[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”116621″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]Fifty years ago today, the Cuban poet Heberto Padilla made a dramatic public confession at the Union of Artists and Writers of Cuba under the watchful eye of State Security agents.
In his auto-da-fe, Padilla denounced himself, his wife and several close friends as counterrevolutionaries.
The confession sent shockwaves around the world.
Two days earlier, Padilla had been released from a 36-day detention at Cuba’s State Security headquarters.
Padilla had fallen foul of the island’s authorities after his return from an extended stay in the Soviet Union, where he opened Cuba’s first press agency in Moscow and befriended dissident poets.
Padilla’s ritualised public penance sent ripples across the literary world while the Cuban government tried to use his “confessions” as proof of its right to imprison the poet.
Internationally, Padilla’s confession was seen as Cuba’s version of a Stalinist show trial – footage of the confession was suppressed by the authorities.
However, his supporters were conflicted. Index wrote at the time how the feeling began to grow that Padilla’s confession had been forced in some way and that perhaps he had been subjected to brainwashing techniques or possibly even torture.
“A majority of the original letter’s signatories seemed to share this view and signed another letter of protest against the whole affair while a minority accepted the confession at its face value and supported the government position. As a result, progressive left-wing literary circles were split in their assessment of the affair and this led to a series of charges and counter-charges that continued for many months,” we wrote.
Whatever the reason for his confession, it served as a harbinger of what was to follow: a period known as the Grey Five Years in which dozens of Cuban artists and writers were banished from public life.
The Cuban government’s treatment of Padilla made its protocol for handling intellectuals and artists visible and has since functioned as a warning to those that seek to challenge the primacy of state authority.
The passage of five decades means that Padilla’s public show of defiance has been largely forgotten internationally but the words he spoke retain their power even today.
Cuba’s government is once again cracking down again on a new generation of Cuban artists and intellectuals, portraying them as lackeys of foreign powers.
It is against this backdrop that Padilla’s words are again being spoken as part of Padilla’s Shadow, a project of MSI and 27N, which protest against state censorship of artistic freedom in the country.
Twenty Cuban intellectuals and artists, including Hamlet Lavastida and Cuban poets Néstor Díaz de Villegas and Katherine Bisquet , will today livestream a choral reading of Padilla’s confession under the direction of Cuban American artist Coco Fusco.
Many of the project’s participants have told Fusco that they are shocked by the text, that it has provoked bouts of anxiety, sleeplessness and nightmares.
Néstor Díaz de Villegas said, “In stark contrast to History Will Absolve Me, the self-defence speech that Fidel Castro gave in court in 1953, Heberto Padilla indicted history by incriminating himself with his auto-da-fe. His confession is the definitive comedy of errors of the Cuban Revolution.”
Hamlet Lavastida, who has designed the commemorative project, said, “Heberto Padilla’s confession represents the irruption of Sovietism in Cuban cultural life. In order to create ‘perfect literature’ it became necessary to purge from the creator everything that was antagonistic to the great disciplinary story of the State.
“Skepticism, disenchantment, cosmopolitanism and existentialism had to be extirpated. This form of cultural repression was undoubtedly and absolutely novel in the Latin American cosmos. Never before had State Communism been so effectively virulent within Latin American culture. This was its contribution, its regrettable contribution, one contribution that is ongoing.”
Katherine Bisquet said, “The confession is disturbing. It plunges you into a desolate time, not because of its vitality, because of its existential nullity.”
“Those words tell me emphatically that we have had to stop feeling everything we could feel, which is to say we had to fake madness in order to survive the real induced madness, the madness from which we do not return.”
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”115928″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]In the middle of the night on 28 November, 32 Cuban artists emerged from a five-hour meeting with officials of the Ministry of Culture. They had called on the Cuban government to refrain from harassing independent artists, to stop treating dissent as a crime, and to cease its violence against the San Isidro Movement, a group of artists and activists that had staged a hunger strike to protest the arrest and sentencing of a young rapper. The news of the encounter was shared with a crowd of about 300 artists, writers, actors and filmmakers who had stood outside for more than 12 hours to pressure ministers to open their doors. Nothing like this had ever happened before on the island.
