Once again, the official intellectuals are summoned to “participate” in another Congress of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), to be used as political reaffirmation for the Regime, since they won’t do anything else, the same as on previous occasions.
Some will bleed for their suffering, the officials will pretend to listen, and it will even appear that something will be done in this regard, when the reality is that they will forget the problems, and they will remain only in the memory of those who are present.
The dictatorship, as it always does, will allow the media to publish or televise some sentimental intervention, to make us believe that it has been a space for free debate, and thus hide the hand of censorship that they constantly apply to us.
Those elected know that they would never be able to say what they hide, their true thinking with respect to the dictatorship, and as in a double game, they will also pretend that the first task is to save the culture, when in practice they only save their lifetime stay in power.
Those intellectuals — the majority — entered into the process when they were very young; today they are a litter of oldsters brought to heel who ooze from the wounds made by Fidel Castro and who have overcome profound humiliations: they carried out cynical condemnations and then couldn’t appear physically in society.
I remember when in the “war of the emails” — as a result of some negative characters returning to public view, repressors in the cultural sector in the ’70s — the majority of intellectuals attacked that possibility, and when the government understood that the protest was growing, they ordered the ringmaster, Abel Prieto, to block the bulls, and that they be the ones who watch the affair.
There were hundreds of letters, first nationally and then from every corner of the planet where there was a Cuban who had been harmed by those people. No one ever said that the guiltiest of all was Fidel Castro. They only permitted themselves to judge the people, pure fallen trees that already weren’t of interest to the State, like the comandante Papito Serguera and Luis Pavón, among others.
I dared to say, in my only email that I dedicated to the matter, that we do nothing by condemning the officials who were removed suddenly, when the intellectual author, Fidel Castro, was still in power, that those who they attacked now were no more than repressors, executioners who executed under the orders of the Castro brothers.
Now they had to endure the pretense that they, omnipotent leaders, didn’t know about the purges in the cultural sector, the persecution of homosexuals or artists who shaped some critical revelations in their work. The intellectuals – even in their letters – were not capable of questioning the centers of Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP).
They played their false roles of bulls seated on the steps while they watched the master of the toreros in the ring and the firefighter in the cultural sector, Abel Prieto, manipulate the affair behind closed doors with some conferences, to drain once and for all the spiteful feelings provoked by the constant reactions.
It will be another congress without solid contributions to the cultural process that strengthens the cultural sector.
Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
Lawton Prison Settlement. April 2014.
Please follow the link and sign the petition so that Amnesty International declare the dissident Cuban Angel Santiesteban a prisoner of conscience.
Translated by Regina Anavy
14 April 2014