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DOI: 10.1080/03064228908534606
1989 18: 11Index on CensorshipCuba 30 years on
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Cuba
The hoarding says : WE'RE N OT SCA RED OF Y OU , MR IM PERIAL
IST! and is placed on the seafront in Havana near the US embassy
.Cuba 30 years onthe press in post-
ect of much heated debateinside and outside the country. A1988)
suggests that the Cuba n
Index's special feature on Cub a
a M edina) and two of its victimsThe C uban Revolution of 1959
wasportant single
y, the marked improvem ent in thee of the ma jority of
thelation, and Cas tro's 1961 declarations a socialist state, made
C uba a
60s and '70s. On the other hand thelso, of course,
substantially
efforts were concentrated on de-stabilisingFidel Castro's new
regime and ensuringthat 'another Cuba' did not emerge in theUSA's
'backyard'.While the effects of this foreign policy arestill
evident in Latin America, particularlyin Nicaragua and Central
America as awhole, Cub a's status as a model for radicaltransform
ation has, to a certain extent, lostits appe al, especially amo ng
the region'smore industrialised nations where the keypolitical word
is now 'dem ocracy' ratherthan 're volution' a nd where in the
contextof recent struggles against militarydictatorship, respect
for hum an rights hasbecome a major concern.It could be argued that
the Cubanconcept of a highly politicised culture,encapsulated in
Fidel Castro's 'Words tothe Intelle ctuals' (1961) in which he
said'. .. within the Revolution, everything;outside the Revolution,
nothing', hassuffered.a similar decline in influence.During the
1960s many of the now mostfamous Latin Am erican intellectuals
especially poets and novelists openlysupported the revolutionary
process,encouraged n ot only by the socio-economicadvances it was
ma king but also by itsappar ent openness to arts of all kinds
inmarked contrast to the stultifying socialistrealism imposed in
the Soviet U nionand Eastern Europe. It is perhaps no
coincidence that this optimism coincidedwith the so-called 'b
oom ' in LatinAm erican literature. And even today, asTeresa
Whitfield's report (pi6) shows,Cub a still functions as an
important forumfor Latin A merican art in this casecinema in a con
tinent in which inter-communication between artists fromdifferent
countries is notoriously difficult(the US m onopolisation of
filmdistribution, television programm ing an dlarge parts of the
other m edia does nothelp).Nevertheless, for m any artists
thispolitical commitment proved hard tofollow through, and many
soon began tofeel hampered by the subordination of artto an almos t
entirely unmed iated politicallogic of production. T he effect of
Ca stro'swords in Cuba itself was most evident in theproliferation
of romantic elegies to guerrillafighters and in the rampa nt
'third-worldism ' of works of essayists and literarycritics who
attacked any work judged to be'tainted' by 'first world
cosmopolitanism'.Fidel Castro's 'Words to the Intellectuals'were,
in part, the leader's response to acontroversy arising from a
documentaryfilm called PM made by people associatedwith the
literary review Lunes deRevolution. This review, which itself ha
demerged out of the revolution, waspublished by a group of young
intellectuals
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INDEX ON CENSORSHIP 3 /8 9
Cubacritical of wha t they regarded as the staleold-guard
Communist review, Hoy,Domingo. The film portrayed
'bohemian'night-life in downtow n H ava na, and w asconsidered to
be a product of'bou rgeoisdecadence ' incompatible with
theconstruction of a new society. Soon afterCastro's pronouncement
on the subject ofart , Lunes de Revolution was closed down ,PMv/as
banned, and many of thoseinvolved with the magazine, such as one
ofCuba's most famous novelists, GuillermoCabrera Infante, were
given diplom aticposts abroad .
