Culture of resistance: the Cuban experience. By Abel Prieto

Source: web site of the Cuban Embassy in Brazil

“I am going to use the expression culture of resistance”, Prieto pointed out, “as something in a permanent clash with what we identify as culture of colonization. In other words against the intent of those who have wanted to submit us, eliminate our identity and our sovereignty”.

“Cuban culture of resistance”, he added “has a long history and has still not ended: first, obviously against Spanish colonialism; later against neo colonialism of the U.S. during the mutilated Republic and its plan of absorption; and now, in the present, against a large world project of cultural domination also Made in the USA and against a specific project of subversion against the Revolution”. Prieto referred to the example of the recent network called “ZunZuneo” designed in the laboratories of the special services of the government of the U.S, largely funded with the intent to reach thousands of young Cubans and promote among them with an active and articulate opposition.

“The imperial wars of plunder”, Prieto explained, “have always been accompanied by a satanizing of the victims, of others classified as barbarians and a culture of colonization that tries to impose on a people dominated by a feeling of inferiority. And that was done during the War of the Ten Years, a crucible whereby many scholars began assuming, after a long and complex process that cannot be simplified by the word nation. During this period, together with the omnipresent repression, the educational system was strengthened. In the press, in the churches the image of those mambises (originally a pejorative name but later proudly taken up by the liberators) were seen as bandits, criminals and outlaws, The idea was promoted that we Cubans were an accursed race, a lazy people addicted to cock fights and gambling, incapable of self government. After the Zanjón Pact, according to Ambrosio Fornet, there was a monstrous collective brainwashing to make the colony definitely Spanish. Even the word revolution was banned and reference to it were euphemistically used such as the bloody decade or tragic decade (…). With the Zanjón began the first intent – repeated later in the Republic – of erasing the memory of an entire people”. This point of memory is very important, Prieto explained when referring to the culture of resistance: the battle is not done with facts and figures of the present but with our own national history, that is disfigured, caricaturized by the enemies of the nation.

He discoursed on the following subjects:

- By the mid 19th century there had arisen among the rich slavers the ghost of another metropolis possible: the United States.
It was a current that pointed to the very bases of the culture of resistance: annexation. Martí said it was a serious danger and that even now was a permanent threat when the Republic was founded. One of the most notable tasks of Martí was to combat tenaciously and with deep exceptional arguments the idea that had been spreading in Cuba and, in general, all Latin America that the United States represented the civilizing model of liberty and welfare that should be imitated. His articles revealed all the dirt and viciousness of elections in the U.S. as the economic growth is accompanied by an irreversible spiritual degradation. Confronting a decadent, authoritarian, backward, almost feudal Spain many persons turned their eyes with naïve admiration to the “Paradise” of the north. There is a text by Martí entitled “Vindication of Cuba” in which he angrily responds to an article appearing in a U.S. newspaper that summarizes the topics of Spanish anti Cuban propaganda. It extols national values and takes the opportunity to denounce “those disastrous elements that, like blood worms, have begun in this powerful republic (the United States) its work of destruction”; the imperial appetite, “excessive individualism” and “adoration of wealth”.

- The War of 1895, organized by the Cuban Revolutionary Party founded by Martí in exile ended with the opportunist entry into the conflict by the U.S. in 1998 when Spain was practically defeated. The Party Martí founded was dissolved, the Liberation Army disarmed and the bases were set for a new model: a neo colony with appearance of a formal republic with a president and parliament and a constitutions that included the humiliating annex of the Platt Amendment.

-During the existence of this mutilated Republic (from 1902 to January 1 of 1959) a crushing cultural offensive was unleashed to achieve a Yankeezation of the Island. With a few and honorable exceptions, the Cuban bourgeoisie lacked the merest national sentiment. They sent their children to study in U.S. colleges and universities and copied the life style of the Yankees. The anonymous protagonists of the powerful Cuban culture were the common people and a few anti colonial vanguard of intellectuals who resisted the spiritual Yankeezation of the country.

-In the Island U.S. television series were dubbed and translated and distributed the main magazines printed for the Empire and that inundated the Latin American backyard. Television with its Yankee style developed rapidly (even color was launched in 1958). Hollywood in pre revolutionary Cuba had all its capacity of fascination.

- A fact that helped us should be noted: due to the low educational level of the popular sectors, mostly in the countryside, there was a preference of Mexican and Argentine films, mostly the former.

During that time films were subtitled and our semi literate people had trouble in reading them in time. What a paradox: ignorance made us a bit more Latin American.

- When the Revolution triumphed, in the first year, 1959, culture of resistance found space in institutions that previously would have seemed inconceivable. That same year ICAIC and the Casa de las Américas were founded.

