By Graciela Ramírez Cruz and Yaimi Ravelo on June 1, 2023 in Havana
Nancy Morejon, Berkeley California, 1994, photo: Bill Hackwell
In recent years the multidimensional war being waged against Cuba has focused on manipulating behavior of the social being, the media and attacking its culture at every opportunity.
In the past couple of weeks we have witnessed the cultural-ideological conflict move its target in the direction of artists and intellectuals who openly support the construction of a better country within the principles inherited by the Cuban Revolution. First the cowardly attacks against the Cuban duo Buena Fe in Spain and now against beloved and world renowned Cuban poet; Nancy Morejon
Today the Organizing Committee of the 29th Havana International Poetry Festival, from the Ruben Martinez Villena hall of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (Uneac), condemned the new attack that is targeting the National Literature Prize winner Nancy Morejon, outstanding Cuban poet, playwright, essayist and translator of international prestige. She is a member of the Cuban Academy of Language, an essential writer in contemporary Cuban literature.
Alberto Marrero, president of the Association of Writers of the UNEAC, in the public event spoke out in support for Nancy, poetry and Cuban Culture
“In the last few hours, press media and digital spaces supported by those who aspire to subvert the social order that the vast majority of Cubans have freely adopted, have echoed a defamatory campaign against the poet and essayist Nancy Morejón, one of the most prominent and recognized voices of the island’s lyric poetry and winner of the 2001 National Literature Award for the work of life.
UNEAC meeting in defense of Nancy Morejon. photo: Yaimi Ravelo
Invited to the Poetry Market 2023 in Paris, those who align themselves in the side of those who hate and undo, pressured the organizers of the event so that Nancy would be deprived of the award of Honorary President of the event, because of her work that has an international resonance. To that end, the French Pen Club and some of its followers reduced themselfes to worn-out commonplaces in their attacks against artists and intellectuals who live and work among us and whose loyalty and devotion to their people and culture is without question.
Cuban writers and artists repudiate any attempt to disqualify Nancy’s poetic and human trajectory and express our solidarity support to her and her distinguished literary contribution.”
Havana, May 31st, 2023
Why is Nancy Morejón being attacked now by the media that makes a living by attacking the image of the Cuban nation?
Nancy Morejon was awarded this year the honorary presidency of the Poetry Market, an event founded in 1983 by publisher Jean-Michel Place and critic Arlette Albert-Birot, which gathers in Paris writers, publishers and publications from all over the world.
During the inauguration of the event, which will be held from June 7 to 12, the Cuban intellectual is scheduled to offer a few words and give two lectures on Caribbean poetry.
Nancy’s “sin”, for those who harass her, is that she represents the highest institution that brings together Cuban writers and artists and to identify herself fully with the cultural work of the Revolution.
The World Poetry Movement issued the following statement from Medellin:
IN DEFENSE OF NANCY MOREJÓN.
Declaration of the World Poetry Movement.
Medellin, May 31, 2023.
The Cuban poet, translator, essayist, editor and academic Nancy Morejón is the new victim of hatred and revanchism of the Cuban right abroad. What is Nancy Morejón’s sin? Living and working in Cuba and remaining on the side of the Cuban Revolution. That is her crime in the eyes of those who, from their position adverse to the island’s political system, try to make a clean sweep of the high values that sustain Cuban culture. Faced with a wave of mediocrity and extreme politicization that Cuban artists who leave the island to develop their work are facing, we can only call on the intellectual and artistic community of the world to repudiate this practice that offends and attempts to humiliate all artists who, faithful to their people, stand by them in the face of the imperial onslaught and the economic, financial, commercial, media, diplomatic and cultural war waged by the United States of America against the small socialist island of the Caribbean. Yesterday it was the boycott, the burning of records and the bomb threats in Miami theaters. Now it is the pressure in Barcelona against the concerts of the musical group Buena Fe, who are a paradigm of high quality and dedication to its people. In the last hours, hatred is Paris in the spurious hands of those who oppose the government and the political system that the Cuban people have given themselves without pressure or influence from anyone, now put in the crosshairs of their impotence and frustration, the great poet Nancy Morejon, National Prize for Literature of her country and one of the voices that best synthesize in the Caribbean culture, that resistant mixture of commitment, patriotic feeling, ethics, race, gender and the highest literary quality.
The outstanding Caribbean intellectual has been invited as Honorary President of the Paris Poetry Market that will begin next June 7 in the City of Light.
The World Poetry Movement, of which the poet is a prominent member as intellectual and main organizer of the Havana International Poetry Festival, calls to repudiate these acts against Cuban culture and against any artistic manifestation of any country in any part of the world.
Culture is the soul of nations. Culture is the spirit that sustains peoples in the construction of a better destiny for their children. Let us defend Nancy Morejón from the barbarism and mediocrity that a few want to turn into a global narrative. Nancy Morejón is today the Cuban culture, the Cuban nation. A woman who has decided to live and fight alongside her people deserves our solidarity and that we accompany her with the strength of our deepest convictions and our most determined action.
Coordinating Committee of the World Poetry Movement Medellín, June 31st, 2023
Origin of the attack against Nancy Morejon, who is the spokesman?
Jacobo Machover, an unknown journalist, university professor and obscure anti-Cuban writer, member of the ultra-right European Association Cuba Libre, addressed the directors of the poetic event dated May 24:
“I learned with astonishment that the Cuban poet Nancy Morejón is going to occupy the honorary presidency of the 2023 edition of the Poetry Market, which will take place from June 7 to 12 in Saint-Sulpice square in Paris.
… “I would like to remind you that this poetess is currently the director of the Union magazine, organ of the very officialist Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba”… “she is among the first signatories of a ‘Message’ of educators, journalists, professors, writers, artists, scientists” (…) headed by journalist Ignacio Ramonet, official biographer of Fidel Castro and Venezuelan Hugo Chavez, dated October 5, 2022 in Havana”
French journalists and writers tell us who Jacob Machover is: son of Polish Jewish parents who took refuge in Cuba. Born in Havana, Machover was 9 years old when his parents decided to leave for France in 1963. He calls himself an exile, as so many do out of opportunism, but he was never really one.
In the 1990s, in the middle of the Special Period, he became an expert on Cuba overnight and began to distill his hatred by publishing essays in which he denigrated Fidel, Raul, Che and the Cuban Revolution. In the 2000’s he called Chávez “ridiculous” and “apprentice dictator”.
The ultra right-wing European Association Cuba Libre claimed the Molotov bomb attack that caused a fire at the Cuban Embassy in Paris in July 2021, with the following communiqué from the European Association Cuba Libre
“The embassy of the Castro tyranny in France was the target, during the night of July 26, 2021, of three incendiary objects that caused material damage. The date is not accidental: it is the Cuban national holiday, which commemorates the 1953 assault by brothers Fidel and Raul Castro on the Moncada barracks.”
… “We proclaim our solidarity with the action carried out against the illegitimate embassy of our country in France, against which we have demonstrated so many times”.
the European Association Cuba libre,
Jacobo Machover, Cuban writer exiled in France and Laurent Muller, president of the European Association Cuba Libre.
Source: Cuba en Resumen