A wave of solidarity has been unleashed in social networks in support of the professor and critic Gustavo Arcos, after being accused of “denigrating” the Cuban model for an article that he published in La Young Cuba. A student of the academic reacted angrily to the text on the blog Subversive Buff, in which he attacked Arcos, considered one of the most important film experts in Cuba.
The publication made by the first-year student of the Faculty of Audiovisual Media (Famca), Luis Alberto Domínguez Vázquez, in which he harshly criticized the professor, was answered by students, colleagues and friends of the academic who appreciated his work as a pedagogue.
The controversy originated as a result of the article by Arcos Words that devour the words, in which he pointed out that “it is not the so-called dissidents, or the mercenaries, or the external enemies who are generating a break with the Revolution”, but rather that “it is itself that is imploding, destroying itself from within.”
The text also criticized the leaders and officials “clinging to a narrative that only appeals to the flash back“an attitude with which they lose sight of the present and discard the signals” that the real world sends them. “
Arcos also assured that in a country “institutionalized and controlled by a single party and ideology”, independence is taken as a “mistake” and that, beyond its “liberating action from an external domain”, it will be seen as “suspicious”.
Although the student recognizes Arcos as “an intellectually prepared man”, he reproaches him for using his ability to “guide” his audience to “denigrate an imperfect social system.” “A person who also read it told me that he did not understand how someone so intelligent could speak or think that way,” says Domínguez.
Arcos has been a professor of Film History at the Famca since the late 1990s. For seven years he has been censored on television and in all official media. “There are fifteen programs, appearances or interviews, already recorded, that have not been broadcast”, reported in an interview.
Marcos Paz Sablon, another first-year Famca student, considered Domínguez’s text as “the first shot” of what “seemed like a campaign ‘from the student body’ to ‘punish'” Arcos
Although the academic does not know where the censorship came from, it worsened after he was publicly very active in defense of the grouped filmmakers in the G-20, a group that demanded a Cinema Law and the end of cinematographic censorship in the country.
Arcos also said that once they had already proposed their “separation as a teacher” because it exerted a “disastrous influence on young people” but that it did not materialize because, luckily for him, “a Dean and several teachers who were manifesting at that time” were they opposed that attempt.
After the onslaught against the critic in Subversive Buff, the former professor of the Faculty, Danae C. Diéguez, celebrated on your Facebook profile Arcos’ coherence and said that his teaching “has concrete resonances in his students” and that he has seen him for years “devoted to being a good teacher.” “I have seen him be unyielding with the unjust, with the stagnation of the institutions, of the power,” he pointed out.
A Famca student, Amel Martínez, he also made his support public to the teacher at the same time that he launched some criticisms of the educational institution: “I have only been at Famca for a year and I can attest to the dissatisfaction that students experience due to the lack of good teachers. There are few and those few seem to do the job of all “.
For Martínez, Arcos is “an example of what we need” and thinks that the students would be “very ungrateful” if they allow, “because of their way of thinking” it is not valued. “It is not necessary to have much experience to know that Luis Alberto’s article has its origins in an order from the high officials of the ISA (University of the Arts) to lead the professor to an expulsion with makeup,” he denounces.
Martínez added: “We want to make cinema, but cinema is not made with fear. If we do not conserve what little value we have left, Famca will continue to advance towards that future where only mediocrity thrives. Let us not be accomplices to our own detriment.”
Another of those who joined the support was the filmmaker Ariel Novo Curiel who considers that Arcos, together with Mario Masvidal, marked his life as a teacher “If any ISA student dedicated a few words to belittle, criticize his work or his criteria, no I’m going to stop at that because obviously you don’t know him. ” For Novo “opportunism in Cuba has become one more study career for the mediocre.”
Marcos Paz Sablon, another first-year Famca student, considered Domínguez’s text “the first shot” of what “seemed like a campaign ‘from the student body’ to ‘punish'” Arcos. “I would like to think that it is the product of an attack of political naivety and not an interested movement.”
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