HAVANA, Cuba.- We were told that the protests of July 11, 2021 (J11) were not legitimate because people stoned stores in Freely Convertible Currency (MLC) and overturned a couple of patrol cars, acts considered vandalism. In those days, the president of the People’s Supreme Court, Remigio Ferro, publicly recognized the right to peaceful protest while dozens of young protesters were prosecuted for “Sedition” and other crimes whose sentences, together, added up to more than twenty years in prison.
Since then, in line with the worsening of the economic and energy crisis, several demonstrations smaller ones have happened. Street closures, cacerolazos and direct demands to local leaders have been some of the ways used by Cubans to denounce the rapid deterioration of their living conditions. The passage of Hurricane Ian through the west of the country at the end of September was the straw that broke the camel’s back in a year full of calamities. The collapse of the national energy system left millions of people without electricity, drinking water and food.
Borderline desperate, people took to the streets without breaking glass or confronting law enforcement. His peaceful indignation was answered with sticks by the paramilitary brigades, who unleashed their usual brutality against unarmed men and women, who are now accused of being terrorists by the spokesmen of the dictatorship.
The facts have been distorted, as happened with the events of July 11 and November 15, 2021; but the regime needs to support its circus and for this it has summoned the guild of artists and intellectuals, with the aim of selling the world the idea that there is no repression on the island. Like that filthy letter from 2003 that justified the execution of three young Cubans, the pronouncement of now it exhibits the signature of important personalities of the culture who have no scruples in denying that people to whom they say they owe their debt, and who they have seen being run over and imprisoned for demanding their rights.
The more than three hundred signatures collected so far show what the Cuban people is worth to their artists and intellectuals. While it is true that most of the signatures belong to individuals who have depended on the institution all their lives to be moderately known, bureaucrats who have been starving themselves for years toasting at exhibitions, communicators whose rise in the world of culture is inextricably linked to his swagger, and artists who from their origins agreed to put their work at the service of politics, it also hurts to find the names of highly respected creators who at some point gave the impression of being fair and consistent.
Nothing like extreme circumstances for the masks to fall off. In recent days, several people on social networks wondered when the day would come when Cuban artists and intellectuals would side with the humble. Here is your answer. With few honorable exceptions, Cuban artists and intellectuals commune with the regime; from fossils like Nancy Morejón or Eduardo Torres Cuevas, to Raúl Torres and “Arnaldo Talismán” with their disgusting servility.
Almost all the signatories stopped having a career a long time ago, and their privileges are directly proportional to their support for the dictatorship. If there is no genuflection and point in the mouth, the doors of the EGREM will not open, nor the possibility of some personal exhibition in any forgotten gallery, nor trips of “exchange and improvement” with travel expenses in dollars, nor invitations to events where no longer you eat copiously as before, but something will fall, for free.
The actor’s recent catharsis Ulyk Anello shook the hopes of some who refuse to see reality as it is. If Anello protested it was because his children’s food had rotted; but not because other people’s children haven’t eaten in a long time. That day the actor got tired, because “you don’t play with the food of his children.” However, the Cuban regime has been playing with the food of the people for years and the artists have been silent, very busy with their own business. The common people, screwed up and beaten, must understand that none of those favored ones is going to abandon their peace of mind or their perks to cast their lot with her.
The people, in fact, should take a minute to carefully read the names that appear on that list, and start now a peaceful boycott against those who have decided, once again, to kiss the hand that strangles us all. Let no one go to an exhibition, a concert, a play or a dance linked to any of those names.
If they do not respect us or feel sorry for how much we suffer, neither do we have to feed their shows with our presence. Enough already. In the end, there is nothing to celebrate, nor reason to get entangled in the ethical dilemma of opening the program of a theater performance, or the catalog of an art exhibition, and seeing there the name of the person who publicly endorsed an ominous statement against our rights, the welfare of our children, the future of the nation.
OPINION ARTICLE
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