By José Ramón Cabañas Rodríguez on May 31, 2021
Aldo López Gavilán. Foto: Archivo
From early May 2021 to the first days of June, the third anniversary of the Festival Artes de Cuba (Arts of Cuba Festival) will be celebrated at the Kennedy Center[1], the most important cultural institution in the US capital. During those days in 2018, a delegation of 427 artists, intellectuals, and promoters of Cuban culture took part in a complex program of presentations ranging from the visual arts and cinema to theater and ballet. More than 100 of those Cubans traveled to Washington, D.C., from their current places of residence outside the island.
A year in advance, specialists from the US entity and various cultural institutions in Cuba were weaving a dream, which was finally guaranteed by exquisite logistics that had to cover the transfer and installation of monumental plastic works, the projection of subtitles, rehearsals, transportation, and also the management of visas for more than 250 people in consulates outside Cuba, as the State Department office in Havana was no longer providing services.
During the two weeks set aside for various events, with one day dedicated entirely to ballet, more than 100,000 people enjoyed the show in one way or another, while around 25,000 bought tickets for indoor venues. Every day of the first two weeks ended with Cuban nights on the top floor of the majestic building, where a unique mix of artists, critics, local personalities, foreign residents, and diplomats gathered.
This mix of intense experiences was what the Center’s President, Deborah Rutter, described from the outset as “a great cultural celebration,” in which perhaps the main achievement was that in the dialogue between admirers and the admired, there was not a single explicit reference to political issues, either for or against the bilateral relationship. Nevertheless, there were acknowledgments of the obvious, such as when jazz musician Arturo O’Farrill interrupted his performance to approach the microphone and say, “The Cuban authorities deserve credit for establishing schools of culture everywhere, and long before a child recognizes his or her talent, he or she is already in one of those schools,” adding, “In the United States, we believe that other countries have needs, when in reality it is we who have needs.”
During those days, ordinary people and experts, without the need for translation, gathered around the stages to consume messages of the culture of a country that, following Martí’s wisdom, had experienced all kinds of influences in order to build its own image for the world. The mutual influences and joint constructions between equals were evident. The faces of young students will never be forgotten when, during the screening of a short documentary on the life and work of the great Alicia Alonso, they were surprised by the news that she was there in the audience.
The Kennedy Center specialists had been organizing international events and themed festivals for years, but when Artes de Cuba came to an end, many of them were left with the impression that they had helped build something unique and unrepeatable. Not only were the venues packed and tickets sold out, but the audience had also built a personal and direct relationship with actors, dancers, filmmakers, painters, experts, and very simple and friendly people who were also very proud of their roots.
To further enhance the impact, Google provided the conditions and technical resources to broadcast live to Cuba a small part of what was happening in each session, extending the stage to 11 million Cubans on the island, at least symbolically.
Despite the risk of being proven wrong by archival data, many observers at the time claimed that it was the largest Cuban cultural event ever held abroad. Whether this is true or not, the fact is that it was not an isolated event.
In previous years, despite the unilateral coercive measures imposed by the United States against Cuba, Cuban artists and intellectuals had traveled to that country and welcomed their counterparts to the island, either as personal guests, participants in official events, or as part of institutional exchanges. Most Cubans who went to the United States did so literally for the love of art, given the impossibility of charging fees for their performances.
But what was unique about Artes de Cuba was that it was a massive presentation of Cuban culture at a time when the political conditions were at their worst. It took place under the Donald Trump administration, when one measure after another was being taken to affect bilateral relations, limit exchanges between ordinary citizens, and establish a negative opinion matrix against the island. How was this happening? Was it a sign of the supposed freedom of expression that the US boasts about, or an inevitable contradiction with official policy?
But this was not an isolated incident. There had been at least one other significant precedent, also under Trump’s shadow. In April 2017, a delegation of 150 Cubans living on the island traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana, to participate as a guest country in the largest and most important jazz festival in the United States. The Cuban musicians, accompanied by artisans and other artists, mingled with the local and visiting public for a fortnight. When the Conga de los Hoyos de Santiago de Cuba let loose its sound at the opening of the event, it made everyone forget their nationality, but at the same time reminded everyone why the nations of the Caribbean arc and the peoples of the southern United States move their bodies in a similar way to specific rhythms.
The festival takes place in a vast space with various stages. The guest country has its own covered tent at the center of everything that happens there. It was a special spectacle when a live performance by Cuban groups began and a large crowd moved toward the same spot without warning, but feeling a great attraction. When the music stopped, the same crowd returned to their previous positions as if awakening from a kind of hypnosis. New Orleans was unknowingly reciprocating the welcome that Cuban artists gave every year at the Havana Jazz Festival to the talented American musicians from that city.