Cubans may complain about food shortages and other restrictions on their lives, but members of elite professions rarely stick their necks out to defend anyone that the state labels a dissident. It is unheard of to exhort Cuban officials to listen to their most vocal critics in person. Although the artists of the San Isidro Movement were known to many, harassment of the group had not generated a major outcry. But in the past three years the Cuban government has issued laws imposing restrictions on independent art, music, filmmaking, and journalism, incurring the anger of many creators. When they saw live streamed videos of the weakened hunger strikers being attacked by security agents disguised as health workers, they decided that enough was enough.
“This is the first time that artists and intellectuals in Cuba are challenging the constitution,” said Cuban historian Rafael Rojas in a radio broadcast. “Their emphasis on freedom of expression and association challenges the legal, constitutional, and institutional limits of the Cuban political system.” In an interview with journalist Jorge Ramos, artist Tania Bruguera said the uprising started because, “a group of Cuban artists have gotten tired of putting up with being abused, harassed and pursued by police because of their political views and for their independence from state institutions.”
Within 48 hours, the Cuban government began to renege on verbal promises made at the meeting not to harass the protesters. President Diaz-Canel, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, Minister of Culture Alpidio Alonso, and Casa de las Americas director Abel Prieto all tweeted defamatory statements about the protesters. Cuban state television aired several programmes lambasting the San Isidro Movement, Tania Bruguera, and journalist Carlos Manuel Alvarez as mercenaries paid by the USA to destabilise the revolution. Bruguera and Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara were threatened by state security and detained for walking outside. Police blocked off and guarded the street where the Ministry of Culture is located. Several activists and independent journalists were placed under house arrest. Police shut down the headquarters of INSTAR, Tania Bruguera’s International Institute of Artivism. The San Isidro Movement was accused on Cuban television of breaking the windows of a hard currency store, but it was soon revealed that the man who committed the act was an agent provocateur working for Cuban police.
The protests come at a moment when the Cuban government has been shaken by the colossal loss of tourism revenue during the pandemic, the dwindling support from Venezuela, and the tightening of the US trade embargo during the Trump years. It was a sign of weakness that officials ceded to the demand for a face-to-face encounter with protesters.
But the state’s reaction is not surprising. Cultural Ministry officials are expected to respond to the demands of the Communist Party and State Security, not to citizens organised outside state sanctioned organisations. The slanderous campaigns on state television and social media are intimidation tactics aimed at preventing more Cubans from rising up. And it is also not unusual for the Cuban government to clamp down on dissent during economic downturns, as happened after the failed 10-million-ton harvest in 1971 and after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
What is extraordinary is that young Cuban intellectuals and artists have chosen to air their grievances publicly and collectively, and to support each other regardless of divergent political opinions. They have not been seduced by promises of favourable treatment from the state in exchange for silence, nor are they succumbing to the self-doubt that police states are so adept at inculcating in the citizenry. Most importantly, despite persistent police harassment, they are not giving up. They have adopted a name–27N–in commemoration of the day they first came together. A few members of the San Isidro Movement are part of 27N, but the group also includes representatives of other cultural fields that participated in the mass protest. 27N has formed subcommittees to attend to various tasks, from media relations to visual documentation to legal consultations.
27N continues to prepare for the next session with officials. They posted an initial list of demands in an online petition: political freedom for all Cubans, the release of the rapper Denis Solís, the cessation of state repression of artists and journalists who think differently, the cessation of defamatory media campaigns against independent artists, journalists and activists because of their political views, and the right to and respect for independence. On 27 November, Cuban officials promised a second meeting, but on 4 December the Ministry of Culture terminated the dialogue due to an “insolent” email from the protesters, who had requested to have a lawyer present and asked that harassment against them cease. Instead, the Ministry convened a meeting with small group of artists that were deemed to be loyal to the revolution. A 27N meeting at the Institute of Artivismo (INSTAR) in Havana.
