Cuban Culture: Our Shield and Sword

By Alejandra Garcia on October 20, 2021 from Havana

Cuban youth performing Peter and the Wolf. photo: Bill Hackwell

Every October 20, for almost four decades, Cuba has been marking its National Culture Day as a tribute to the date on which La Bayamesa, our National Anthem, was sung for the first time in Bayamo city, Granma Province. This year, the country celebrated it under exceptional conditions, amid the restrictions imposed due to the pandemic, the effects of the U.S. blockade, and at a time when the arts sector is the main target of the political manipulation campaigns being generated from the North.

The last two years have been very hard for the island due to the shortage of medicines and food, the confinement, and the deadly disease that has already left more than 8,000 people dead and more than 941,000 infected.

The western far-right, especially Miami’s extremists, took advantage of this scenario to promote hatred against Cuba and its people and has done so through social networks, in the digital sphere, and small groups of Cuban pseudo-artists, on the ground.

In recent days, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel dismantled this dirty game and its intentions, ways of acting, and lies. “We are not naive. It is all too clear that our adversaries are trying, by all means, to provoke a social explosion, and they have chosen a particularly difficult moment for the country to induce provocations,” he said.

In his remarks, Diaz-Canel reaffirmed without a muscle trembling on his face that “preserving, under the worst of attacks, independence and national sovereignty will continue to be the priority for those who feel revolutionary and patriotic, even if these words are considered obsolete in certain circles.

And he added that “the only ‘obsolete’ thing is to depend on or be humiliated by the most powerful.”

Today, as never before, Fidel’s words remain alive: “Our culture is the shield and the sword of the nation”. It is that core of identity that we treasure, that protects us from disintegrating influences, as writers Cintio Vitier and José Lezama Lima would say.

Abel Prieto, president of the “Jose Marti” Cultural Society, pointed out that the pandemic and its consequences of all kinds limited the people’ s participation in cultural processes and the social projection of writers, artists, art instructors and promoters, as well as their organizations and institutions.

However, culture was not orphaned nor abandoned despite the recession we lived through due to COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the closing of theaters, cinemas, and concert venues.

“Culture among us remained alive, unlike what happened there where neoliberalism reigns supreme. In Cuba demonized by the machinery of lies of the media and social networks, the country’s leadership has continued to support creators and institutions,” said Prieto, who was minister from 1997 to March 2012.

In the past two years, the island protected especially unsubsidized musicians and performing artists, whose income came from performing in public spaces. “Cuba did not forget its artists, despite its wounded body of ailments and shortages,” as Diaz-Canel noted.

No matter how hard the circumstances, the island will always have as a flag the words pronounced by Fidel in 1993, during the most bitter days of the Special Period: “Culture will always be the first one to be saved”

Source: Resumen Latinoamericano-English