The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.63/No.22           June 7, 1999 
 
 
Cuban Writer: `The Revolution Must Be Defended'  

BY TIM FAST
ST. PAUL, Minnesota - "The Cuban revolution must be defended." This was the central message of Pablo Armando Fernández, a widely published Cuban poet and novelist who spoke at a number of meetings of college students in the Twin Cities area April 29- May 2. "Forty years of the revolution have not been easy," he said. "The Cuban people face many difficulties. However, they are working through the difficulties. And they are doing this because they defend the revolution."

Born in a sugar mill town in Las Tunas province in 1929, Fernández was sent to the United States in 1945 by his parents to get an education. In the 1950s he published two collections of poetry and was a member of New York's literary circle that included figures like Norman Mailer and Carson McCullers. In the early 1950s he was unable to return home because of the domination of the island by the rule of pro-U.S. dictator Fulgencio Batista.

In 1959 with the triumph of the revolution, Fernández went back to Cuba with the intention of advancing the fight of the exploited Cuban peasants and workers he knew as a child. He has remained true to this intention ever since. Fernández today is a leader of the Union of Writers and Artists in Cuba.

Fernández spoke to 40 students at Macalester College in St. Paul and to more than 180 students and faculty at three meetings at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. The topic of his talks was the experience of Cuba in fighting the commercialization of culture.

The tour was sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature, the Department of American Studies, and the Spanish- Portuguese Department at the University of Minnesota, in collaboration with the Minnesota Cuba Committee, the local coalition of those opposed to Washington's policies against Cuba.

"Before 1959 there was not a single black family that lived in the Miramar neighborhood of Havana," Fernández told 125 youth at a meeting at the University of Minnesota. "Today this is all changed. The changes in these things is what we are defending in Cuba. When I return to my home town I see that the children of peasants have become doctors, engineers, and diplomats.

"For many years I thought about the question, `What did it mean to be Cuban?' " the writer continued. "The only thing that brings Cubans together is their history. We need to know more about these things, such as the fact that Cuba is the only country in which a black man, Antonio Maceo, commanded white soldiers in the battle against Spanish colonial domination."

Many of Fernández's comments spoke to the question of artistic freedom in Cuba over the 40 years of the revolution. "There was censorship in Cuba. This was done by other writers who set themselves up as bureaucrats in the Union of Writers and Artists. Raul Roa, the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the 1960s, had written a book that criticized the invasion of Hungary by the Soviet Union during the Hungarian revolution of 1956. The book disappeared.

"The leaders who came from the July 26th movement like Fidel Castro did not believe in controlling art. We went through some difficult periods. The socialist realism promoted by the bureaucrats never dominated in the same way as in the Soviet Union.

"Writing in Cuba has become much freer over the last five years. The main restriction we face is shortages of paper and ink. And also young writers today are freer in the sense that they don't think they have to limit themselves to social themes."

Fernández's talks were well received. A number of young people wanted to know how they could visit Cuba.

 
 
 
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