[Interview with Alpidio Alonso Grau, Cuba’s Minister of Culture.]
“Culture has been and remains an essential element to deeply understand the meaning of the social project we are building,” assured Cuba’s Minister of Culture, Alpidio Alonso Grau, during an exclusive interview to Cubadebate, on the occasion of the National Culture Day this October 20.
“From the first months after the triumph of the Revolution, laws were passed and decisions were made that decisively favored the development of culture: the creation of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry, the foundation of Casa de las Americas, the National Printing House… In addition, a very dynamic space for creation was generated at the National Theater of Cuba, related to theater, dance and other scenic manifestations. From there came the Covarrubias Brigades and folkloric expressions received a first support.”
“Those initial steps set the course and, in a concrete way, already announced the leading space that culture was going to have in the project that was being born. It is very symbolic that the first book published by the Revolution is precisely Don Quixote,” said Alpidio Alonso.
The minister recalled Fidel’s exchange with intellectuals in 1961 and his final intervention that transcended as Words to Intellectuals, a diaphanous call for Cuban artists and writers to participate in the Revolution’s project.
“This call opened a very broad space for participation, which included all honest people willing to collaborate; space was given, even to those who did not feel revolutionary,” the minister emphasized.
Since the beginning of the Revolution, creation was placed at the center and the indispensable role of culture was recognized to achieve a true transformation in Cuban society.
“The first great cultural gesture of the Revolution was the Literacy Campaign, where thousands of young people participated, among them, by the way, many who would later become great figures in the artistic panorama. From that moment on, the doors of culture were opened to everyone. And then everything became possible. That democratizing will of culture is a very particular sign of the Cuban Revolution, which already at that moment marked the orientation that the revolutionary process was going to have in the years to come.”
“Afterwards,” he pointed out, “the School of Art Instructors was created, Uneac was founded, important publications and editorial spaces were born, the Cubanacán schools, the great scholarship plans and, later on, in 1976, the Ministry of Culture.
Thus, with the strengthening of the institutional system, a base was created that made it possible to provide better conditions for artists to support and promote their work and, at the same time, “encourage participation and enjoyment on a large scale of these works and, in general, of cultural services. Thus, a link was strengthened that has as its interface the institutions created by the Revolution”.
Alpidio Alonso Grau is aware that the great investment made by the Revolution in education and culture is an element that marks the Cuban social project.
“From a country with a high illiteracy rate, we have become a nation whose greatest wealth lies in the human resources it has developed: the training of professionals in all spheres, particularly teachers and doctors, the development of biotechnology and the production of vaccines. All this must ultimately be seen as a great cultural victory. It is not possible to conceive of what we have achieved, much less the prosperity and development to which we aspire, without the role of education and culture”.
According to the intellectual, the capacity of resistance that the Cuban people have shown in the face of the aggressive policy of the United States has at its core a great cultural accumulation: “The very work of the Revolution and the values it has sown and cultivated in the men and women of this people. When one thinks about this, one understands the depth of Fidel’s idea that culture is the shield and sword of the nation”.
“Although some do not realize it and there are even those who deny it, today we are subjected to a ferocious cultural war of colossal dimensions. In the face of this, the role of culture in the defense of the nation is essential. I am speaking, of course, of culture in the most complex and profound sense, of all the memory and spiritual richness of this people, of its creative capacity, of culture as an attitude. That is our life insurance.
“That is why we are committed to deploy a thorough cultural work at all levels, particularly in the communities. President Miguel Díaz-Canel called for incorporating culture much more in the transformation work that is taking place in the neighborhoods. As he pointed out, these transformations cannot only be of a material order; there is much to be done in the spiritual order. And there the role of culture is fundamental,” the minister explained.
Alonso Grau also warned about the danger of the tools of art in the hands of the Empire, as an instrument of domination. “Contrary to them, for us culture is the only road to full emancipation. As Fidel said: ‘Without culture there is no possible freedom’. Appropriating Martí’s well-known phrase, today it is also a matter of ‘plan against plan’. In this sowing of values and conscience, the tools of art and literature, of culture in general, are essential”.
The leader believes that institutions have to feel responsible and contribute to open the way for the work of art.
