The Impossible Path of Independent Initiatives in Cuba
HAVANA TIMES – In the last few days, I’ve been thinking back on those meetings of the Havana Times collaborators that used to be held in Havana every six months.
It was an important social gathering for me, and a temperature check on intellectual thought in Cuba.
As I already commented in another post, the meetings were held at different venues; sometimes nature formed an inescapable backdrop and a gift. We’d have a pot-luck meal where everyone contributed something, and the work session would take place amid jokes and laughter.
Those were happy times, when we believed we were participating in the construction of a budding collective future, even in the shadows of the official exclusion and without knowing from what direction that yearned-for change might arrive.
Even back then, we were all very clear that things were in bad shape.
I remember one time, when editor Circles Robinson stated that a common opinion among the readers was that we criticized a lot but never proposed any alternatives.
That commentary was received with sarcasm. Because even without having directly experienced repression, we all knew that any active participation in the destiny of Cuba was impossible.
Havana Times embodied the principle of that impossibility. We were a project with no official recognition, not accredited to report, interview, or obtain access to certain events.
We simply existed, since thank God, the site hadn’t been blocked by the media censor.
However, what part of all our opinions or ideas could even be attempted?
I make a count now of all the projects I conceived at that time, and the result is a view of the iron hermeticism of a system that won’t allow any modifications to be implemented, no matter how slight – even if the key proponents are from civil society, and their organization has been spontaneously generated.
I was a participant and witness to a number of artistic projects that evaporated due to the lack of resources, the distance and eternal dysfunctionality of public transport, plus the obstacles to effective publicity… not to mention fatigue and exodus, a fatal constant that makes every attempt very fragile, like building on top of a swamp.
It’s even worse if the project comes to take roots in the community; the more popular it is, the more suspicion it generates, and the quicker the voracious wolves of officialdom are to pounce on it.
Like the censorship of the Rap festivals, and a decade later of the Rotilla Festival of Alternative Music, followed by the Poetry Without End event, and Puños Arriba (“Fists up”). We artists and performers who haven’t been officially sanctioned understand we’ve been banned from coexistence with government institutions.
Then came the naïve idea of creating a truly independent Art – self-managed, self-promoted. and based in private homes.
That’s how the 00 Havana Biennia took place, the idea of art curator Yanelis Nuñez and the controversial visual artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara. The result was a festival of alternative culture that demonstrated the web of artistic vocation, and the synergy that can be activated among so many creative people who live in Cuba.
Nonetheless, the joy was very short-lived. The government response to our audacity was to post Decree #349, in the Official Gazette, whose provisions were aimed at rooting out any attempt to exist as artists at the margins of the institutions.
The blow was so conclusive that it triggered a protest of eleven artists in which I also took part. This, in turn, gave rise to the San Isidro Movement. Banned and excommunicated, we went on to be considered part of the so-called opposition, even though the scandal unleashed by Decree 349 also led to repercussions among artists within the official institutions. The final result of all the protest was a decision not to implement the decree. However, one thing was left clearer than ever: there’s no independent art in Cuba, just as there’s no space to create any autonomous event, even the most innocent.
One example was the November 27, 2020, protest of hundreds of artists and supporters in front of the Ministry of Culture. Another, the animal protection movement’s protests in front of Zoonosis and the Agriculture Ministry, demanding a real law for animal protection, and to allow the protectors to be part of the construction of an empathic and humane society.
The official reaction to those demands displayed an absolute refusal to dialogue. Later, the government tries to clone those civic groups and initiatives, presenting them as falsely legitimate proposals, but with their scope diluted by “implosion,” or having them only able to act in a limited way and under their strict control.
In summary, the only viable roads for dreamers are giving up, going into exile, or retreating inwards.
And if there were still any doubts left, the direct proposals of the youth, such as those that were aired publicly on July 11, 2021, ended in a merciless witch-hunt, bogus trials, and long prison sentences.
I ask myself if the Havana Times readers who once considered us passively critical journalists have followed the unwinding of these events and understood the fate of citizen initiatives in our country.
Read more from the diary of Veronica Vega here on Havana Times.