority of the population not allow dissent? It would have been healthier for the system to allow the free exchange of ideas, because, undoubtedly, the Revolution, with all its social and economic achievements, would be victorious in this battle. But it chose the path of rigidity, and that path led to an abyss of frustration and injustice.

What calls my attention is the beginning of his speech, where Fidel propounds that:

“That is, the benefits, both material and cultural, were designed to be enjoyed by protagonists and contemporaries of the Revolution. The writers and artists would be living their moment of fulfillment, they were granted the right to be free, a right won with weapons in a just struggle. But those who mistrusted, who had different opinions, were automatically ‘out of the game’. In the cultural supplement Lunes de Revolucion, founded in 1959, the writers who belonged to the Grupo Origenes were harshly criticized, by Catholics, the bourgeois and those who were apathetic. Didn’t these writers feel marginalized from the revolutionary process? Weren’t they made to feel guilty for doubting and having philosophical ideas that were different from those of the successful revolution? Wasn’t the moment of ‘now and for the men of this time’ meant for them”?

But in the end, Fidel affirms the opposite and asks for the ultimate sacrifice:

“Gentlemen, would it not be better to think about the future? Are we to think that our flowers will wilt when we are planting flowers everywhere? When we are forging these creative spirits of the future? And who would not change the present, who would not change even their own present for that future? Who would not change his, who would not sacrifice his for the future? And those who have artistic sensibility, don’t they have the disposition of the fighter who dies in battle, knowing that he dies, that he ceases to exist physically to fertilize with his blood the road of triumph for those like him, his people? Think of the soldier who dies fighting, sacrifices everything he has, sacrifices his life, sacrifices his family, sacrifices his wife, sacrifices his children. For what? For us to do these things. And those who have human sensitivity, artistic sensibility, don’t you think it’s worth making the necessary sacrifices? But the revolution is not asking sacrifices of creative geniuses; on the contrary, the Revolution says: put this creative spirit in service of this work, without fearing the work will be cut short. But if one day you think your work may be cut short, say: it’s well worth it to have my personal work cut short in order to do work like what we have before us.”

I think in the context of the times, as I said, in the midst of difficult situations in which the Revolution needed to consolidate itself, an inflexible and cautious policy was justified, and that the approach of “against the Revolution, nothing” had its reason for existing. On countless occasions the country’s development has demanded changes, adjustments, modifications; it’s a logical process of life itself. Fidel himself has not hesitated to make these changes: he denounced the “errors and negative tendencies” (1984); there were major shifts in economic policy (“now we are going to build socialism,” he affirmed in 1986, denouncing a series of situations that threatened the country’s economic development), and more recently, in his speech at the Aula Magna of the University of Havana (November 17, 2005), he made these reflections.

I don’t think we should accept that the Martían cultural policy, anti-dogmatic, creative and participatory, of Fidel and Raúl, founded on “Words to the intellectuals,” is irreversible, among other things because that statement itself is dogmatic (as defined by the DRAE, “dogmatic”: inflexible, holding opinions as firm truths, without doubts or contradictions.”) Everything can be reversible (only death is not); everything can be improved, adapted or made more perfect; all have the right to participate, pro and con. In Cuba - perhaps as in no other country - education and culture have developed; art schools have been created, a successful literacy campaign was carried out, libraries have multiplied, education has been brought to the most remote corners of the island, a solid, superior intellectual and artistic movement has been created. So I think it’s time to raise a genuine national dialogue, where everything is questioned and analyzed, without fear or rules, and where a genuine exercise of freedom of expression is permitted.

Josefina de Diego

Havana, January 25, 2007

Another text from Josefina de Diego

“Let’s follow orders” or “Who belled the cat”?

The “Five-year gray period,” framed between the years 1971-1976, was only a stage – not gray but black – within the entire cultural context of the island. The problems that are attributed to this period had begun from 1959, and had “their best definition” in June 1961, with the famous “Words to the intellectuals,” handed down by Fidel in the National Library.

In late 1960, the documentary PM, directed by Sabá Cabrera Infante and Orlando Jiménez Leal, was censored. Lunes de Revolución lambasted the Grupo Orígenes (1959-1961); in 1961, private schools were nationalized, and priests and nuns were expelled; that year also created the ORI (Integrated Revolutionary Organizations), which merged all political groups that fought against the Batista dictatorship, which eliminated any possible source of opposition, however slight it might be. Anibal Escalante, a prominent member of the PSP, was named director; in 1962 Anibal Escalante and his top aides were expelled from the direction of the ORI, accused of sectarianism; in 1963, the ORI replaced the United Party of Socialist Revolution (PURS), the antecedent of the future Communist Party (the only one) of Cuba (1965). The sadly-remembered UMAP, a shameful chapter in our history, occurred between 1964 and 1969: the censorship of the books Fuera del juego, by Heberto Padilla, Los Siete Contra Tebas, by Antón Arrufat and Lenguaje de mudos, by Delfín Prats, to name only well-known examples, followed in 1968. On March 13, 1968, in a speech to commemorate the attack on the Presidential Palace, Fidel confirmed the arrest and imprisonment of the microfraccionarios, led by Anibal Escalante, and announced the beginning of the Revolutionary Offensive, which ended, among other things, the small amount of private property that still remained. It was also in the late sixties that the purges began in the universities, the accusations of “ideological deviations,” etc.