“The role of the institutions does not end with the staging, their work is much more comprehensive. Not only should they accompany creators as much as possible in the different moments of the creative process, but they also have an irreplaceable function in the promotion and circulation of that work, and also in the training and preparation of audiences, so that they can fully enjoy that experience”.
Supporting art and artists: a premise
“The pandemic period forced us to suspend the presence of the events. We understood that we could not stop working and we had to look for other ways to interact with the public. That’s how we discovered many of the potentialities of the new digital technologies for the promotion of artistic work,” explained the Cuban Minister of Culture.
In those circumstances, very difficult from every point of view, the Cuban state decided to protect its artists. “Thousands of musicians and performing artists linked to our companies received salary protection during the pandemic. At the same time, the events promoted by our institutions were not given up. It was surprising to see how many young people followed the activities and events through the networks.”
From then on, in the new normality, it was decided to take advantage of these spaces and today all major events are developed in a hybrid way.
“The will has been stronger and even when the blockade has worsened, which has implications in cultural work, especially in the process of artistic education, we have not suspended activities and we prioritize cultural programming and the development of our events with the resources we have and appealing to creativity,” said Alpidio Alonso.
“That is the case of the Alicia Alonso Havana International Ballet Festival, which comes in the midst of the difficult situation we have with the theaters of the capital, several of them closed, due to maintenance and repairs that cannot be postponed. But, in the direction of the Ballet prevailed the will of not suspending the event and face it differently. Even though the bulk of the program will be at the National Theater of Cuba, this year the festival will reach several provinces of the country, including Pinar del Rio, where, after the damage caused by the hurricane, a great effort has been made to recover the Milanés Theater, so that it will be ready to hold some performances of the event there.
“That has been the spirit with which we have faced the attempts to boycott several of our events. That’s how we acted when they did everything they could to boycott the Havana Biennial, the San Remo Music Awards, the International Book Fair, etc. But, as always, in their calculations they underestimate the wealth of experience of our institutions and, above all, the moral quality of our artists. In all cases, they have failed”.
Deficiencies in the institutional system of culture
Cuba’s Minister of Culture acknowledged that there are serious difficulties in the institutional infrastructure, “fundamentally derived from the restrictions to which we are subjected by the blockade, especially in the importation of technologies and supplies for artistic productions and specialized teaching”.
“It is criminal what is being done to a small country, bent on sustaining something as noble as the cultural project of the Revolution. Little is said about the tremendous damage done to culture by the blockade. We should talk more about it, give examples that show the difficulties it creates for us and provide data that prove how much the blockade makes everything we do in favor of culture more expensive.
“Just to give a simple example, easy to understand: a pair of mid-top sneakers for a ballet student or a ballerina has come to cost us twice as much, and more, than what it would cost us if we could buy them directly in the United States. If you multiply that by the number of dancers and ballet students in the country, the figure is considerable. In other words, the blockade exists, it hurts us, it affects us on a daily basis.
“It is a crime that is committed with impunity in front of everyone. And the main proof of its criminal effectiveness is that they do not remove it, but rather they intensify it, despite the fact that they say that the problems we have stem from the inefficiency of our government, from our inability to manage, in this case, culture.”
Alonso Grau said that there are also “serious problems of preparation of the cadres. We do not always find cadres with a full understanding of the role of culture and with the necessary sensitivity and capacity to carry out such a complex task. Of course, this has an impact on our institutions’ capacity for dialogue with creators, on the efficiency of their management and on the leadership they should have in the management of many processes”.
In the same way,” he said, “we need to train true entrepreneurs of culture and develop cultural industries, not in a mercantilist sense, but taking advantage of their potential to insert themselves in those markets and generate dividends that are then invested in the promotion of culture itself. There is potential in our cultural products and services that we are not exploiting and that we must promote inside and outside the country. For that we need efficient institutions and companies and, consequently, leaders and entrepreneurs with the preparation and capacity to manage them”.
The culture war and Cuba at its epicenter
“I feel it is my duty to denounce, once again, the cultural war and the defamatory campaign of which we are victims. There is a lot of money put to develop subversive projects in the country, related to culture. A good part of it is granted shamelessly, in a public way. The repertoire of actions of this cultural war is very diverse. The data on the amount and origin of its financing is available to everyone,” the Cuban minister commented on the unconventional war against the country.
