The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.62/No.40           November 9, 1998 
 
 
San Francisco: Dozens Hear Cuban Editor  

BY OMARI MUSA
SAN FRANCISCO-Cuban poet and editor of La Gaceta de Cuba Norberto Codina kicked off his three-day visit of the San Francisco Bay Area October 9 with a meeting of more than 80 students and faculty at the University of California in Santa Cruz. The audience was mostly Latinos. The campus Latin American and Latino Studies department sponsored the event.

Codina began by reading several poems and then opened the floor for discussion. One of the first questions was whether the Cuban revolution would survive the death of Cuban president Fidel Castro. "We are all mortal," Codina responded. "Our revolution is a revolution of the whole people. It is much more than just one individual, it is 11 million strong."

Another participant asked about tourism and the impact of its growth in the last decade. "Tourism provides the largest amount of hard currency," Codina said. "This hard currency allows us to buy oil and other products. So in this sense it is very beneficial. On the other hand," he continued, "it has contributed to increasing inequalities. Some benefit from the dollars they receive from tourists as tips. We are constantly in discussions trying to minimize the bad effects of this phenomenon."

In response to another question on the impact of the U.S. economic war on Cuba, Codina noted that Cuba now has economic and diplomatic relations with more countries than at any time since the revolution. "In this arena the position of the U.S. government is isolated. But I don't think Washington will give up on the blockade."

The next evening, Codina spoke at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in the city of San Francisco. The center is known throughout the Bay Area as a gathering place where discussions on art, literature, and politics in Latin America take place. The meeting was chaired by Andrés López, the center's artistic director.

A large group of students took part in this event from San Francisco State University. Their class is organizing a January trip to Cuba. "What effect did the collapse of the Soviet Union have on art and culture?" one of these students asked Codina.

The crisis precipitated by the abrupt end of trade relations in preferential prices with the Soviet Union "affected us materially," Codina responded. "Most important was the drastic reduction of the number and breath of books we could produce. It dropped from 16 million copies in 1989 to 1.5 million two years later. We are now up to about 7 million copies. This has had a big impact on students and the availability of books. They are not as cheap as they once were."

The role of culture and the revolutionary process was also a theme at the meeting at the University of California, Berkeley, which 35 people attended. The event was sponsored by the Ethnic Studies, African-American Studies, and Spanish/Portuguese departments. Ling-chi Wang, director of Ethnic Studies, introduced Codina, and Laura Pérez of Chicano Studies chaired.

"What is the role of socially committed literature in Cuba," asked one of the students. "In the early years of the revolution there was a strong push for this type of literature," the Cuban editor responded. "It later saturated Cuban society and there was a strong reaction against it. It became too narrow and restrictive. Culture is determined by its quality. A bad political poem is not only a bad poem, it is also bad politics."

Codina also said that in the last decade artists and writers in Cuba have engaged in dialogue with their Cuban counterparts living in other parts of the world. "Cuban culture is not limited to our experience and works in Cuba," he noted. "Cuban culture and themes are produced wherever Cubans live. There is a growing interchange and this is good for the Cuban nation."

Participants raised questions on the discrimination against gays, Blacks, and women, and whether there is censorship in Cuba.

Well-known Puerto Rican writer and poet Piri Thomas and his companion Susan Dodd Thomas hosted Codina throughout his stay in the Bay Area. Susan Thomas translated Codina's remarks during the meeting at the Mission Cultural Center.  
 
 
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