In the following decades the problems continued, though not with such intensity and intolerance. I won’t do the recount, because many have already taken this on in the current debate, but what I want to emphasize is that the control on freedom of expression, the media, free association, etc., has maintained itself until our time, and not only in the cultural sector but in all sectors of society. ICAIC, an agency with a reputation for being liberal, is still deciding which scripts are shot and which aren’t, which movies are shown and which aren’t, just like they did with PM in 1960. The imprisonment of Raúl Rivero and independent journalists, in 2003, and other cases of censorship and restrictions that occurred “yesterday,” are proof of that.

It would also be unfair not to recognize all the undeniable progress made in this half-century of Revolution: no government set out to do so much for “the poor of this earth.” It brought education and public health to the farthest corners of the country (although the quality has declined considerably in the last fifteen years. I think disproportionate international aid is being provided to many countries; it has left the island without the doctors and teachers it needs, which has seriously affected the quality and quantity of these services – for the record, I think it’s a humanitarian and generous effort, worthy of respect and admiration, that all governments should exercise); important plans were developed for cultural, social and economic development; the Literacy Campaign was a success; schools and art institutes, libraries, museums, cultural centers, the National Ballet, ICAIC, the Casa de las Americas, etc., were founded.These seeds bore the precious fruits that we collect today.

Now, returning to the title of this text – which I don’t want to prolong any more – I would say that I have drawn attention to the statements of two officials who stood out during the ”Five-year gray period”: Serguera and Félix Sautié (second to Pavón). Both have said (Serguera in an interview and Sautié in a letter) that they received and followed orders, like soldiers. According to them, they were not responsible for what they did, only the executors of the policy outlined by the “highest leadership of the country,” that is, the policy defined in 1961. We all know that this was and still is so. I think centralized power over the years has been the cause of many of the difficulties that we now suffer. I don’t doubt the good intentions, but the fact that there is no real discussion and debate in the bodies responsible for defining the government’s policy has not been beneficial for the integral development of the nation.

There is something that I’ve always held as an unquestionable principle, but I think it can be the cause of many of the ills that plague us (the double standard, apathy, laziness and skepticism of the young, among others): the existence of a single party (I don’t want my words to be misinterpreted nor to be accused of having an “annexationist agenda” nor of “aiding the enemy.” I simply express my opinion.) I remember one person who told me: “It’s true that Martí created a single party, but who founds a party and another one that opposes it at the same time?” The existence of a single opinion (for example, all members of the National Assembly are members of the same party) prevents the necessary flow of different ideas that are important for the “oxygenation” of the country and its organic development. The claims that this gives “arms to the enemy” and that “it’s not the time” have returned like a boomerang, and it’s the people who are left without the weapons they need to build, think and organize their country. In other words, silence has prevented the actual display of ideas and concerns of the people, the true exercise of free speech, debate, confrontation of opposing views, effective exchange and the enrichment of different opinions.

If the officials of the period under discussion were following orders, who gave them? Why did they if, as Serguera said, he did not even agree with many of them? Why was this type of behavior generated, to accept everything, to not question anything? Wouldn’t it be good and healthy to begin to change this mentality? Why not have a debate – not only on culture but also on the economy, education, public health – where these issues can be analyzed in depth, and we can begin to change what needs to be changed?

The international situation has evolved, the left has been reborn with renewed vigor in many parts of the world, and Cuba is again accompanied by numerous Latin American countries. I think, honestly, if you rethink a lot of things considered as immutable in our country, it would be an important step toward rescuing, protecting and keeping all the achievements – which are a lot – in these years.