- ICAIC not only set the bases for a national film industry, with a high artistic level but equally transformed the taste in a massive scale, really massive that allowed these films to be appreciated at a popular level. A new public was capable of enjoying the films from all parts, even experimental films.

- This rupture of the elites also acted on the elitist tradition, the National Ballet of Cuba that not only founded a very original school, very Cuban with an extraordinary prestige but also prepared the public for classical ballet and, in general, for dance that became very widespread.

-The Casa de las Américas received from its de-colonization task, of integration, one of the highest praise from the Brazilian intellectual, Darcy Ribeiro when he said: “Brazil assumed its Latin American character thanks to the Casa de las Américas”. Few phrases summarize the role played by the Casa in the construction, and visibility of the Latin American and Caribbean spiritual family.

- The creation of the National Folklore Group and the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore gave a new dimension to the heroic and solitary task of an intellectual such as Fernando Ortiz, determined to rescue the legacy of African origin that nourishes the roots of what is Cuban in the midst of the cult for Yankee origin of racism prevailing in the neo-colony.

- Today in the midst of this process of updating our model, blockaded, hounded and beaten by the world crisis, the Martí Theater was re inaugurated, an emblematic institution, a true symbol, thanks to a costly investment. Also inaugurated again is the experimental theater, El Ciervo Encantado. The tense situation in terms of funding and resources has not weakened one single cultural institution with budgetary reductions. None of our events have been canceled. In the midst of a battle for a more efficient socialism in terms of production and the economy, culture continues to be considered by us one of the essential conquests which we will never renounce under any circumstance.

- At the core of our culture of resistance, the editorial policy is not in the least chauvinistic, it does not have that feeling that Martí ridiculed with the expression “vain villager that believes the world ends in his village”. The promotion of our authors (even those who have a provincial network) is a priority. Editorial production conjugates the defense of our identity, our literary heritage and indisputable universal vocation. At the same time it deals with the concept of universality apart from the hegemonic, apart from colonialism and much to do with the thoughts of Martí. The catalog of the Casa de las Américas is a model of quality, rigor in which houses practically all important books of Latin American and Caribbean literature. In the catalog of a publishing house such as Art and Literature, of the Cuban Book Institute we find a valuable compendium of African literature, often the first Spanish translation.

- Symbols of all kinds, the culture of resistance that typifies us are the base institutions, museums, video halls, culture houses, theater-films, book stores, public libraries, art galleries. These were strongly hit by the Special Period; later they were hit by the devastating hurricanes of 2008 (more than 400 institutions were destroyed); and then again, in Santiago de Cuba and other eastern provinces the fierce blow of the devastating hurricane Sandy. Today, however, in spite of the serious situation in the country all these institutions are recovering.

- Aside From state institutions we have organizations such as the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba and the Hermanos Saíz Association (AHS) that groups the best young artists. There is a systematic critical analysis of all the work of cultural promotion; they maintain a rigorous evaluation of quality and deny concessions, bureaucratic deformity and clumsiness, all kinds of distortions. At the same time guaranteed are the basic elements of our cultural policy: the leading role of the vanguard. Debates in these organizations, are often concentrated in the essential, indisputable, decisive role of the authentic values of our culture, the culture of resistance that we have mentioned in moments that affect humanity now, in the midst of crises that are economic, environmental and of values in face of the growth of fascist and racist ideas, in face of the world offensive of colonial culture.

- Now, 3 or 4 days ago, we concluded the 8th Congress of UNEAC and there discussed was the need to mobilize the forces of culture of resistance to put a halt to the contamination we are being submitted to. The models of foolishness, of Yankee frivolity, the cult of the labels that we identify as ‘famous”, the reality shows and other aberrations, have gained space in today’s Cuba. It is of utmost importance to offer our children and young people the necessary intellectual tools to decide for themselves what to consume and what to discard in terms of culture. The vanguard of Cuban intellectuality demanded that (mentioned in the UNEAC congress) to confront all these phenomena, without absurd prohibitions (and useless) nor prejudice against new technology but with coherence and systematization

We have advantages that must be exploited more if we combine the work in schools, with the teachers, the media, of the cultural institutions, the art instructors, the writers and artists. Life has shown us that the work of cultural emancipation of the Revolution is not lost nor can we allow it to be lost.

- After the conference there was an exchange with the public. Several participants were interested in the broad cultural bonds between Brazil and Cuba, including exchanges with universities the teaching of the Portuguese language in the island and what to respond to the accusations of “ideologizing” in of Cuban education.

Translation: In Defense of Humanity-Cuba

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