December 9, 2020
Photo: Alejandro Azcuy
We, artists and intellectuals of the world, members of the Network in Defense of Humanity (REDH), express our unrestricted support for Cuban culture, its institutions and its creative heritage, that today are under siege by the interfering actions of US imperialism and the big transnational media at the service of big capital.
In the effort to undermine the legitimacy of the institutions of Cuban culture, the actions of the self-described San Isidro Movement (MSI) have been exploited in the media, and the events of November 27 have been presented as directly associated with the actions of this movement.
On November 27, various actors gathered in front of the Ministry of Culture to express their dissatisfaction and concern with certain issues of cultural life, some of them were responding to an agenda dictated from abroad.
In response, all the institutions of culture, including the highest authorities, were completely involved in a debate, which shows not only that there are several ways of interlocution and that it was not necessary to force a dialogue, but that the Revolution considers the exchanges as contributions to its strengthening.
Cuba is a cultural power, recognized worldwide for its high artistic and creative level, as well as for the production of thought, theory, literature, and others. Diverse aesthetic expressions are reissued, made school, and reborn generation after generation. Cuba is undoubtedly one of the few countries in the world that prioritizes public cultural policy, with a perspective of common good that exhibits a sense of humanity. While in the whole world the artistic and cultural exhibitions are almost always exclusive and excluding, in Cuba they are open and generally free.
We reject the soft coup agenda, known as the US method to reverse the sovereign processes, which is being attempted against Cuba. We repudiate the actions of the pseudo-MSI, which exhibit a clear and public subordination to US plans, as evidenced by the multiple documented video exchanges with Timothy Zuñiga-Brown, US chargé d’affaires in Cuba, as well as the statements of support for this movement made by other senior officials of the Trump administration.
We strongly condemn foreign interference that violates Cuba’s sovereignty. We warn against the manipulation of culture to test an agenda of destabilization and call on the world to maintain active solidarity with the Cuban revolution, with its cultural and artistic processes, which are diverse and genuine. #CubaNoEstaSola
Executive Secretariat of the Network in Defense of Humanity
December 9, 2020