Condemned to Eternal Silence, or the Chronicle of an Announced Ordeal / 14ymedio, Juan Carlos Cremata

14ymedio biggerOpen Letter from Juan Carlos Cremata, Havana, 9 September 2015

 

Dear Friends:

On the morning of Monday, September 7, I was summoned to a meeting at the Theater Center of Havana to have communicated to me Resolution No. 10 (the corresponding document is attached) of the Ministry of Culture, the National Council for the Performing Arts and the Theater Centre of Havana itself, where our theater project El Ingenio [The Genius] is cancelled and my contract is a theater director is terminated.

It also means: I am eliminated from any possibility of doing theater in Cuba.

For those who do not have the calm to read the entire document, here is a summary in the style of trending topic or news highlight:

WHEREAS: In the months of July and August 2015, the theater director Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti, who directs the El Ingenio Project provoked an ethical-professional conflict with the management of the Theatre Center and the National Council for the Performing Arts, who legally represent and sponsor him, by undertaking intemperate attacks on these institutions through the foreign press and social networks, incompatible with the social object for which the above-mentioned project was created, leading to a lack of confidence in the artist, all of which disqualified his projects as institutional interests.

And further (…)

RESOLVE

FIRST:  The Project El Ingenio, given its representation by the Theater Center’s performing branch, will be halted.

SECOND: By way of the necessary document, the employment contract in the artistic branch of the Director Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti, will be terminated.

Thus is censorship and the exercise of “freedom of expression” legally consolidated in our country, in the 21st century.

The measure was taken without consultation with the National Theater Awards or with other artist guilds. It was a simple vendetta. A calculated summary execution.

And so there is no mercy for those who think differently. “To the wall*” for those of us who refuse to remain silent.

It is a sad time and space in which we have had to live.

What will be the next step to finish burying me?

Draw your own conclusions.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The outrageous document is signed only by the Director of the Theatre Center in his role as an employer, but everything was done to cravenly avoid criticism of the real person responsible for this offense: Mrs. Gisela Gonzalez, president of the National Council of Performing Arts. The Director of the Theater Center, Marvin Yaquis even expressed his deep regret at having to do something he did not like, which he was forced to do.

Please, do not blame him.

He is only the spokesman for the ignominy, the one who carries out the sentence of death “in life” to which I have been condemned.

*Translator’s note: Paredón! – meaning “to the execution wall” – was the infamous shout from the crowds at the show trials against its “enemies” with which the Castro regime inaugurated its taking power in 1959.