By the late 1960s, as former politicalprisoner Ariel Hidalgo
suggests in histestimony (pl 8), Cub an intellectual life hadbegun
to close down and insulate itselffrom the rest of the world, with
some of theeffects described by Nick Caistor ( pl2 ). Thepolitical
demands on art intensified. AsHidalgo notes, this was associated
with theincreasing dependence of Cuba on theSoviet Union which was
in turn a resultof the US economic blockade an d acorresponding
hardening of officialideology into dogma. The mostsymp tomatic,
although not the only, case ofthe time was the infamous 'Padilla
affair'(seeIndex 2/\912 p65). Man y writers began toleave the
country, some stayed but weremarginalised (like Lezama Lima,
perhapsthe country's greatest writer), and otherswere imprisoned
for 'enemy propaganda'.Among st the latter was Ariel Hidalgo.The C
uba n pena l code m akes it illegal foranyone to 'incite against
public order,international solidarity or the socialist stateby
means of oral, written or any other kindof propag anda ' (Article
103). Hidalgo wasaccused of doing just that; his writings
wereconsidered to be 'enemy propaganda'. Hewas arrested in 1981 and
sentenced to eightyears' imprisonment.In its recent report on Cuba,
AmnestyInternational estimates the number ofpolitical prisoners at
between 200 and 300.At the time of its (March 1988) visit therehad
been app roximately 455, but nearly halfof these were released
shortly after, and inthe New Year it was reported th at
allremaining political prisoners w ould also bereleased. It is
perhaps no coincidence thatthe Pope is reportedly visiting the
countrysometime during the next two years.Amnesty also points out,
however, that theabove figures do not include those
politicalprisoners who have not been charged withcrimes against the
state for exam ple,people who have tried to leave the
countryillegally, people charged with contempt forhaving painted
anti-government slogans, orthose charged with disseminating
religious'propaganda' .In the interview published on pl5,the
Vice-President of the Cub an
Journalists ' Union, Lazaro BarredoMedina, puts forward the
official view offreedom of expression w hich is legallyencoded in
Article 52 of the 1976 CubanConstitution: 'Freedom of speech and
thepress, in accordan ce w ith the goals ofSocialist society, is
recognised for citizens.The material conditions for their
exerciseare guaranteeed by the fact that the press,the radio ,
television, movies and other m assmedia are state or social
property andcannot b e the object, in any case, of privateproperty,
thus ensuring their use in theexclusive service of the working
people andthe interest of society.' Very soon afterthe revolution,
all the press andbroadcasting stations from the pre-revolutionary
Batista period had eitherbeen closed down or expropriated.Although
p rivate ownership of the massmedia is not a necessary
prerequisitefor freedom of expression, there are very realproblems
w hen that control is taken overby a univo cal state (see p
12).
The final contribution to o ur specialfeature is an essay by a
young C uban writerwho has lived in exile since he was a c hild.In
contrast to the nostalgic tone of mostwriting on exile, Octavio Ar
ma nd here,paradoxically, celebrates its possibilities.Surely a
topic for interesting debate. John Kraniauskas
Nick CaistorBondageand BeyondHow Cubans view themselves,their
soul, Fidel and theworld outside'Wanna chain' me?' These
words,invariably the first any foreigners hearwhen venturing
outside their hotel inHav ana, bring you up w ith a jolt.Especially
when they're spoken by a six-foot young black Cuban man sporting
a'Love and Kisses' T-shirt and tight jeans .Seeing you halt, he
presses on, and it soonbecomes clear that it is simply your
dollarshe is after, not the delights of bondage, paidor
unpaid.Getting beyond this level of contact canbe difficult in
Cuba. Foreigners in generalare regarded with a complicated mixture
ofawe and scorn; those Cubans who havetaken in all the government
prop agan da areextremely suspicious of anyone from the'capitalist
world'; those w ho are disgruntledat life on the island 30 years
after theRevolution cannot wait to get your dollarsoff you, or
angle for an invitation to thesupposedly blessed world outside. In
thepast three decades, Cub ans, except for theprivileged few who a
re authorised to travel,have become cut off from the rest of
theworld to an extent which distorts allrelationships with people
from 'outside'. Italso makes o ne of the few individualchoices left
to them that of whether to stayor to leave, and this then becomes
aconstant theme of conversations.Because in the end, after
initialmisapprehen sions an d m isgivings, it ispossible to talk to
lots of Cu bans w ho dospeak freely of their hopes and
frustrations,do give a view of what it is like to try towrite, to
create and to get on with life herein Cuba tw o generations after
therevolution.Rodrigo, for example, was born inFebrua ry 1959, a
month after Fidel Cas trotriumphantly entered Havana. His fatherwas
a waiter, his mo ther a hairdresser; bo thfound themselves out of
work w ith thedisappearance after the frugal revolution ofmost of
the cafes an d restau rants inHavana. But Rodrigo did go to school,
andfrom an early age was directed towardsstudying art, which he now
teaches, as wellas painting for himself. He has been looked
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