Also in April, but the previous year, a delegation from the United States Presidential Commission on the Arts and Humanities had traveled to the Cuban capital. Led by its president and including among its members the secretary of the prestigious Smithsonian Institution[2], the delegation set out to identify and expand channels of communication between the creators of both countries and to promote their presentation on each other’s stages. With no time left to iron out a multitude of details, the US officials tried to secure Cuba’s presence as a guest country at the Folklife Festival organized every summer by the Smithsonian at the National Mall in the US capital, which attracts an average of 1.5 million visitors over a 10-day period. Although this participation could not materialize, the Commission awarded one of its 2016 prizes to Lizt Alfonso’s Cuban dance company, taking into account its artistic achievements and the training of new talent, at a ceremony held at the White House in November.
There were countless performances by Cuban artists in US auditoriums during those years. Important institutions in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and other cultural centers in the United States welcomed dance, music, theater, and the visual arts from the island. US creators and institutions continued to support bilateral rapprochement efforts, even when political conditions were no longer conducive to doing so.
A significant moment in the bilateral program developed by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez during his participation in the high-level segment of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in November 2018 was a broad exchange with important figures of US culture, which took place in New York City. Far from any formality, the attendees once again reviewed achievements and expectations, confident that events such as the annual Cuban Film Festival in that city are spaces for rapprochement that must be defended.
Even in a situation of further deterioration of bilateral relations between Cuba and the United States in November 2019, also within the framework of the UNGA activities, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla had a wide-ranging exchange of views with US cultural managers, exploring, among other initiatives, the feasibility of establishing binational structures that, among other things, would help creators on both sides to overcome the effect of those regulations that prevent better relations and promote the work of all on an equal footing.
It seems that these events weighed heavily on the dreams of those who sought to sever all ties between the two nations and were determined to make exchanges even more difficult at any cost. At that time, it was already an ordeal for Cuban artists to obtain visas to fulfill commitments in the United States, while it was increasingly difficult for American creators to find a seat on flights reduced by the White House time and again until they were almost non-existent, with Cuba as the only destination.
Then, in the only US city where politicians make their careers and fortunes by attacking Cuba, the local government council passed a resolution prohibiting local shows (basically cabarets and temporary stages) from inviting Cuban artists who had “ties to the regime.” Despite being the capital of anti-Cuban hatred, Miami had gradually become, over almost 30 years, a destination for Cuban musicians, who were attracted by an audience that demanded the quality of the culture they had known on the island and could not find in their new home. This decision was enforced at the outdoor concert organized to bid farewell to 2019, in which artists who were unwilling to make public statements against the Cuban government were removed from the program.
Most of the Cuban musicians who usually traveled to that destination began to divert their performances to other venues throughout the United States where Cuban culture is appreciated with a capital C. With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, they also committed themselves to bringing the best of themselves to all of Cuba, either in person or virtually. But a small number succumbed to commercial pressures.
Since then, a campaign of disrespectful attacks against Cuban artists, which is impossible to carry out in major US cultural centers, has moved to social media with US federal funding and using media and platforms that had been programmed since the failed attempts of Zunzuneo and Piramideo[3].
The USAID and NED dissident-making apparatus handed out money to individuals with no recognized cultural work in Cuba or abroad to pose as victims, and certain media outlets indebted to the State Department and other agencies rounded out the campaign by magnifying “movements” of isolated individuals and others who were victims of the confusion.
At a time when there is almost no human movement between Cuba and the United States, and when it is difficult to know the Cuban reality firsthand, these spokespeople claim to attest to “attacks against Cuban culture and artists” that are non-existent and easily refutable with all the common work that has been explained before and at other times. COVID-19 has plunged part of the planet into virtual reality. The pandemic has led some back to the belief that “it’s coming” and to dreams of destroying the Cuban model of the 1990s.
If we look at the “race behind the oxen,” as our ancestors used to say, we can conclude that the cultural ties between Cuba and the United States are of such magnitude that they cannot be denied, much less destroyed by the repetition of ideas that have no basis in reality and do not have the support of the American public. The immense cultural exchange that has taken place between the two countries is the fact itself; the rest is a macabre and desperate reaction that seeks to deny it.
Culture and its exponents, like so many other sectors of national life in both countries, will once again be pillars of a future era in which US leaders come to understand that Cuba is a neighboring country with which they must coexist.
[1] The full name of the institution is the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
(2) The Smithsonian Institution is a US non-governmental institution that brings together 17 museums, research centers, and other entities in the country dedicated to cultural promotion.
(3) Zunzuneo and Piramideo were the names given by USAID to two projects dedicated to influencing Cuban society through the massive use of social media.
José Ramón Cabañas Rodríguez is Director of the International Policy Research Center (CIPI) in Havana, Cuba.
Source: Cubadebate, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English