The kidnapping of Cuban intellectuals and artists, by Castro

55 years of Words to the Intellectuals are met, the pamphlet resulting from meetings at the National Library during the last three Saturdays in June 1961 (on 16, 23 and 30) to which Fidel Castro called the writers and artists after the commotion caused by the prohibition of documentary PM.

Those meetings became a wordy monologue Commander, although was trying to be relaxed, could not hide his disgust at having to devote his time to discipline annoying writers and artists, with its absurdities, had just not obey the orders of the aferradamente Stalinists of the Popular Socialist Party (PSP) metamorphosing commissioners.

So to not dwell on something that has already lasted too, gun on the table and Alfredo Guevara at his side, the Maximum Leader, imposed without restrictions the rules of the game: "Within the Revolution, everything; outside the revolution, nothing."

Attendees fascinated few, unwary or fear the most, just hit upon to applaud the words of the Chief. And yet the Cuban culture is paying the consequences.

The Commander was ambiguous enough not specify the exact boundary between what was inside or outside the revolution. The curators take care jealously to demarcate the border in each particular case, with thick crayon censors and always wide margin in favor of the paranoia of the head or any of its many chieftains, more or less severe and cults: Alfredo Guevara, Edith Garcia Buchaca, the Pavón and Quesada, "Papito" Serguera, Ana Lasalle, Fernando Portuondo, Roberto Fernandez Retamar, Carlos Aldana, Abel Prieto, Iroel Sanchez, Luis Morlote, or Prima Ballerina herself in Chief, Alicia Alonso, lieutenants who does only afew days, he used his influence to prevent the presentation at the Book Saturday memories living abroad dancer Carlos Acosta.

For several years, some intellectual figureheads of the organic --intelectuales dictatorship, as often llamados--, Abel Prieto, strive to explain that the ordinance Commander last Saturday of June 1961 was not so strict and left much field of artistic creativity, as they say , was not exactly "out of the revolution , " which is as recalled and cited, but "against the revolution." As if that results vary somewhat! Could one be "out of the revolution" without being considered an enemy and treated as such?

Over half a century of aberrated "cultural policies" have generated an intellectual environment, where in addition to certain rebellious poses not go beyond where it says danger and occasional storm in a glass of water, prevails, as in the rest of the Cuban society, fear, hypocrisy, simulation and double standards .

The diffuse boundary between the inside and the outside of the revolution has enabled the regime, in addition to censorship, prohibition and ostracism of the rebels, recovery after death (cases of Lezama and Piñera), coaxing certain exiled authors, and also co - opt for the system, provided they do not pass thread, some critics as filmmakers Sara Gómez, Fernando Perez and Tomas Gutierrez Alea --a who Alfredo Guevara, his main harasser, called cynically, after his death, as "a difficult revolutionary" - the represaliados the Decade Grey those who have been granted as a sign of his rehabilitation the National Literature Prize (Lina de Feria, Pablo Armando Fernandez, Anton Arrufat, Cesar Lopez) the reluctantly tolerated singer - songwriter Pablo Milanes and Carlos Varela, writers Leonardo Padura, Pedro Juan Gutierrez, etc.

Already not remember the very faithful Miguel Barnet, now president of the National Union of Writers Cuban Artists (UNEAC), when the lycanthropic pack fell on him to write the song Rachel, instead of something like Biography of a Cimarron, that it was useful to the revolution?

When they talk about "cultural policies of the revolution" one can not help but evoke, among other barbarities, attempts to implement socialist realism in film and literature, closing Monday Revolution and Ediciones El Puente, exodus of the best writers and artists, the Padilla case, gray 70s, the time when the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) were the ones rewarded literary contests and poets were forced to write detective novels where the heroes were the agentones Interior Ministry (MININT) and informers of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) ...

That is the art that wanted herd within the revolution, understood as sheep pen. Fortunately, despite many mediocre and subdued, despite the commissioners, almost miraculously, Cuban culture has managed to not perish.

Originally published in CubaNe