“It’s not just about the boycott of our main events and the way they pressure many artists to desist from coming to Cuba. It is truly embarrassing the way Cuban artists who have found some market in the United States are pressured. They use that market as an element of political pressure and those who do not give in are immediately shut out,” he denounced.
The Cuban intellectual pointed out that there is a whole platform for the media lynching of artists who work in institutions or who openly identify with the socialist project.
“Sometimes they are pressured and denigrated in social networks just for living in Cuba. They try to disqualify and minimize the work of authentic creators just because they identify and work with our institutions. And, at the same time, they exalt, almost always in a disproportionate way, the work of those who have broken with the Revolution or of some mercenary, with no work to justify the curriculum they have built for him”.
In this sense, the Minister of Culture also mentioned the amount of money destined to buy the opinion of journalists and writers inside Cuba, so that they collaborate with publications with hypercritical positions on the Revolution.
He considered despicable the way in which they have tried to manipulate some artists to break with the institutions, or how they have tried to sow tares to divide the artistic movement, confront it with the institutions and subtract support to the Revolution. “All the time they present the institutions as bureaucratized entities, which limit the freedom of creation,” he said.
“It is recurrent the way they try to bring to the present some cultural policy mistakes made in the past, as if we were still at the same point, denying a work that is not perfect, we know that, but of which we can be proud, much more when it had to be done in such difficult conditions.
“They seek at all costs to poison public opinion and sow the matrix that Cuba is a paradise of censorship. Sincerely, I do not believe that anyone with two fingers on the head, who knows Cuba, can give credence to these lies. I think so, even of some of those who attack us today, who have managed to consolidate an artistic career thanks, above all, to the opportunities provided by the Revolution, because they studied in our art schools and were trained in an environment such as the one we live in there, which favors the creative attitude to the maximum.
“In addition, they were promoted by our institutions and had in those same events that today they boycott, a fundamental pillar for the launching of their artistic work. And because they enjoyed an intelligent public, which they will find hard to find elsewhere, whose preparation is also the result of hard cultural work. Not even they themselves believe such a lie. But, poor them, their hatred (or money) was stronger”.
The Minister of Culture recalled that they have always dreamed of creating a counterrevolutionary front in culture. “But no matter how much money they spend on subversive projects, digital publications, technology and fees for collaborators who criticize the Revolution, made-up scholarships and awards, leadership courses, events in renowned universities and luxurious hotels, they are not going to be able to divide us. They will have to make do with an insignificant handful of mercenaries, with no real weight in the culture, to keep alive the business that this new industry of the counter-revolution has become”.
On the subject, he asserted that “the truth is in the strength of the creative work of our artists; in the social prestige and commitment of our national awards; in the climate of creative freedom that is experienced in our art schools; in the diversity and strength of the artistic work of our young people, and in the thousands of artists who are working, often for free, in our communities.
“The truth is in the thousands of creators from all over the country, who have joined right now, with solidarity donations and with their artistic work, to the recovery efforts in the western provinces. The truth is in the richness of our cultural life; in the diversity and quality of the events that, even in the midst of difficulties, we continue to make; in the public that continues to fill the theaters, the concerts, and in the tens of thousands that every year crowd La Cabaña and the main squares of the country during the Book Fair.
“The truth is in the thousands of contestants who each year send their works to the Casa de las Americas Literary Prize; in the commitment to the collective work maintained by the thousands of writers and artists who every day get up to work, facing the same difficulties as the rest of the people, to contribute with their labor to that greater work that gives meaning to their lives, and in the frank dialogue and working climate maintained by our creators’ organizations with the different institutions and their main leaders.
“The truth is in the respect and admiration that President Díaz-Canel has earned for the seriousness, transparency and systematicity of his exchanges with our writers and artists. That cannot be hidden. I am the first to say that much remains to be done and that we still make regrettable mistakes. But this cannot lead us to deny a work that is there for all to see,” said Alpidio Alonso Grau.
“Beyond the slander, that is our truth. And the campaigns of today’s and tomorrow’s haters and the attempts to destroy what has cost so much sacrifice will continue to crash against that truth. As bad as it may seem to them, in Cuba, Revolution and culture are already inseparable. It is a pity that they are incapable of understanding it.”
(Courtesy: Cubadebate. Translated by Resumen Latinoamericano, a newsletter whose focus is news and analysis coming primarily from Latin America by writers, researchers, and activists living there.)
