For a small island, Cuba has an inordinate wealth of artistic talent. Even in the nation’s currently ravaged state, contemporary Cuban culture is experiencing something of a renaissance. Cuban musicians, writers, dancers, artists, and dramatists have distinguished themselves on the world stage. In the United States, jazz pianist/composer Chucho Valdes received two Grammies, Buena Vista Social Club captured one and the film Fresa y Chocolat (Strawberry and Chocolate) was nominated for an Oscar. In Europe and Latin America, Cuban writers have won major Spanish-language prizes, and the Havana Biennial is a major event in the international art world. Culture and the Cuban Revolution, published by University Press of Florida, and coauthored by John M. Kirk, a Canadian scholar of Latin American studies, and Cuban writer Leonardo Padura Fuentes, contains interviews with 13 Cuban artists who have been key figures in revolutionary Cuba.
Though all the artists interviewed support the revolution, many are openly critical of mistakes the government has made. “Nobody asked to speak “off the record’ or cut references to censorship after reviewing a transcript of their interview,” writes Kirk. “Frankly, this surprised me, because I believed that there would have been a greater fear of official retaliation.”
Together, the interviews paint a dramatic portrait of the last four decades inside revolutionary Cuba. The book offers insightful, sometimes poetic commentary on Cuba’s profound sense of national identity, the nature of freedom and censorship, and the place of art in society.
“When the revolution of Fidel Castro succeeded in 1959, Cuba was already an important cultural presence in the western world, with its creators … receiving recognition in the most diverse artistic circles,” writes Padura. The revolutionary government nurtured culture in the 1960s, supporting artists and making art available to all levels of society.
It was an exhilarating time for young revolutionary artists. In his interview, writer Anton Arrufat acknowledges the excesses and foreshadows the darkness to come:
“It was a magical situation, the birth of something that was seeking to burst forth. … The mental structures changed, people began to lose interest in money, and you could almost get by without any at all. People also lost interest in the clothes they wore. It was enough to have one pair of pants, a shirt and a pair of boots. And people liked these changes.
“… There were constant marches in the street. People joined the militias in immense numbers, and there was shooting practice. We were attacking everybody. … I attacked everything that bothered me. There was an enormous freedom to do anything you wanted. And you could use the newspaper, the official newspaper of the July 26 Movement, to attack any figures you wanted, regardless of their prestige.”
In the 1970s, however, everything changed.
“If the 1960s was a decade of expansion, vitality renovation, and open commitment with the revolutionary process on the part of Cuban artists,” writes Padura, “the 1970s have been judged as a dark, repressive period, in which numerous cultural figures … were officially marginalized.”
Repression began creeping into theater as early as 1966, when a system of “approved parameters” was introduced. “… an official directive … insisted that all those who worked in the theater, education, or other fields where there was close contact with the public needed to obey certain “parameters,'” playwright Abelardo Estorino recalls in his interview. “And it was shortly afterwards that they started to expel actors, directors and others because they were homosexual or because of ideological matters, religious leanings or other problems.
“A commission was formed that called you for an interview, where they told you about all your problems: the unacceptable aspects of your personality, or your ideas or even your personal life. You were told that because of these “characteristics’ you were not allowed to have contact with the public, “because we are going to create a perfect society, and you do not fit into it.'”
During this time some artists were punished, while others were simply exiled to obscure jobs and not published, exhibited or in any way recognized or allowed to practice their art. The art that received economic support and publicity was propagandistic art, based on government-sanctioned themes, or collective art, based on public participation rather than artistic considerations. It was a time of stagnation and sterility in Cuban culture.
Anton Arrufat was marginalized for nine years, during which he worked in a low position in a library and was not allowed to write. “When I finished work, they checked the wastebasket to see if I had written anything,” he recalls. “If anything went wrong, I was automatically to blame.”
During this time, he says, “A number of freshly minted fictitious writers suddenly appeared. It was also the time when the genre of the detective novel developed … written on the orders of the Ministry of the Interior. They thought that in this way they would be able to create a literature that would reflect Cuban reality and would displace earlier literature. This failed too because any literature ordered by the state is almost always a failure.”
Ironically, it was the period of political turmoil to come that would liberate artists.
“As the Berlin Wall was tumbling down and the Soviet Union was collapsing, Cuba experienced a terrifying political and economic solitude,” writes Padura. “The government introduced “The Special Period in Times of Peace,’ a title with which it baptized the harshest economic crisis that the country had ever lived through.”
What little support there had been for art dried up, along with money for the government services people had come to depend on. What few gains against censorship artists had made in the 1980s crumbled in the face of such crushing conditions. There was no paint for artists, no paper for writers, no film, no money for anything.
“With the economic crisis, however, the lack of institutional support to finance their projects meant that cultural figures actually gained independence,” writes Padura.
With the loss of government support came loss of government control, as artists looked to international sources for a lifeline. “This allowed them greater freedom of expression,” writes Padura.
As the crisis worsened, the government introduced major economic changes. The country was opened to international tourism and foreign investment, the dollar was legalized, private enterprise became acceptable, and travel abroad became easier.
International success has freed these Cuban artists from their dependence on government support and approval and rekindled their creativity. “I believe that the country is living through a period of special creative effervescence,” writes Padura. “If it is true that some sectors, and especially the newspapers and television, are little more than instruments of propaganda instead of information, we also need to recognize that today many people in the cultural sector are expressing themselves with greater depth within the space of “conditional freedom’ than they have been winning in recent years.”
Anton Arrufat agrees that things have loosened up considerably. “Now you find references to Cuban reality that would never have been allowed before.” But, he says, “There is no absolute freedom. It would be naive to think that there can be absolute freedom, whether it be in a socialist country or a capitalist one.”
Not all censorship has disappeared on the island. But as the nation continues to change, Cuban intellectuals are exploring issues of freedom and censorship.
“Self-censorship, which is the result of censorship, was such an unconscious reflex, so integrated into the consciousness of the artist, that these ideas would never even have occurred to them,” says Arrufat.
“The word freedom … is beautiful, in much the same way that the word democracy is,” says poet Roberto Fernandez. “I don’t see how anybody can be against these concepts. That doesn’t mean, however, that those who proclaim the importance of these concepts, often with great fanfare, are the ones who practice them.
“You asked me to comment on the case of Cuba, a country which is an atypical case, since it has been blockaded for some four decades. Indeed, it is the victim of not only a blockade but also of a brutal economic war waged by the United States. … Given these conditions, it doesn’t make much sense to speak about freedom in an abstract sense.”
Anyone who undertakes a book like Culture and the Cuban Revolution risks criticism for who gets left out and who gets included. Only two of the 13 artists interviewed were female, a fault John Kirk addresses by saying that women are badly underrepresented in the cultural field. It’s a tired excuse and an oversight the authors have perpetuated by not seeking more influential female artists to include in the book.
It appears, too, that the authors chose to play it safe by including only star-level artists who, in Kirk’s words “belong to the cultural “establishment,’ in that they enjoy support, prestige and official recognition.”
However, the book does not claim to be the last word on art in revolutionary Cuba, but rather a very specific piece of the picture. The artists’ willingness to talk about the failures of the revolution along with its successes presents — if not a wholly balanced view — at least fascinating insights into the cultural life of revolutionary Cuba during the past 40 years.
Carlos Padura Fuentes will give a reading and book signing, followed by a panel discussion moderated by Noel Smith on Tuesday, Oct. 9, at 7 p.m. at the University of South Florida Library Grace Allen Room.
Contact Editor Susan Edwards at 813-248-8888, ext. 122, or ed@weeklyplanet.com
This article appears in Oct 4-10, 2001.
