By José Ernesto Nováez Guerrero on January 31, 2021
The events that took place on 27 January at the door of the Ministry of Culture (Mincult) are a repetition, on a smaller scale, of the same script applied two months earlier in the same place. This time it was a smaller and much less of a varied group.
In contrast to the plurality of positions and aspirations of November, all the participants were now politically aligned around a discourse more or less openly adverse to Cuban cultural institutionalism. They were accompanied by a group of journalists and communicators working for media that are clearly funded to oppose the Cuban state.
The insistence on the Mincult, to the detriment of other ministries much more related to their demands, gives an idea of the importance of this Ministry in the scheme of denial of the current social order. The refusal to accept the dialogue offered on multiple occasions, and broadcast on direct video by themselves, shows that the intention behind this move was essentially media-related.
The attempt to capitalize politically on the events of November 27 leads to constantly forcing scenarios of tension that make conflict situations possible. The medium-term objective seems to be to place this type of event in the national public debate on a regular basis, to force institutions into a long chain of explanations and counter-demonstrations that wear them down, and to give symbolic legitimacy to young emerging figures, with works still in the process of maturing, and others without any work at all.
The aim is to channel legitimate artistic concerns, which are often related to the material shortages of the present, to the inadequacy of the institutions, etc., and to take them more and more to positions with a direct political meaning.
The underlying strategy is to progressively empty Cuban institutions of meaning, not just the cultural ones, until the state reaches a crisis situation where change can be forced, either by violence or by a profound crisis of functioning that renders the apparatus inoperative.
This is not paranoia, it is history. This was the scheme that was applied against Eastern European societies and more particularly against the USSR. In her magnificent book The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, researcher Frances Stonor Saunders demonstrates how the cultural field was and is a privileged battle space.
Socialism is realized through its institutions. In the heat of the revolutionary process, new institutions emerge through which the political will of the revolutionary process is channeled. Revolutionary institutions are the result, on the one hand, of popular demands and, on the other, of political will. This does not mean, of course, that they are eternal or that they always fulfill their function correctly. Some tend, over time, to become sick with inefficiency and bureaucracy. Others become meaningless.
The duty of the revolutionary government is to subject the functioning of institutions to a permanent review. Transform practices, smash bureaucrats and bring the institutions to a functioning that truly responds to the needs of the social sectors they represent. And to do so through permanent dialogue with the people, subject to their critical control.
But this necessary exercise has nothing to do with a total negation of revolutionary institutionality. Wanting a body to function better has nothing to do with disregarding it. The strategy that is being pursued today against the Mincult is in a spirit of de-legitimization and disregard. This is why it is not in their interest to engage in a dialogue, but rather to generate crisis situations. It is more interested in spectacle than in words.
The experience of the USSR shows that, with all the political mistakes and social problems, the Soviet peoples lived better under socialism than under the neoliberal model that succeeded it. And not because they consumed more, socialism cannot be a quantitative problem, but because they had more opportunities for human development, they distributed the wealth that was generated much better and the people’s life expectancy and quality of life was much higher.
This is without idealizing. The USSR had big and profound problems, as does any real project, and we Cubans have learned and must continue to learn many lessons from that process. The main one, perhaps, for the functioning of institutions: bureaucracy is the enemy of socialism.
The interesting thing about the process in the USSR was that it succeeded in bringing broad sections of culture and society to act against their own interests. This is a lesson we must not lose sight of.
Nor is it a question of demonizing non-institutional spaces. In a rich civil society that is connected to the world, it is normal that in addition to what can be gestated institutionally, there are numerous parallel projects. The institution’s duty is to accompany and support them whenever possible. They are part of the cultural and spiritual wealth of the nation. But we must know how to differentiate between the wheat and the chaff.
The attack on the Mincult is essentially an attack on the sovereign and socialist project of the country. Hence the appeal to vague formulas, to confused political claims that seem to ask for a lot and do not commit to anything. The concepts are loaded. To ask for freedom of expression, without specifying the nature and forms of this freedom, is to appeal to the abstraction of liberal representations, behind which there is always the logic of capitalism.
There is much to heal in the body of culture. But the solution will not come from the speculators of the scandal, but from the thousands of Cubans willing to engage in an inclusive dialogue to think critically about the better country we all want.
The refusal to accept the dialogue offered on multiple occasions and broadcast live on video by the Cubans themselves, shows that the intention behind this move was essentially media-related.
Revolutionary institutionality is the result of popular demands on the one hand, and political will on the other.
In a rich civil society that is connected to the world, it is normal that in addition to what can be gestated institutionally, there are numerous parallel projects. The institution’s duty is to accompany and support them whenever possible.
Source: In Defense of Humanity, translation Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau