CUBA:
Cultural Policy Debate
Keeps Growing
By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA (IPS) - More than
a year after the
outbreak of the
so-called "e-mail war",
the debate on cultural
policy has not died down
in Cuba. And although
the issue is not
addressed in the
national media, the
discussion continues,
and is spreading to
embrace other aspects of
life in this socialist
island nation.
Lectures, book launches,
and the airing of works
previously censored by
national television have
been occurring in recent
months, less frequently
and with a weaker public
impact than many people
would like, but
systematically enough so
that the call to
dialogue is not
forgotten.
"What’s happening shows
how much we still need
opportunities and spaces
for this debate,"
psychologist Norma
Guillard told IPS,
following a talk on the
portrayal of lesbians
and gays by Richard
Dyer, a professor of
film studies at King’s
College, University of
London. Organised by the
Criterios
Theoretical-Cultural
Centre, with the support
of the International
School of Film and
Television in San
Antonio de los Baños,
the goal of the meeting
was to promote
theoretical reflection
from the standpoint of
culture on issues of
sexual diversity and
human rights, which are
being raised in
present-day Cuban
society.
A second lecture by Dyer
on the portrayal of race
also promises an intense
debate on the problem.
While racial issues have
been studied and
analysed by a number of
academics and
intellectuals in Cuba,
their conclusions have
largely been filed away
in dusty corners and
have barely appeared in
the national press or
wider forums.
"If the socialist state
controls the media, why
does Cuban television
veto
counter-revolutionary
humour, but air racist
and homophobic jokes?"
asked essayist Desiderio
Navarro during the
debate, which swung from
media stereotypes to the
conditions faced by the
gay community in Cuba.
Playwright Norge
Espinosa also voiced
this contradiction.
"Most campaigns are of a
preventive nature, in
which politically
correct images of
homosexuals are
subordinated to moral
concepts that, one way
or another, are
judgmental about
homosexuals," he said.
"The problem is that
we’re still talking
about characters and
stereotypes, and not
about the person,"
Espinosa said. He
pointed out that
"Strawberry and
Chocolate," the leading
Cuban film to address
the problems faced by
homosexuals in this
country, was not shown
on Cuban television
until nearly 15 years
after its release.
Last year’s broadcast of
Strawberry and Chocolate
was one of the practical
results of the "e-mail
war", which among its
many themes pointed out
that over 20 major Cuban
films had never been
shown on national
television, for one
reason or another.
Months later, in August,
a group of young
filmmakers took up the
controversy about video
censorship, which had
even vetoed some works
that had been
commissioned and
financed by state
companies.
"The lasting legacy of
the 2007 e-mail debate
is its expression of a
need for reflection and
renewal, affecting not
only the problems
inherent in creativity
itself, but also the
relationship of cultural
workers and artists to
the society in which
they live and work,"
popular local writer
Leonardo Padura told IPS.
When a Jan. 5, 2007
national television
programme featured dark
figures from a past era
of rigid cultural and
artistic censorship, the
result was a chain
reaction among Cuban
intellectuals who
created a historically
unprecedented mechanism
of communication,
reflection and debate in
the country.
Dubbed the "e-mail war"
or "electronic forum",
the flood of messages
drew out many
testimonies of
censorship, prohibition
and exile. But it also
shifted the focus from
raking over the past to
examining the
persistence of erroneous
cultural policies in the
present.
What became known as the
"five grey years" in the
early 1970s were really
a much longer period,
affecting all aspects of
Cuban culture and
thought, and the
symptoms still endure,
said many of the more
than 200 e-mails and
articles arriving in the
IPS inbox in 2007.
After the initial
outpouring, the debate
expanded and has
touched, to a greater or
lesser extent, on the
topics of art
censorship,
discrimination on the
grounds of religion or
sexual orientation, the
distance between the
media and reality, and
the right of
intellectuals to express
opinions on any social
issue in today’s Cuba.
A series of lectures on
the "five grey years"
organised by the
Criterios
Theoretical-Cultural
Centre met one of the
demands of the debate:
to salvage the memory of
the past, but to also
use it as a means of
reflecting on the
present and the future.
Just over a year since
the first lecture, held
Jan. 30, 2007, Navarro
has announced that by
the end of February a
book will be launched
about the "five grey
years" and their
after-effects, titled
"La política cultural
del período
revolucionario: memoria
y reflexión" (roughly,
Cultural Policies in the
Revolutionary Period:
Memory and Reflection).
"For the first time
since the 1960s, after
being prohibited for all
those years, controversy
and debate are occurring
openly in the
intellectual world which
was always their
rightful place," said
Padura.
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