On June 20, 2022, the Cuban Academy of Language (ACuL) issued a laconic message: the poet Roberto Méndez, who was to direct the institution until 2026, resigned his position “for health reasons.” His successor would be the essayist Jorge Fornet, then deputy director and one of the regime’s trusted men at Casa de las Américas. The change was surprising and, in search of an explanation, 14ymedio contacted Mendez. The writer never responded.
However, another member of the ACuL, interviewed on condition of anonymity, explained to this newspaper why Méndez was removed from his position, what tensions the institution has experienced in recent months and how it was kidnapped by the Government.
The crisis of power began in May 2022, when Daniel Ortega proposed to his Parliament the closure of the Nicaraguan Academy of Language, “sister” of the Cuban one. The measure put the academics in Havana in check: either they condemned it – as multiple organizations and intellectuals were doing – or they remained silent, demonstrating a lack of autonomy and complicity with Ortega, an ally of the Cuban regime.
“Against all odds, Méndez decided to sign a document of solidarity with Nicaraguan academics,” says the ACuL member interviewed by 14ymedio. In addition, the writer supported a release of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) that expressed its “deep concern” with Ortega’s action and claimed “freedom of thought, expression and association” in the country.
“Méndez’s letter did not have wide dissemination or visibility,” says the source of this newspaper in the Academy. “The drafting of the document did not obey a personal decision: it was something agreed upon by the five members of the Governing Board. The plenary session was oblivious to that matter.”
He had barely served four months as director of the ACuL.
When Roberto Méndez began directing the Academy, on February 18, 2022, the Communist Party newspaper celebrated the results of the election and said that everything had been “in good hands”. However, the official press remained silent after the resignation and did not announce the inauguration by Jorge Fornet, director since last January.
After months in limbo, the ACuL tried to return to its usual operation. Fornet, who worked for years as the right hand of the cultural commissioner Roberto Fernández Retamar, was presented finally as leader of the Academy at the IX International Congress of the Spanish Language, held in Cádiz (Spain) last March.
“There are charges that are awarded as a prize, but there are others that work as a purchase. This is the case of Fornet”
“There are positions that are awarded as a prize, but there are others that function as a purchase. This is the case of Fornet,” reflects the member of the ACuL interviewed by this newspaper.
Despite his loyalty to Casa de las Américas, Fornet’s career has not been blameless in the eyes of the regime. Author of numerous essays on the cultural policy of the Revolution and son of the also “problematic” writer Ambrosio Fornet, the essayist is remembered for a volume that was never sold in Cuban bookstores: The 71: anatomy of a crisisa formidable analysis of the year in which the poet Heberto Padilla was arrested by State Security.
“The appointment of Fornet intends to ‘clean’ him once and for all of his lack of orthodoxy. The Government wants to lead him on the right path, which is why it offers him the position. And it seems that it is giving results,” says the source of 14ymedio in academia.
The “voluntary” dismissal of Roberto Méndez and the rise of Fornet also had a higher objective: to achieve definitive control over the ACuL, an institution that tooth and nail defended its autonomy throughout the Republic and that Fidel Castro, later of 1959, he tried to dismantle in vain.
“Since the Revolution failed to eliminate the Academy, it decided to infiltrate it” –as it did with Freemasonry and many other institutions–, explains the interviewee. The resistance of the ACuL to Castro, led by the writer Dulce María Loynaz, is legendary.
Méndez himself recounted in a article how, in his youth and recently arrived in Havana, the corporation seemed anachronistic to him compared to the institutions created by the Revolution. It was a “rare mixture of retired professors and ruined noblemen”, gathered in the Loynaz mansion, on 19th and E streets in El Vedado, which functioned as one of the institution’s headquarters.
Over time, and given the extreme old age of the writer, the Academy was governed by intellectuals related to the Government and counterintelligence agents, who gradually entered the corporation: Lisandro Otero, Salvador Bueno, Roberto Fernández Retamar and Nancy Morejón . In 2012, after decades of suffocation by the regime, the ACuL was absorbed by the Office of the Historian, then directed by Eusebio Leal. With the patronage of Leal, the corporation began to meet definitively in the building of the San Gerónimo School, in Old Havana.
“The key to understanding how the Academy currently works is the essayist Graziella Pogolotti, a figure to whom very little attention is paid, and who is the one who dictates the Government’s instructions for the corporation”, details the academic consulted by this diary. “The decisions promoted by Graziella, with the help of Professor Luisa Campuzano, are those that have already been made in the Ministry of Culture.”
It was Pogolotti who, according to the source of 14ymedioachieved the dismissal of Rogelio Rodríguez Coronel, director of the ACuL until 2022 – who also had ties to State Security – and his replacement by a “moldable” candidate like Roberto Méndez.
“No one was going to choose a novelist like Leonardo Padura, who joined the corporation in 2019. Neither was a writer like Mirta Yáñez, who has never gotten into trouble”
“Taking into account the Academy’s staff, Méndez announced himself as the ideal director,” he exposes. “Nobody was going to choose a novelist like Leonardo Padura, who joined the corporation in 2019. Neither was a writer like Mirta Yáñez, who has never gotten into trouble. Less ‘noisy’ academics were in the same condition, like the linguist Sergio Valdés Bernal or the historian Eduardo Torres Cuevas. The ‘old camajans’ of Cuban literature, such as Antón Arrufat or Reynaldo González, would never have accepted the position.”
Méndez had no qualms about accepting Graziella Pogolotti’s proposal, says the source. “Everyone else said no,” she insists.
“It is very revealing that the conviction of Daniel Ortega, regardless of its little repercussion, did not lead to the expulsion of Méndez from the ACuL,” observes the academic. “The regime also has an image of cordiality to maintain before the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language (Asale) and the RAE.” Havana will not dare to repeat Managua’s gesture.
As for Jorge Fornet, he is still under surveillance and “he is yet to buy”, ditch. Meanwhile, the essayist continues to preside over the Academy and trying to recover his work rhythm, in the midst of crises and divisions.
The low attendance of its members, on April 21, at the traditional tribute to Miguel de Cervantes for Language Day, in the San Juan de Dios park, was symptomatic. Closely observed by Perla Rosales, the implacable deputy director of the Office of the Historian –and its top boss, in practice–, the Academy has managed to hide its definitive kidnapping by the regime with smiles and bouquets of flowers.
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