Among the features in this issue is an interview with noted Cuban poet Luis Marré, who for 18 years was managing editor of La Gaceta de Cuba.

Active in left-wing literary circles during the 1950s, Marré was drawn to the revolutionary fight against the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. "I considered myself in debt to the revolution," he recounts. "I had been against Batista and my sympathies were with the revolutionary movement. I participated in some demonstrations against the government, including the one in which the student Rubén Batista was fatally wounded.

"None of that seemed sufficient in 1959, and in fact it wasn't. That's why I went to the Swamp," he states, referring to the Zapata Swamp in south-central Cuba. At the time of the revolution, this area was one of the most backward and underdeveloped parts of the country.

Marré volunteered to go there and work as an accountant on a state farm. He also joined the militia there, participating in the battle against the 1961 U.S.-sponsored invasion at the nearby Bay of Pigs, and in the fight against armed counterrevolutionary bands in the Escambray mountains.

In 1962 Marré moved back to Havana, where he wrote scripts for radio programs. While enrolled as a journalism student at the University of Havana, he became managing editor of La Gaceta de Cuba.

"My first surprise was encountering a magazine without journalists, only writers, some of them very talented," he states. "At that time contributors weren't paid, and this minimized variety since the various issues did not always contain the number of signed articles we would have liked. I'll add that this was a magazine without a regular publication schedule; it came out when God willed--it was very religious in that sense--because in those days printshops gave priority to textbooks and notebooks for education.

"Part of those 18 years coincided with the so-called 'gray half-decade' or 'black decade,' a stage of sharp ideological confrontation and when many writers were prevented from publishing; they could not even be mentioned," Marré points out. The term "gray period" is often used in Cuba to refer to the five years between 1971 and 1976, when economic, as well as cultural, practices copied from the Soviet bureaucracy had great weight.

"You never knew precisely which writer was 'clean' and which one wasn't," Marré states. "You had to consult constantly. Nothing was ever put in writing, nor were meetings held. Sometimes we would commit a blunder because a writer suddenly became 'dirty' just as the issue was going to press, and there was no way to turn back. You never knew exactly what it was that was held against a writer. Perhaps he had made a joke, perhaps he was a homosexual, or perhaps he hadn't done anything at all but it was suspected that he might say something at any moment. A list was drawn up of prohibited writers, some of them first-rate."

In the late 1970s, Marré recounts, the situation began to change.

"In 1976 the Ministry of Culture was created with Armando Hart at the helm, and the black period began to be a thing of the past. The payment of royalties was approved and La Gaceta was enriched with new writers.

"Then other problems arose. La Gaceta was turned into a news bulletin, a circulator of dated news and unreadable speeches that no one was interested in. With the exception of Nicolás Guillén, the entire UNEAC executive board wanted La Gaceta to reflect the life of the organization. That stage ended, and an even worse one began. La Gaceta then became a huckstering magazine to compete with other publications, like Opina, reflecting the worst of popular art. This was during the economistic period in the country, and it was demanded that everything bring money into UNEAC's coffers, at whatever price. Some of those issues still make me ashamed."

What about today? "The best stage of La Gaceta is the present one, and I have often said so. Today's La Gaceta is the magazine I would have liked to put out when I was there."  
 

Carlos Varela

Another feature of this issue of La Gaceta de Cuba is an interview with Carlos Varela, one of Cuba's best-known singers.

In it Varela discusses some of the difficulties his generation of artists has had in dealing with some of the economic transformations in Cuba over the last decade.

"A situation of everybody out for themselves came about, not as a result of selfishness but as the only way to survive," he says. "It was the end of the 1980s, and Cuba was changing. Everyone wanted to create their own band, get their own instruments, organize their own tours.... We were all fighting hard to get our songs out, and as always, the results weren't the same for everyone."

Varela adds, "The market has pressured many artists to leave Cuba. One would also have to think and ask oneself whether they abandoned Cuba or Cuba abandoned them. History will tell.

"Many people wagered that I would leave Cuba. Not now, but during the most difficult years, which was the end of the 1980s. Everything my songs have given me, for good or for bad, are the result of trying to ignore what other people think. I believe I have been consistent in this. I have defended my work by hook or by crook, without concessions, and this has its price. I've often been urged to renounce the country and go into other markets." But, he says, "I have only tried to defend my work from inside this island, and I will continue doing so.

"In defending my songs I am defending my right to be free, to think as I want and to be as I want, not as others want me to be."  
 

Martínez Villena centennial

The November–December issue also features an essay by Fernando Martínez Heredia on the centennial of the birth of Rubén Martínez Villena. Martínez Villena was a Cuban poet who became a leader of the Communist Party of Cuba in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He died in 1934.

Martínez Villena grew up in the wake of the U.S. occupation of Cuba in the early 20th century. His generation was formed politically under the influence of the fight for Cuba's sovereignty and against U.S. imperialism.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home