The retreat may have been a result of orders from higher ranking officials as famous Cuban folk singer Silvio Rodriguez suggested. Rodriguez, considered by many to be an apologist for the regime, nonetheless understands that the officials in the cultural ministry were engaging in a defensive, though morally illegitimate, political move.
It is not surprising that prominent but independently minded Cuban artists and intellectuals such as singers Carlos Varela and Haydee Milanés have voiced support for the protesters. But it was nothing short of astonishing that the regional chapters of the Union of Cuban Artists and Writers (La Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba, UNEAC) and the Hermanos Saíz Brigade on the Island of Pines posted a message of solidarity with the San Isidro Movement on 7 December on Facebook, decrying the Cuban government’s defamatory campaigns, writing on Facebook, “We will not advance toward a dialogue and mutual respect by resorting to dismissive insults.” Cuba’s political culture does not embrace public expressions of dissent within its ranks, nor do regional representatives of organization tend to speak out about activities in the capital.
Changes in Cuban culture played a significant role in the November 27 protest. For the young Cubans who rose up in rebellion, their smartphones are weapons they use both to inform and defend themselves. The legalisation of cell phone possession in 2008 and the opening of phone-based internet access in 2018 utterly transformed Cuban public discourse. Young Cubans use Facebook as an alternative public sphere in which to share news, air grievances, galvanise support for causes and cast aspersions on their leaders. Official state media has been upstaged. Cuba’s leaders are being thrust into arguments with disgruntled citizens on social media – and their responses are undignified to say the least. The Cuban government tries to block access to opposition media, but young Cubans fight back with VPN networks and mirror sites. In her daily podcast, Yoani Sánchez explains to listeners how to use a VPN. Dozens of independent journalism publications and streaming channels have blossomed on the internet, providing Cubans with news and views that would never appear in state media.
Communication between Cuban exiles and islanders is fluid and constant, signalling a complete breakdown of the state’s effort to drive a wedge between those inside and outside the country. Cubans have grown more emboldened by being able to see what others like them do and by witnessing what the state does to other Cubans. WhatsApp chats facilitate the creation of organisations based on special interests, including Cuban doctors on medical missions who share information about the oppressive labour conditions and constant surveillance they experience. The island now has independent animal rights groups, LGBTQ groups, feminist groups and anti-racist groups, all of which have organised smaller protests in recent years using social media.
The Cuban government continues to dismiss all forms of dissent on the island as the works of mercenaries trained, financed and mobilised by the United States government as part of a long-term regime change strategy. More than a few progressives outside Cuba parrot that rhetoric or at least feel obligated to prioritise their condemnation of US policies over concerns about Cubans’ civil rights. Many Cubans and Cuban-Americans, myself included, would argue that it is a mistake to rationalise or diminish the Cuban government’s repression of civil liberties and blame the embargo for the government’s stance toward its citizens. While USAID has awarded $16,569,889 for Cuba pro-democracy efforts since 2017, including financing of some of the opposition media, not all Cuban media beyond the island government’s control was invented by the CIA, nor is all Cubans’ opposition to their government a product of American meddling. Cubans do not need the United States to “help” them develop critical views of their government. “Anger rather than fear is the widespread sentiment among Cubans—a constant, built-in discomfort,” writes Carlos Manuel Alvarez. “We’re fed up with blind, doctrinaire zeal. Navigating Communism is like trying to cross a cobblestone road in high heels, trying not to fall, feigning normalcy. Some of us end up twisting our ankles.”
Most complaints of police repression, domestic violence, animal mistreatment, food shortages and poor public services in Cuba come from ordinary Cuban citizens who post their grievances on Facebook. No American planes are dropping leaflets from the sky to provide instructions. Cuban exiles send billions of dollars to relatives and friends each year, and much of that money pays for cell phones, internet, computers and other tech equipment that allow islanders to send and receive information. Important opposition media outlets, such as 14yMedio and CiberCuba, are entirely privately financed. Tania Bruguera and Yoani Sanchez have made a point of not accepting any funding from the US government, and savvy musicians and filmmakers use crowd funding campaigns to support their projects. The bulk of US State Department funding for Cuba-related activities stays in Miami, where media companies, publishers and cultural promoters can operate freely.