Josefina de Diego

Havana, February 9, 2007

Another text from Josefina de Diego

Case closed

The “Five-year gray period” was a term used by Ambrosio Fornet to refer to the “grayness” of the literature written between the years 1971-1976, as a result of a policy of doctrine, suspicion and intolerance against the cultural sector, and the calls that were made by the highest political and cultural leadership of the country to develop an art that is truly “revolutionary,” something impossible to achieve starting from such narrow limits. Previously there had been a moment of glory - according to Fornet, a “Five-year gold period” – with  Los años duros of Jesús Díaz, Condenados de Condado by Norberto Fuentes, Los pasos en la hierba by Eduardo Heras León (all published at the end of 1960), etc. And also – although I believe that Ambrosio is not referring to these books – with Celestino antes del Alba, by Reinaldo Arenas (1967), Fuera del juego (1968), by Heberto Padilla, Lenguaje de mudos (1968), by Delfin Prats and others. But when talking about the “Five-year gray period,” you’re also talking about the persecution initiated by Pavón and his followers against homosexuals, “intellectuals” and extravagant people, the “marginalization” of playwrights and artists in general, “ideological deviations,” etc.., a period which, as we all know, lasted much longer than five years.

Many people say “now it’s over,” that “it was a ‘bad cold” (according to the statements of Reinaldo González published by the newspaper El Clarín, February 13, 2007), that the “Five-year gray period” and the debate that occurred in January and February this year are now “a closed case,” to use terminology that the famous series CSI: Crime Scene has made fashionable.

I think that, indeed, many things have changed for the better, that the persecution of homosexuals has decreased and, at present, although there are many prejudices, now you can’t expel anyone for that reason from work and the universities. Even television itself shows programs that touch on this subject with great breadth and depth, as in the recent telenovela, La cara oculta de la Luna. It’s also true that there is a real opening and that subjects that would have been impossible to discuss are now being thought about and questioned (the proof is this debate). But I do believe that there are still serious limits on the true exercise of free speech, free association, free movement (not to mention other problems, very serious, in the area of production). Government officials still retain the right to decide what is ideologically correct or not,  they still are able to grant or withhold permission to leave or enter the country where you were born. It’s still nothing more than a brake on freedom of movement and, indirectly, on freedom of expression (many people are denied the right to travel because of their political views). Cases of censorship of books, authors (who live in Cuba or abroad), documentaries and movies, etc., still exist and have occurred in this 21st century, not just in the “Five-year gray period.”

But they don’t accept this reality, nor do they want to recognize the errors and injustices that were committed. And if they don’t recognize, if they don’t point out the real causes, we cannot consider this a “closed case,” because, continuing the detective terminology, “the evidence” shows that there still remains much to be rectified. As Dr. Arnoldo Kraus says,  in his book Who will speak for you? An account of the Holocaust in Poland.

I could continue enumerating examples, but right now there has already been a lot written about what happened in those last years.

I think many people would like the debate to be extended, so it doesn’t stay in the narrow context of the decade of the ’70s. It didn’t happen, although it’s good to recognize that up to now the views expressed through the limited space of email have been respected, and that, by all accounts, those who were able to participate in the conference on 30 January, expressed themselves freely. “From the wolf, a hair,” we could say, without much enthusiasm and little conviction.

Josefina de Diego

Havana, February 20, 2007

Translated by Regina Anavy

Just like Galileo Galilei they showed us the instruments of torture, this time on television. The functionaries of culture and/or the Party must have been amazed that the same silence as always didn’t happen. You’d have to be very naive - I know it’s a very polite adjective – first, to swallow the story that it’s a perverse sequence of blunders, and, secondly, to believe for a second that Cuban television is the place where “belligerent ignorance” is located.  Alfredo Guevara should know this full well, because since 1960 he has called on Cuban intellectuals to please have the clarity to follow the objectives and the inspiring example of the Revolution: “The only limit to freedom is freedom,” a witty phrase in which it’s unclear what freedom is, but clear what its limits are. With the passage of time and the vicissitudes of practice, this call was made less obsequious.

Can anyone defend the idea that the Round Table is a TV show? Is it an initiative of the “ignorant” who, according to Guevara, conspire against the revolution?

There is no doubt that the government of Cuba has known very well how to keep people at bay for 48 years. One of the reasons many compatriots left was to be able to express an opinion, something they couldn’t do here without regretting the consequences. It’s been some time since the regime showed how it can reduce a man’s book of poems to a pulp, along with his spirit. Now we have the poet Delfín Prats to prove it. The regime turned the others into a show.

Literally.

We who live here shouldn’t forget that wherever we are, we’re Cubans, and the homeland is ours not just by happening to live in it. On matters of Cuba, any Cuban has the right to give an opinion. José María Heredia does it every day in his clear verses:

“Don’t forget our past. We need it desperately to be able to decipher our present and to confront our future.”

