The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.62/No.40           November 9, 1998 
 
 
New York: Norberto Codina Discusses Cultural Policy Of Cuban Revolution  

BY MIKE TABER
BRONX, New York - Closing his U.S. speaking tour, Cuban poet Norberto Codina spoke at a meeting of nearly 100 at Hostos Community College October 22. Codina is editor of La Gaceta de Cuba, the bimonthly magazine of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) and the country's leading literary and cultural journal.

The event was sponsored by the Student Government Organization, Hostos Center for Arts and Culture, Alex Haley Lecture Series, Director of Department of Humanities Michael Mbabuike, and college president Dolores Fernández.

Javier Torres of the student government chaired the meeting and introduced Fernández, who welcomed Codina to Hostos. Student government president Julio Alcántara; Dagoberto López, a Dominican poet, who read two of his poems; and Scott M.X. Turner, an Irish musician who performed two songs related to the Irish freedom struggle, also gave welcoming remarks.

Codina spoke briefly, thanking the organizers of the meeting and the other speakers, and read three of his poems. He then opened the floor for questions.

Asked for his observations on how Cuba is seen around the world, Codina responded, "When we travel abroad we are aware that Cuba represents something very different in the world." He pointed out that on Fidel Castro's recent tour of South Africa, the Cuban president was greeted as a hero by thousands, reflecting not just Cuba's longtime support for African liberation struggles, but the example of the revolution among the people of that country. More than 300,000 Cubans served on internationalist missions in Angola from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s, for example. Cuban volunteer troops helped defeat successive invasions by South Africa's apartheid regime. The crushing defeat the racist regime's troops suffered at Cuito Cuanavale in early 1988 paved the way for the independence of Namibia and gave a new impulse to the battle to bring down the apartheid regime itself.

Another participant asked about the effects of the "Special Period" on Cuban culture. This is the term Cubans use to describe the difficult economic conditions Cuba has faced since the early 1990s, after the loss of favorable trade relations with the USSR and Eastern European countries following the disintegration of the Soviet bloc regimes. The crisis has been exacerbated by an intensified economic war by Washington and the effects on Cuba of depression conditions of world capitalism.

"Before the crisis, things like begging and prostitution in Cuba did not exist. Now these have begun to reappear," Codina said. In addition, "among the young generation there is a high incidence of nonconformity."

"These topics have found reflection in literature and art," he stated. "Cuban culture has been able to treat these problems in all their complexity." At the same time, "there has been a strong desire to preserve the values of the revolution, drawing on the spiritual reserves of human solidarity in Cuban society." This is the opposite of the dog-eat-dog competition prevalent under capitalism.

He pointed out that Cuba has been subject to a "triple blockade." Not only has it been subject to the 38-year-old U.S. embargo and the loss of 85 percent of its foreign trade with the Soviet bloc countries. A third "blockade" has consisted of serious errors by Cuban revolutionaries themselves, Codina said, above all "the copying of economic models from the Soviet Union."

Correcting these errors has been a priority of the communist leadership in Cuba the last decade and a half, beginning with what the Cubans refer to as the rectification process in the mid-1980s. "To be a revolutionary means being critical, not a dogmatic defender of the way things were. It means speaking about problems openly, not painting Cuba falsely, or by exaggeration, as a paradise." Responding to another question, he said that what exists in Cuba is "art that is critical because it is revolutionary."

Asked about freedom of the arts in Cuba, Codina said that there is growing openness in Cuban culture, compared to even a few years ago. "Conservative sectors of society have attacked this," he stated, reflecting prejudices that still persist. "But there has been a strong reaction from writers and artists who have joined the debate on art and culture." There is no straightjacket on creativity in Cuba, Codina said.

Cultural policy of Cuban revolution
He gave the example of a controversy surrounding a 1996 theater festival in Camagey, Cuba, sparked by two plays. One of them, El arca (The ark), depicts Noah's Ark, in a symbolic comparison with Cuba today, surrounded by the rising waters of a hostile world. In the play, a young Cuban woman who is a member of the Pioneers asks herself questions about her future. She asks what it means to "be like Che" - a slogan of the Pioneers and other Cuban youth organizations, which often point to the life of Ernesto Che Guevara, one of the central leaders of the Cuban revolution, as an example to emulate. Among the questions she poses is whether a prostitute too can strive to "be like Che." Leading journalists in Trabajadores, the weekly newspaper of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers (CTC), and others described these plays as counterrevolutionary and criticized El arca "for gross manipulation of the figure of Che." This incident led to a full-scale debate in the media on cultural policy, "which La Gaceta published in its entirety," Codina said, "including a discussion on censorship."

A polemical article by Abel Prieto, former president of UNEAC and now Cuba's minister of culture, concluded that exchange. Prieto summarized the cultural policy of the revolution by pointing to a well-known speech by Fidel Castro in 1961, referred to as "Words to the Intellectuals." One of the statements in that speech has since become the guideline for Cuba's cultural policy: "Within the revolution, everything is possible. Against the revolution nothing." The perspective presented in that speech, Prieto wrote, was subsequently elaborated on by Che Guevara in Socialism and Man in Cuba. In this famous article, one of his last major political writings, Guevara criticized "socialist realism." Following the death of Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin, "socialist realism" became the banner under which artistic expression deemed threatening to the interests of the bureaucratic caste headed by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union was not only censored but brutally suppressed.

Codina said "the biggest element of censorship in the world is economic power by a wealthy minority. To have people who are illiterate and poor is the biggest form of censorship." Since the triumph of the socialist revolution, Cuba has taken big strides to eliminate these ills.

Combating antigay prejudice
Codina was asked his opinion about the murder of Matthew Shepard, the gay student in Wyoming killed by right-wing thugs, and how attitudes on homosexuality in Cuba are reflected in the country's culture.

More revealing about the depth of antigay prejudice, promoted by the powers that be in the capitalist world, than the murder of Shepard itself, Codina replied, was the picket at his funeral by a group of right-wing protesters chanting "No tears for queers."

"Although Cuban society has a homophobic component," he stated, "nothing in Cuban history since the revolution even remotely compares to this incident." Even with the prejudices that still exist, such an act would meet "not only universal repudiation from all sectors of Cuban society but with disbelief that human beings are capable of committing an act of such a character."

Antigay prejudices were strongest in the early 1970s, which Codina referred to as the "dark period" of Cuban culture. "Thankfully these prejudices are disappearing in terms of culture." The question of homosexuality has begun to be presented in the arts and in society more openly than ever, he said, giving the example of the Cuban film Strawberry and Chocolate, as well as other works.

He pointed out that today many Cubans who "were marginalized in the 70s for being gay are playing prominent roles as international ambassadors of Cuban culture." At the same time, some of the worst "macho censors" of the past, who used to play on antigay prejudices to justify limits on freedom of speech and expression, packed their bags and left Cuba for capitalist countries as economic difficulties mounted during the Special Period. This confirms Lenin's observation, Codina said, "Scratch an extremist, and you'll find an opportunist."

Several students at the end said they appreciated the candid exchange.  
 
 
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