Cuban citizens may have limited legal rights, but they do not lack agency; they choose to apply for foreign grants or to work for media outlets funded by American sources. I do not make these points because I favour US-backed regime change – I am arguing for a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics that are leading to more frequent, more visible and more organised protests in Cuba. I am also arguing against the Cuban government’s position that does not differentiate between a CIA-financed assassin and an independent journalist who writes a brilliant essay about Cuba’s public health system, or an artist who recites poetry outside a police station.
The recent confrontation at the Ministry of Culture raised the hopes of many Cubans around the world. It also generated skepticism from those who say that dialogue with the Cuban government is futile, and that artists don’t have the knowhow to bring about political change. It’s worth recalling that the Charter 77 civic movement in former Czechoslovakia started in response to the arrest of a psychedelic rock band. The myth of Cuba as a political utopia is the revolution’s jugular: it draws tourist dollars and foreign aid, but its claim to truth is undermined by the harsh lived realities of 11 million citizens. Cuban artists and intellectuals have been enjoined to sustain that myth for 60 years. Their collective refusal to do now is a clear sign that change is on the horizon.
Coco Fusco is an artist and writer and the author of Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba(Tate Publications, 2015). She is a professor at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
This article was originally publishing in the North American Congress on Latin America here. Some minor alterations have been made to conform to Index house style[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Cuban artists Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara and Yanelys Nuñez Leyva, members of the Index-award winning Museum of Dissidence
Yanelys Nuñez Leyva and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, members of the 2018 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award-winning Cuban artist collective the Museum of Dissidence, have been putting themselves on the line in the fight for free expression in Cuba, from being harassed by the authorities to their numerous arrests for protesting Decree 349, a vague law intended to severely limit artistic freedom in the country.
Cubans voted overwhelmingly for a new constitution that upholds the one-party state while claiming to bring about some economic and social reform, but the Museum of Dissidence took a more critical stance to the referendum. Index caught up with Nuñez Leyva and Otero Alcántara to talk about the current situation in Cuba and what they’ve been up to recently.
Index on Censorship: Why did the Museum of Dissidence and its members come out so strongly against the new Cuban constitution?
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara: The constitution imposed by the regime is an aberration that goes against the freedom of the Cuban and does not represent us as Cubans, intellectuals or humans. The Magna Carta should not be written to control and cut my freedom, it must represent a balance of citizen welfare especially for the immediate future.
Index: Decree 349 will see all artists prohibited from operating in public places without prior approval from the Ministry of Culture. How does this impact the work you do?
Otero Alcántara:The campaign against the 349 was a great victory, the regime had to admit that it was wrong. The country’s leaders had to face and make political moves to placate countless artists, intellectuals and ordinary people concerned about Cuban culture and who joined in the demands to the regime.
Given this, the 349 helped to make visible all the repression and censorship that the government has been carrying out against culture and art for 60 years. As a legacy, we left the movement of San Isidro, a group of artists and intellectuals that has the mission to overcome all the inhumane repression of the regime, to be vigilant and proactive over freedom of Cuban art and culture. The most important project of the post-campaign movement 349 will be the Observatory of Cultural Rights in Cuba.
Index: What sort of training did Yanelys Nuñez Leyva receive while in Prague as part of the Freedom of Expression Awards Fellowship and how will it be useful in Museum of Dissidence?
Yanelys Nuñez Leyva: The training covered tools I can use for work, such as video editing. It also offered insight into new topics such as feminism, a social movement that is not yet as strong in Cuba but should be.
Index: What did Museum of Dissidence do while in Mexico at the Oslo Freedom Forum and how will this help further your cause?
Otero Alcántara: The MDC joined several independent institutions in Cuba such as the Matraca Project, or the Endless Poetry Festival, so that each one, from his or her experience, would demand freedom of expression for all Cubans in a forum.
In all the presentations, we emphasised the unjust detention of two Cuban musicians, Maikel Castillo and Pupito, who are imprisoned for opposing Decree 349.