In the mediation during Fidel Castro’s meeting with the intellectuals, at the José Martí National Library which discussed the theme of artistic creation, after the prohibition of the documentary film P.M., in June 1961, Alfredo Guevara said: “I want to clarify, of course, I am not one of those who’s afraid. I don’t expect more of the Revolution than positive things in all areas, including the field of art, including the field of creation, and I believe that with the Revolution we have found all we need to express ourselves, all who have something to say, all who want to say something. We have found the opportunity to say it with absolute freedom, and to say “no” not just in a small group of bourgeois or fans, but to say it before all our people, to the broader public, the public that connects the entire nation. Because the Revolutionary triumph is the story of the entire nation with its own purposes, or at least that is how I understand it, specifically for artists.” (Revolution is Lucid, Ediciones ICAIC, 1998, p. 181)

This seems to be the answer to a very brave opinion issued in one of these meetings. A man said, aloud, that he felt fear. His name was Virgilio Piñera.

We would diminish the scope of Virgilio’s declaration if we don’t hold onto a startling date. In 1952 he published a strange novel, La carne de René (Rene’s Meat), a tale of the terrors that surround meat. René, the protagonist, has received an inheritance from his father and grandfather in the cause of meat. So his life has been a series of escapes and imperious resistance to his calling. With his refusal to accept the cause, René shakes the precepts of an established world. In turn, that order will use all its weapons to persuade him. This is a sinister game in which each man has been a victim, but also a victimizer. It’s worth mentioning this date as the beginning.

You know the rest of the story. Virgilio died in 1979. They say that his funeral was attended by very few people. In 1968 he had written Dos viejos pánicos (Two Panicked Old Men). He had had the bad taste to insist on fear as a subject at a time when displaying macho swagger was demanded.

Now in a statement by the UNEAC Secretariat, in a predictable text written in an irritating language, we are called on to not abandon the flock, to remain as silent as lambs of the purist stock, now, when we are threatened that speaking out means we are in favor of annexation. I can’t forget the emaciated figure of Virgilio, walking to a microphone to confess his fear.

Leticia Córdoba

Havana, February 16, 2007

Translated by Regina Anavy

As is known, a group of Cuban artists and writers began an unusual, semi-public debate based on the unenviable motivation of the reappearance on the scene (totally public) of a group of inquisitors who were the protagonists of what they call the Five Year Gray Years. This has produced a magnifying glass for those of us who — emigrants, exiled or whatever we are — live outside the island. I have read from these last posts as many decent arguments as arrogant libels that distill all the predominant misfortune of the exiles when they begin to consider themselves as virtuous and unqualified guerrillas.

I will confine myself briefly only to post my position. With different degrees, the people who are enveloped in this debate are all worthy of maximum respect, and in some cases also admiration for their intellectual gifts and their works. The fact of living in Cuba does not discredit anyone, and can even be of great value without that person having to be a militant in some opposition group, in the same manner that to be in the opposition (although it’s an ineffable indicator of personal valor) is not in itself a merit. Cuban writers and artists can be (and in many cases are) generators of innovative ideas, values and proposed ethics. And they can do it under very unfavorable conditions, always walking the thin line that separates what the system considers the border between virtue and sin.

Frankly I envy the possibility of having influence in this way on Cuban society, and I admire how it can be done from a theater hall, an exhibit of paintings, a conference or a rap concert. As I live in the Dominican Republic now, I can’t do it myself.

To put these people to the test case of the opposition is immoral, for many reasons.

One of them resides in the fact that the majority of people I have seen giving an opinion with similar disdain and arrogance in reality never challenged the system in Cuba beyond some private whispered conversations. Another, because some of the commentators seem to live in a different place other than the “rude real world,” where the intellectuals always produce stories that they agree on and that have nothing to do with the world in which we live (whether for political, ethical or economic reasons). Let’s be frank: “Looking out for ourselves” is a professional sickness.

And it’s because the intellectual world is always like a stable of fine horses, although I recognize that the Cuban stable is very complex and shelters horses of a distinguished sensitivity.

The risks of subservience are negotiated. The image of the stable does not imply any pejorative judgment, only a sociopolitical condition.

Some years ago I visited a stable of fine horses belonging to a Canadian friend. He called my attention to how slowly he opened the stable door. According to my friend, if it were opened suddenly the blast of cold air could upset the animals. He had to open it little by little. They are strange animals, he told me, since when a real danger occurs — for example the entrance of a carnivorous animal into the stable — they are paralyzed by fright.

In Cuba it happened that they opened the stable doors suddenly.

The stable is a pact that for decades has implied the negotiated subordination of writers and artists.

The agreement was very clear. The Cuban leadership would compromise by allowing certain liberties and space for personal realization, ranging from (to be graphic) presenting Marketing in the Mella theater or filming Guantanamera, up to being able to travel almost freely and living outside the country. That’s to say, from the most altruistic to the most prosaic, writers and artists had a range of reasons available to stay inside the Revolution (as Fidel demanded in “Word to the Intellectuals”), and of course, to worry when they saw Pavón on monotonous Cuban television.

For some artists and writers it was a gauntlet they had to pass through.

