English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
A further lapse in judgment just happened on Cuban television: Luis Pavón, one of the most frightful and terrible people in the history of Cuban culture, just received praise on the Cubavisión program, Imprint. In those days when so many lashed out against “The Difference,” I suppose, I hope, that they also are pointing now … Continue reading “Message from Jorge Ángel Pérez / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate”
Message from Paquito de Rivera to Marta Valdés Dear Marta (Valdés): I congratulate you on your brave insertion into the group of Cuban intellectuals against the sadly famous ex-ex-ex cultural leader Luis Pavón, who, by the way, has been for a long time a perfect non-entity (pun intended). I hope this is just an introduction … Continue reading “Message from Paquito de Rivera / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate”
The recent events triggered in Cuba after the resurrection of Pavón-Quesada-Serguera, to wit, the many outcries of various kinds by email, articulating a common domestic front to protest the raulista attempt to clean their old repressive instruments, to whitewash historical memory, and, incidentally, to humiliate their victims once again, and in general, all intellectuals, if … Continue reading “Message from Jorge Luis Arcos / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate”
Masochism is the “sexual perversion of someone who enjoys being humiliated or mistreated by someone else,” says the dictionary. Did the writers who now rightly denounce the official television revival of Luis Pavón, Serguera and Quesada actually enjoy it? “Pick little fights, don’t try to be a hero,” the current director of the Cuban Academy … Continue reading “The Masochistic Left is “Pavonating” Itself / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate”
About the text “A little ashamed of ourselves” by Luis Manuel Pérez Boitel, in response to “The crisis of low culture” of Francis Sánchez. My friend Riverón, Although I consider friendship one of the gifts that should be defended at all costs, I also think that standards about things that happen in life, art and … Continue reading “Message from Jorge Ángel Hernández / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate”
Hi, Gustavo, I am grateful that you sent me the debate. I don’t know how to get involved in the analysis but I think that I need to. If you can, send this opinion to whoever you want. Although I have to confess that I find it difficult to express myself and to organise my … Continue reading “Messages from Belkis Vega / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate”
For more information about this series of posts, please click here. From “The New Man” Dear comrades, close comrades, Those who now warn us, memorializing the life and work of Papito, Pavón and Quesada, instead of ridiculing them as flunkies, or treating them as model sacrificial snitches from a gray period of our history, should … Continue reading “Letter from the New Man in Defense of the Gang of Three / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate”
For more information about this series of posts, please click here. From Consenso digital magazine The digital magazine “Consenso“* is putting at the disposition of its readers a portfolio which contains almost all of the texts that were circulating via electronic messages among numerous Cuban intellectuals in the months of January and February of 2007, … Continue reading ““Consenso“ in the Intellectual Debate / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate”
For more information about this series of posts, please click here. From Jorge A. Pomar Are the intellectuals waking up? Everything in Cuba is as rotten as in Hamlet’s Denmark. It all stinks. Even the Horaces of the UNEAC (Cuban Writers and Artists Union) stink. Yet another proof of this is the electronic call to … Continue reading “Concern About the Media Comeback of Luis Pavón / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate”
For Antón de Milián Many friends, and others who are not friends, have approached me, interested in my opinion about this debate on the parameters or simply, the fact that non-participation in it could be interpreted as indifference, apathy or in the worst of cases… cowardice. Those who really know me know that I do … Continue reading “The Period of the Silent Scandal / José Milián / Polemica, The 2007 Intellectual Debate”
During the time in which I lived in Madrid, a friend of mine from the Island came to visit. Unable to resist his curiosity, he immediately began to pry into my bookshelves (a habit I have to confess, I do not like). When he came across a shelf lined with cassettes, he smirked and in … Continue reading “Censorship: Are You There? (1) / Carlos Espinosa / Polemica, The 2007 Intellectual Debate”
“The Little Email War,” “Little Glasnost,” “Rebellion of the Intellectuals” or “The Created Situation,” have been some of the names used to baptize this phenomenon which I prefer to call, “words of the intellectuals” (with the “of” in bold and underlined). Evidently a hole has been opened in this Pandora’s box (which was a gift … Continue reading “The Journalist Reinaldo Escobar Enters the Debate / Polemica, The 2007 Intellectual Debate”
14ymedio, Havana, Yoani Sánchez, 30 June 2023 — I had read him in those ‘plain-paper covered’ books that passed from hand to hand in Cuba in the 1990s. Later, on our Island where censorship was practiced in all its forms, several videocassettes with some of his participations in foreign television programs slipped through. He had … Continue reading “Carlos Alberto Montaner, the Cuban Who Taught Us to Debate”
14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 14 March 2023–Universidad de la Habana, March 13, 1963. Fidel Castro leaned on the podium, at the top of the stairs facing thousands of students. Dressed in a suit, grimacing, are: President Dorticós; the adventurous geographer Antonio Núñez Jiménez; youth director José Rebellón; and the parents of Camilo Cienfuegos, who had … Continue reading “‘Cubadebate’ Exhumes Fidel Castro’s Speech That Gave Way to the UMAP Camps, and Removes it Hours Later”
14ymedio, Havana, 28 February 2023 — Two events marked the discussions on Cuban literature this February: the Havana International Book Fair and the controversy over the documentary El caso Padilla (2022) [The Padilla Case], by Pavel Giroud. Cuban authors, editors and translators also dealt with issues such as the return to the Island from exile and … Continue reading “The Debate on ‘The Padilla Case’ Was the Main Cuban Cultural Event in February”
