BY MIKE TABER
Fidel Castro's June 30, 1961, speech, known in Cuba as his
"Words to the Intellectuals," which is reprinted here, is one
of the Cuban revolution's main statements of cultural policy.
Its guideline for artistic expression - "Within the revolution,
everything; against the revolution, nothing" - serves as a
summary of the revolution's cultural policy to this day.
Two and a half years earlier, on Jan. 1, 1959, U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba in the wake of victories by the advancing Rebel Army led by Castro and a revolutionary uprising and general strike by Cuban working people led by the July 26 Movement, which sealed the fate of the capitalist regime.
The new revolutionary government began implementing social and economic policies that addressed the needs of Cuba's workers and peasants rather than protecting the financial interests of U.S. imperialism and wealthy Cuban property owners. The most important measure of its first year was an agrarian reform that confiscated the millions of acres owned by U.S. corporations and Cuban landlords, distributing them to hundreds of thousands of small and landless peasants. Other measures included the outlawing of racist discrimination; a housing reform that slashed rents owed to landlords; the reduction of electricity rates; steps to promote equal rights for women; the eradication of gambling, prostitution, and drug networks; and a vast expansion of public education.
Between late 1960 and the end of 1961 the revolutionary government organized a successful campaign to teach one million Cubans to read and write. Central to this effort was the mobilization of 100,000 young people to go to the countryside, where they lived with peasants they were teaching. As a result of this drive, Cuba virtually eliminated illiteracy. This was combined with steps to foster the development of book publishing, film, and artistic creation, expanding access for millions of people in city and countryside.
These and other measures, supported by the overwhelming majority of the Cuban people as well as working people and youth around the world, determined the enmity of Washington, which, to this day, remains committed to the overthrow of the Cuban revolution. As it became clear that the revolution's leaders could not be bought off, the U.S. rulers embarked on an intensifying political, economic, and military drive to destroy the revolution. In response to Washington's moves, in the summer and fall of 1960, the revolutionary government mobilized working people to defend their interests, nationalizing the properties of U.S.- and Cuban-owned corporations and ending capitalist domination in Cuba.
On April 17, 1961, two months before this speech to Cuba's artists and writers was given, 1,500 Cuban-born mercenaries, organized and financed by Washington, invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs on the southern coast. The counterrevolutionaries hoped to establish a beachhead, declare a provisional government, and appeal for direct U.S. intervention. The invaders, however, were defeated within 72 hours by Cuba's militias and its Revolutionary Armed Forces. On April 19 the last mercenaries surrendered at Playa Girón (Girón Beach), which is the name Cubans use to designate the battle.
During the months leading up to this battle, Cuba had been on a war footing as workers and farmers mobilized throughout the country to meet the expected attack. On the eve of the battle, Prime Minister Castro proclaimed the socialist character of the revolution and called working people to arms in its defense.
In this context of deepening class struggle and intensifying military assault by imperialism, the division between supporters and enemies of the revolution among Cuban artists and writers also sharpened. Discussion and disagreements over the revolutionary government's policies on culture and freedom of artistic expression intensified. Two of the controversies that preceded the meeting at which Castro spoke, which are referred to here, concerned the journal Lunes de Revolución and the film PM.
Lunes de Revolución was a weekly literary supplement to the daily newspaper of the July 26 Movement, Revolución. Besides its editor, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, and Revolución editor Carlos Franqui, its leadership included Pablo Armando Fernández, Antón Arrufat, Virgilio Piñera, and Rine Leal. It published articles by a broad range of authors, from Jean-Paul Sartre, Virginia Wolfe, and Pablo Neruda to André Breton, Thomas Jefferson, and Leon Trotsky. Its editorial policy came under attack from various quarters, including political currents such as the Popular Socialist Party and writers who were polemical targets of articles published in the pages of Lunes.
Lunes de Revolución was closed in November 1961. In subsequent years, members of the journal's leading staff went in opposite political directions. Several left Cuba and became enemies of the revolution, while others remained prominent supporters.
In a retrospective look at Lunes published in the May-June 1993 issue of La Gaceta de Cuba, Graziella Pogolotti - currently a member of the national secretariat of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) - discussed the controversy around it.
"The closing of Lunes came about following the clash that gave rise to the discussion in the National Library and [Castro's] "Words to the Intellectuals," she wrote. "What was raised at that time was that Lunes had a kind of monopoly of power. The solution proposed at the time was to multiply it, that is, that Lunes not be the only literary and cultural newspaper, but that there be a wide array of publications that would give space for everyone to express themselves. This coincided with the creation of UNEAC, and part of the space that opened up led to the creation of La Gaceta de Cuba." Pogolotti noted, however, that "instead of being multiplied, Lunes disappeared."
A second controversy at the time surrounded the film Pasado Meridiano, or PM, produced in 1961 by two Cuban film makers, Orlando Jiménez and Sabá Cabrera. The Commission for the Study and Classification of Films reviewed the film - which painted an impressionistic picture of a Havana afternoon in January 1961 - and decided it should not be shown, categorizing it as "harmful to the interests of the people and their revolution." This decision sparked wide debate among Cuban writers and artists.
The controversy was discussed in an interview with Alfredo Guevara, president of the Cuban Film Institute, published in the July-August 1993 issue of La Gaceta de Cuba. In that interview Guevara stated, "It's worth recalling that in those days an armed attack was expected any day, and antiaircraft guns were being placed everywhere.... If today, under current conditions, I was called on to approve or to prohibit PM, I would simply let it be shown."
Debate around these and other questions led the revolution's leaders to call a series of meetings with several hundred leading Cuban artistic and literary figures, at the National Library in Havana, on June 16, 23, and 30, 1961. Among the government leaders attending were Castro, Cuban president Osvaldo Dortico's, Minister of Education Armando Hart, and members of the National Council of Culture. Castro's speech was given at the close of the third and final meeting.
On August 18-22 of that year, the First Congress of Cuban Writers and Artists was held in Havana. Out of that gathering UNEAC was founded.