The first requirement was to stop on the threshold of criticizing at least three subjects: the leadership of Fidel, the legitimacy of one party, and the repudiation of North American politics; and to exercise criticism always in a elliptical and cryptic manner. All of which was not too serious if we take into account that at the end of everything, artistic language is always cryptic and that in the last instance, art does not prove anything; it only presents it.

The second requirement was to enjoy the exemptions without the ambition of making them universal, which in fact left outside the “intellectual” terrain a group of sectors like the social sciences. And in passing, UNEAC was castrated, converting it into a trade union protected by the parasol of a liberal regulation (in the worst meaning of the term) and backed by an international opinion much more sensitive to what can happen to a poet than to an historian.

In this sense it’s fair to point out that if the writers and artists suffered a five year gray period, the social scientists did also. And the gang of harmless and mediocre inquisitors – Darío Machado, Isabel Monal, Fernández Bulté, Miguel Limia, Talía Fung, Valdés Vivó – captained by the Ideological Department, were “Pavónized” on all the television channels, in every event and even in the Latin American Studies Association.

The significance of the “revolution” in which you have to be inside was sharply extended by the same politics under way, so that for a writer the revolution was defined as a program of social changes; for a sociologist it meant causeways, microjet banana irrigation and the battle of ideas. If the Cuban leaders knew anything it’s what Carpentier reminded them about on one occasion: The works that motivated revolutions were not Quixote or the Mona Lisa, but rather The Social Contract and Das Kapital.

On the part of UNEAC, its leaders and the loquacious Minister of Culture (who in turn is a member of the Politburo), there always has existed a total silence when social scientists have been repressed, and the writers and artists have been silenced by dread before the predatory action of the carnivores.

Redefining the system: Although the writers’ and artists’ debate scarcely had an impact on public opinion, it’s very important since it sent a signal to the political class. Although a television producer has affirmed that it all was an unimportant accident, as the young Baudolino said, the only accident is the love of the innocents. Which no one here is. The stupidity of the deed does not imply its irrelevance. The Cuban political class knows that epochs of adjustment are coming and it has to face three challenges.

The first is the disappearance of Fidel Castro or at least his reduction to the hemp-like ghost that appears on television, which means the loss of the center of the system.

The second is the end of the blockade, gradually, through bleeding, but its end, after the stupid attempt of George W. Bush to intensify it (in order to not change it).

In third place, the economy should open up to larger levels, a process that Chávez postponed with his subsidies, but only postponed. And it should be done conserving its unity in the middle of the damage that the comandante has left from the time when, like a spoiled little grandfather, he began to teach the housewives how to make black beans, and he filled the gas stations with social workers.

The regurgitation of the bile of the five year gray period was a balloon that was floated, orchestrated by the sadly famous ideological department, whose head - a prototypical case for Lombroso – knows very little about culture but a lot about the active methods of intelligence. And they did it by exhibiting to the irritated public three old men who served them faithfully for years. The butchering animals didn’t enter the stable; they only opened the doors to see how the fine horses would react. UNEAC’s declaration closed the doors again, and it was thus, with the closed doors, that the meetings started about the five year gray period. It’s the systemic limit for our writers and artists.

They should learn something that a brilliant communist once told us: Today they take away others, and if I don’t protest, tomorrow they will take me away. Above all, when it became clear that the Cuban inquisitors pray to God to keep their gunpowder dry.

Haroldo Dilla

Santo Domingo

Monday, February 12, 2007

Translated by Regina Anavy

Many friends, and others who are not friends, have approached me, interested in my opinion about this debate on the parameters or simply, the fact that non-participation in it could be interpreted as indifference, apathy or in the worst of cases… cowardice. Those who really know me know that I do not suffer from any of these three evils. The reason is very simple: I have no mailbox. But I have kept abreast of what is happening because there are always good souls who have helped me receive messages in some way and because I have attended various meetings.

Now, to the point. I never thought that Pavón, despite his ideas, acted alone. The phenomenon is more complex. On this point it is very easy to think that we must look up, but I am also talking about that we must look to the sides, and at times down. I have documents signed by him, evidence that was based not only on the decisions of the Congress of Education… and Culture, but a Legal Advisor whose name I don’t want to remember and other representatives of institutions, in this case the Union and the Ministry of Labour. But we also relied on criteria coming from their own Theater Groups or it could be from their Work Councils. Advice that in some cases they reconsidered and joined the victims and others who, from the beginning, supported them. Those who emerged from the famous hearings held by the so-called Evaluation Commission, came out with a ticket in their hands, with ten days to appeal the sentence, if they didn’t agree with it, otherwise they had to present themselves and face the penalties of the law against Vagrancy. Could Pavón have created this judicial machinery alone? I will not mention, of course, the ordeal we had to go through.