Index: How did attending Libertycon in Washington DC reinforce or re-inspire your fight for artistic freedom in Cuba?
Luis Manuel: All these events we have been a part of, such as Forum 2000, or the Index award, or the residency in Metal, have helped to create a platform where contemporary art ceases to be an ornament in a house but an exercise of pressure and a true link of change within Cuba.
Index: Although nearly 87% of voters in the referendum voted yes to the new constitution, there was an unprecedented display of ballot-box dissent, with more than 700,000 people voting no. What do you think this is a result of and do you think this signifies changing times for the Cuban population and government?
Otero Alcántara: In a totalitarian regime like the one in Cuba, where it controls all the information, international observers and legal transparency systems are not allowed, those percentages are strategies of the regime to simulate a less critical state than the one that exists. Those numbers are a joke but the interesting thing is to see how the political opposition handles that ‘no.’ Making ordinary people see that they are not alone, that other thousands of people feel and voted just like them, is something that contributes to encouraging dissent.
Index: What makes you remain so steadfast in your fight for artistic expression in Cuba when the oppression of artists continues, including the recent arrest of members of the Museum of Dissidence?
Otero Alcántara: Love binds me, wherever I want to escape, from the shelter of the pillow in the darkness of my room; going through a luxurious hotel in Miami or in a bucolic countryside in the UK, the suffering of Cuba and the human is shaking my head and the only way I can free myself from that ghost is to fight and know that I am doing something.
Last December when the government promised to implement the 349, I felt that my spirit was imprisoned in the body of a regime, so I took responsibility for the life of my body through a hunger strike to the regime. It would be they who would decide if I was still breathing my body or not but my spirit would be free.
Luckily, we got a reaction from the government. They appeared on Cuban television, and that was because of the union that was achieved among all the artists.
Index: What are the main goals that you’ll be working toward throughout 2019?
Otero Alcántara: 2019 is the year of the official state-sponsored Havana biennial and a year of preparation for the #00 Biennial of 2020, which are two interesting scenarios for the future of Cuban culture right now. The other thing is to continue working for overall freedom in Cuba.
Index: How has the Museum of Dissidence benefitted from its time on the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards Fellowship?
Otero Alcántaral: Being Index Fellows was one of the best things that has happened to the museum in its history as a work of art and an institution. It was a prize that gave visibility to the Musem of Dissidence and gave us thousands of contacts. It gave us protection against the repression of the regime and its discredit toward political art in Cuba. But above all we met people like Perla Hinojosa and the rest of the Index team, also Mohamed Sameh from ECRF, Julie Tribault, the promoters of the Metal artistic residency and another large number of projects and platforms that, with their example, have encouraged us to continue the struggle, especially in the moments of greatest loneliness.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1583501159250-00b68107-bcde-1″ taxonomies=”7874″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Cuban artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara being arrested in August 2018
Index on Censorship calls for the immediate release of Cuban artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, a member of the 2018 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award-winning Museum of Dissidence. This is the second time he has been arrested in two weeks.
Otero Alcantara was performing a homage to Daniel Llorente, which involved a footrace with American flags outside his home. Llorente demonstrated with the American flag in 2017 during Havana’s annual May Day celebrations. Otero Alcantara was detained along with two other artists and his whereabouts is currently unknown.
The head of Cuba’s National Council of Visual Arts, Norma Rodriguez, told Reuters in a press conference that Otero Alcantara “is an activist, not an artist”.
Michel Matus, an artist who captured Otero Alcantara’s arrest on video, wrote a statement on the harassment and threats he faced for filming and for being part of the campaign against Decree 349, a law that criminalises independent artists and places severe restrictions on cultural activity not authorised by the state. Matus was called into a police station to show the deeds to his home to prove ownership. He was interrogated for over nine hours about the campaign, his family and Otero Alcantara.
“Artists should not be criminalised for freely expressing themselves,” said Index on Censorship CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “The Cuban government should immediately release Luis Manuel and other jailed artists and end its repressive intimidation tactics.” [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1555338145410-bdabf8fe-1d1a-7″ taxonomies=”7874″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