The story is more or less known and this is not the appropriate framework in which to tell it. But when this man signed, with his own hand, on my expulsion decision, that: “…His works AGAIN JEHOVAH WITH THE STORY OF SODOM AND THE TAKING OF HAVANA BY THE ENGLISH allow his literature to be categorized as pornographic and obscene” …he is not alone. There, in that document, are other signatures. And in the process, other names. He had planned the conditions before acting. And he received support from people who thought like him. And in the realm of ideas I do not know if we bring something to this debate by questioning who felt the same and who no longer did. Because time has gone by.

There is only one idea in which Pavón and I completely agree: a better world is possible. But for him, or for them, that world is better without me, or without us, the parameterized. The superficiality and naiveté–to put it in some way–with which we were tried, cost us a lot. And I refer to certain words that Blas Roca told Fernando Sáenz Peña and Lazarus: “The parameterized are a living test of faith in the Revolution, that the wrong will be rectified, because if not, they would have given up already… and despite there not being a place in different instances, they still insist, for that they must have great faith.” And of course there’s the argument that we had it once and still have it. And for that faith we come back and are still here. But for this case to have been forgotten in the past–where it deserved to be– it should have been analyzed and corrected at that time. It should have been spoken about and judged.

This is not about vengeance, and much less about justice. It was and is about saving a project of social justice that was above us and even above Pavón, yet it was he who truly suffered from it. He and his allies were affecting the credibility of this project and with this massacre it was they who served, on a silver platter, the gossip to their enemies themselves.. For me, this was never El Quinquenio Gris, the Five Grey Years; for me this was always El Período del Escándalo Silencioso, The Period of the Silent Scandal. Playwrights and directors, actors and designers, etc. have existed within artistic education whether the professor dares to speak about them or not. Because of ignorance or fear of not knowing if they were among us. And it is precisely these young people who are now professionals that I am thinking about. What will happen to them? Will they be willing to not make the same mistakes?

Excuse the delay and perhaps the large extent of my words.

José Milián
February 9, 2007

Translated by: Dolores M. Goizueta

In moments of rage in those who almost foam at the mouth and perhaps the rest of the nine orifices of the human body, after another telephone conversation with associates who are equally irritated, angry, disconcerted, and full of shame for the media nonsense, I hope it’s only this! I received your profound and brave reflection as a condition of cultural caution, historical, ethical and after all political. Thank you, friend, for thinking and acting. Count on me and my glimmers of thought in a firm attitude, ready to obstruct the injustice that seems to advance dangerously…but I communicate to you, with José Martí, that “I am honored and I am afraid.”

Hugs of appreciation and alert.

César López

Words on the Inauguration of the Sixteenth International Book Fair

Dear friends:

As the sun sets in the west, memory turns to some Argentine verses written by Rafael Obligado, and to transcend the mournful darkness over the Pampas, the country summoned as the invited country of honor, precisely, is the Argentine Republic.

Now then, the fact that two Cuban intellectuals share the dedication doesn’t mean that this book fair is limited to them.

A banquet of words, contributing to the general culture, in all its manifestations, at the site where the book rules without any type of exclusion. And as Poetry is a creation and the creation is fundamentally Poetry, I permit myself to affirm that this Fair is dedicated to all Cuban creators, since Cuba, a poetic Island or Archipelago, begins its consolidation from the territory to arrive at being a Nation and finally achieves the high category of Fatherland with Poetry. “And all night they heard the birds pass,” says the Admiral in his Diary and he affirms it, not so that we describe, put so we find a world and at the same time find ourselves in the sphere where, as now, the afternoon leans. Sweetly to the west. And it does not stop being its own world and ours.

We said that this creative whole, of the word, inserted into time, found its space in Cuba. With the Mirror of Paciencia, and without by-passing the find of the poem Florida, the poets have sustained our nation, our fatherland, verb, waters, land. And upon saying poets, we include the writers, thinkers, historians, economists, musicians, dancers, painters and sculptors. Men and women of good will who have constructed our homes, the house, the city, the Fatherland.

For this reason the more-than-generous enlargement has an historic turnout that wishes to include all Cubans so that this sixteenth Book Fair be total and ecumenical and thus overcome any limitation that our culture could have shown, supported or suffered with the passing of time.

An admiring arc that starts with José María Heredia (and doesn’t forget to mention precursors like Silvestre de Balboa, Alfonso de Escobedo, Manuel de Zequeira, Manuel Justo de Rubalcaba and Manuel María Pérez Ramírez…) and goes up to Raúl Hernández Novás and  Angel Escobar, and didn’t ignore the great poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with their work and full lives finished. And the thinkers, novelists, playwrights, situated firmly in Cuban culture where would also be Cirilo Villaverde and Ramón Meza as well as Ezequiel Vieta and Alejo Carpentier. On this bridge are the names that almost don’t have to be enumerated; but some ring in my ears: Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Joaquín Lorenzo Luaces, José Jacinto Milanés, Plácido, El Cucalambé, Manzano, Luisa Pérez de Zambrana, Julia Pérez Montes de Oca, Mercedes Matamoros, Juana Borrero and Julián del Casal, Mendive, and the pinnacle of José Martí… As the twentieth century goes by, the poets persist: Boti, Poveda, Agustín Acosta. Emilio Ballagas, Mariano Brull, Eugenio Florit, Nicolás Guillén, Dulce María Loynaz, Regino Pedroso, Samuel Feijóo, Dora Alonso, José Lezama Lima, Virgilio Piñera, Gastón Baquero, Eliseo Diego, Jesús Orta Ruiz… and others and others and others. Rolando Escardó, Roberto Branly, Baragaño, Fayad Jamís, Heberto Padilla, Luis Suardíaz I don’t have to beg pardon for insisting! Right, Hernández Catá, Carlos Montenegro, Lino Novás Calvo, Lydia Cabrera, Enrique Serpa, Félix Pita Rodríguez, Enrique Labrador Ruiz…? ¡How José Soler Puig escorts us! ¡And Fernando Ortiz, Mañach, Moreno Fraginals….

Among our letters walk Antonio Benítez Rojo, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Calvert Casey, Reynaldo Arenas, Severo Sarduy, Miguel Collazo, Jorge Luis Hernández and Jesús Díaz…

The book is the conveyor of the word, it hands over the verse and thus ascends again and like always to Poetry. The Word and Poetry, which, like reality and symbol, oblige us to be vigilant and to look with open eyes at History. And like an unavoidable memory, we all remember Juan Clemente Zenea, so close in that spot. We looked at him. The conqueror of time. Here in his space. In time. Alert in his trajectory. The poem. The Word and Poetry. “And you were mended where your mother was broken.” San Juan de la Cruz points at us, whispers and screams. So that we become conscious of this bellicose and dishonored place where the poet, Poetry, was humiliated, with this festival that would have been impossible in another epoch, that remains pure and thus has to be preserved forever.

And in the same way that these creators carried the word and at times had to die for it, now, as an ethical and aesthetic obligation, we raise the libertarian command of knowledge and honor by the means of books. The Sixteenth Book Fair could be dedicated to so many authors and books that existed, exist and will exist in our lives. To enumerate their names would not be a problem, but discretion imposes a certain modesty. The centuries repeat themselves from the 17th up to the 21st in which we live…Bring on this Fair and those who come, dedicated to these creatures, women and men who sustain the Fatherland, in every moment, the joyful and the troubled, the successful and the failures. With insistence on keeping what unites it, what unites us beyond artificial, mechanical, and opportunistic borders.

And if the extensive enlargement of Honor is affirmed in the fair for Cuban writers, wouldn’t we have to proclaim something similar and equivalent in respect to the Countries? It’s a happy honor that Argentina is the country invited, but neither should we forget the sister republics of our America. Martí illuminates and dictates perpetual lessons. And Our America is proud of its origins and its constant History. From José Hernández and its Martín Fierro and Sarmiento and its Facundo to Julio Cortázar, the country favors the ample culture that will be, already is, present in this Fair, and breathing the air of all America, open to the world, to the Universe, in order to accomplish what some still consider unobtainable. What is possible for the impossible. Knowing that the Perfect does not exist, but constant Perfectibility does.

The Fair is ecumenical, embracing, humble and proud at the same time. Its purpose, or one of them, is to open the doors of delightful knowledge to all creatures within our reach. If it teaches reading to overcome illiteracy the immediate obligation of the people is to make books available so that those who can read have the elements for their culture and constant self-improvement and joy. For their lives. It’s for this that the Fair exists. As in the biblical quotation, this festival of action and celebration fulfills a goal, a mission, a destiny: “Lift your eyes and regard the regions, because there they are ready for the harvest.”

And it’s not a matter of exploiting the many for the benefit of a few, only of the whole dignity of man. The human creature. Thanks to everyone. The Book Fair: The Festival has begun and is infinite.

Havana, February 8, 2007

César López

Translated by Regina Anavy

I am young (barely in my twenties), and in part I’m responding to Arturo Arango’s just claim that it would be alarming if those of my generation didn’t participate in this outrage, even though we didn’t experience this atrocious and horrifying process, because, as Oscar Llanes says, the exclusion of our presence now would just reproduce, consciously or unconsciously (we don’t know), those repressive methods of  silencing and marginalization, known in all its shapes and sizes. It’s time to talk, comment, discuss this issue, as forbidden as other issues were in those years.

Consider, for example, that those names (Luis Pavón, Jorge Serguera and others) are now heard by us for the first time. So I think, along with many young people who don’t want under any circumstances to suffer a second helping of pavonato (remember that second helpings are never good), that it hasn’t been pure coincidence that such a consecutive appearance of those sinister characters, directly or indirectly responsible for making lives and work so miserable for many intellectuals who championed pluralistic thought, as should happen in a truly democratic society that is responsive to its citizens.

Take into account, especially, the epic and apologetic television show with which they were presented. And not only was it a lack of the most basic ethics, and now I’m not talking about that humanist ethic that “pavonates” us before the world and ourselves, but it was also an aggression impervious to most of those who lived during that time, whether intellectual or not, (family, friends and people in general), who had to suffer forms of dogmatism, opportunism and the distortion of a certain ideology, manipulated to the limit, forms which are still new to many of us.

Publicly praising people who were involved in such barbarity leaves no room for the slightest doubt in today’s political and social context. It’s not only a symptom or a syndrome, in the words of one of the debaters, it’s without ghosts or pathological elaborations a very clear announcement of what might happen in an increasingly uncertain future, and that these, and new and worse, processes could repeat themselves. So it seems to me fair and irrevocably necessary, this protest you started. You can count on the support of the youngest, of those who begin their walk down a path that can be abruptly cut off, and we are not willing to submit, not for our parents, nor for ourselves.

Leonel Brito

Translated by Regina Anavy

January 2007

Magaly Sánchez

Translated by Regina Anavy

January 2007

In the middle of the little avalanche of e-mails that have been stirred up by Luis Pavón’s return to the stage, I have respectfully read your views. I am writing just to let you know that I fully agree with you, with every one of your words. Only in place of “mistakes,” for elegance rather than being obvious, I would put “criminal acts,” which of course continue and will remain so long as they are not openly and publicly recognized as such, with absolute transparency, which I fear will not happen under the present circumstances of our country.

I  take this opportunity to tell you that what caught my attention — although not much, to tell the truth — was that in Cubavision’s program, This Day, on Dec. 19, they didn’t include among the important events anything more or less than the birthday of José Lezama Lima. Was it also a coincidence? I don’t think so.

Nor do I believe that our deplorable television (the same that showed mutilated versions of Philadelphia and The Kiss of the Spider Woman, and that glorious spot to alert us to the dangers of drugs and harmful substances that turn young people into homosexuals, the same television that has never broadcast a single image of the gay pride demonstrations taking place in other parts of the world, the same that indulges in jokes all the time, or rather promotes the worst kind of homophobia, among other insults), is a being apart from our culture. No, it isn’t. Come on, at this stage of life we’d have to be very naive to believe that. As our Desiderio says in his magnificent and very timely article, Symptoms of what?, let’s ask ourselves about the causes of things; these dirty tricks, to put it gently, are signs of … something. And not precisely of something good.

Dear RG, I thought first about sending you this little message in private, just for you, partly because I’m not used to screaming in public and partly because you and I, if memory serves correctly, know each other personally and… Well, I was afraid maybe you would misinterpret me. But then I thought that if one is to express support and solidarity with someone who shouted, he shouldn’t do it quietly. So I’m sending copies to others. I hope you don’t mind.

Cordially,

Ena Lucía Portela

Translated by Regina Anavy

January 2007

Cira Romero

Camilo sent me the debate because he knows I’m interested, and of course I want to participate. I’m not an artist nor a writer, but as a Cuban woman, I am identified with a social revolutionary project which purports to capture all the feelings of justice I feel stirred up with these comments, and the fear with which moments of history are diluted, which, although they hurt and embarrass us, should be profoundly analyzed to avoid their repetition. Evidently the experiences of the past were not sufficiently clarified, nor appropriately regulated, and that’s what worries me.

In my opinion, these television programs show only the tip of the iceberg, and the reaction provoked responds to deeper discomforts which don’t yet have the necessary support of our society, expressed in its politics. This is, precisely, what interests me the most, that at the root of these anxieties provoked by the inadvertence? or stupidity? of the televised programming, we might analyze and discuss styles of thinking, ambivalence, the absence of coherent definition in the institutional politics of the ICRT, which ought to know how to express our new cultural, educational, feminist politics, etc.

As a militant of the Cuban Communist Party, I aim for an intelligent response from the organization, on the condition of being a facilitator and coordinator of the debate, so that all interests and suggestions might be considered that are made responsibly so we might collaborate with this permanent and necessary dialectic process, of approaching and elaborating the inevitable contradictions of all processes.

Affectionate greetings,

Mariela Castro Espín

Translated by Regina Anavy