BY CANDACE WAGNER
WASHINGTON, D.C. - "Art and literature continue to be a
priority in Cuba, despite our economic difficulties,"
declared Cuban poet Norberto Codina Boeras to an audience
at George Washington University (GWU) the evening of
October 4. The event was sponsored by the International
Cultural Affairs, Multicultural Affairs, and Arts
committees of the university's program board.
Codina, editor of the prominent cultural magazine La Gaceta de Cuba, had been invited by the Latin American Studies Association to attend its September 28-30 congress here. He then began a four-week speaking tour in this city, Los Angeles, Houston, and New York at the invitation of numerous academic figures and institutions in those areas.
He was welcomed at the GWU meeting by American University professor Eileen Findley and other professors who have been working with the Norberto Codina Lectures Committee, which is coordinating his four-city tour.
The Cuban poet opened his talk, attended by about 65 students and others, by explaining that the purpose of the meeting was to "get to know each other a little better. Both you and us have been operating on the basis of stereotypes. We need to break through those stereotypes."
Codina pointed out the historical interrelationship of culture in the United States and Cuba. Ernest Hemingway, who spent years living on the Caribbean island, "is Cuba's greatest writer," he said. "You sent Hemingway to us - a tall adventurous white man. We sent a small Black man to you - Chano [Pozo] - who made a revolution in jazz.
"Today, music from the United States is very popular in Cuba and 90 percent of the films shown are from the United States." This fact was surprising to some in the audience who had heard through the U.S. media that the revolutionary government denied Cubans access to U.S. culture and politics.
Despite the severe ongoing shortages of artistic materials, including paper, Codina told of a "great flourishing of Cuban culture" today. He encouraged the audience to attend the showing of the Cuban film Strawberry and Chocolate the following night at the university. "The film is a reflection of the many other developments going on in literature and art in Cuba. It deals with the most sensitive issues - homosexuality and emigration. It is a film about dogmatism and the struggle against it. Most of all it is a message against intolerance."
La Gaceta published an interview in its September- October 1993 issue with Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, director of Strawberry and Chocolate, whose two main characters are a young gay man and a Union of Young Communists militant. The film is very popular in Cuba.
"The most important cultural event in Cuban history," Codina explained, "was the literacy campaign" launched immediately after the victory of the 1959 revolution. "The fact that we were able to wipe out illiteracy immediately was a first for a poor country like Cuba. It was the first step for a country to have access to literature and art. Prior to the revolution we had no printing capacity, only tiny workshops that usually would print no more than 500 copies of a title."
In 1959 the revolutionary government printed 50,000 copies of the classical novel Don Quixote by Cervantes. "This book was a banner leading us forward in Cuban cultural development," Codina noted. An effort was also made from the beginning of the revolution to bring culture into the factories and further into the schools.
During the discussion period, Codina highlighted some of the history of La Gaceta de Cuba, which is published by the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC). The magazine has published for 33 years, with a hiatus in 1990- 92 due to the limited paper supplies precipitated by the collapse of trade at preferential prices with the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries. Since then the magazine has been financed largely through donations from Cuba solidarity committees abroad, the French ministry of culture, and individual contributors. Selling subscriptions to the magazine and the controversial step of including advertising are part of the effort to make the publication self-financing.
La Gaceta has gone through different stages over the years, Codina explained. "At times it has been an important forum for debate and discussion, at other times a top-down publication - very dogmatic," he said. "In the last four years it has been full of constant discussion and debate over ideas, exchanges, breaking down taboos, reconsidering mistakes of the past."
While, as a magazine dedicated to art and culture, the debates published in La Gaceta de Cuba are not primarily on political subjects, "pure art and literature don't exist," said Codina. "We humans are political animals. It is clear that in any society art and literature are elements that pick up the pulse beat of the population. They have a catalyzing effect - they are the finger in the sore."
In one controversial but popular move, La Gaceta de Cuba has featured interviews with and articles by a range of Cuban writers living in the United States.
Even during the 1970s, which Codina referred to as "the gray years" of Cuban culture, "the revolutionary government never exercised measures like the banning of films from capitalist countries as did governments in China and Romania, for example," he said. "Even in that period Kafka was published and Cubans could view Fellini films that were unknown to many North Americans."
Members of the audience asked Codina a number of questions. "Won't the lifting of the blockade cause more problems in Cuba?" one asked.
"There is nothing more urgent for the Cuban people than the complete halt of the U.S. embargo," answered Codina. "While this would mean new challenges, the most important thing is stopping the blockade."
Brian Adams, coordinator of the D.C. Hands Off Cuba Coalition, chaired the meeting. He urged all participants to buy bus tickets for the October 21 demonstration in New York opposing U.S. policy toward Cuba. Similar actions are being held October 14 in Chicago and San Francisco.
Earlier in the day, Codina held a discussion with a dozen students and faculty at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. The Center for the Studies of the Americas and the departments of foreign language, literature, and art history hosted the event.
The following day, half a dozen activists from Local 82 of the Service Employees International Union who are involved in the Justice for Janitors campaign met with Codina. They told him of their efforts to organize the cleaners in office buildings in the Washington area, many of whom are from El Salvador and other Central American countries. Codina asked the union activists questions with great interest.
A discussion ensued on questions ranging from the role of trade unions in Cuba to how Cuba will maintain its socialist course as foreign investment is opened up, as well as Cuba's cultural policies.
A poetry reading and reception at El Centro de Arte, (Latino Art Center), was another highlight of the tour here. Along with Codina, Efraín Inurreta Díaz and Ana Noriega Olarte of the Academia Ibero-Americana de Poesía opened the program with their poetry. Later, others read poetry and sang. A broad range of regional cultural experiences were represented, from Puerto Rico to Argentina and Peru.
The Cuban also spoke to students at a Latin American studies class at George Washington University.
At Codina's speaking engagements, supporters of La Gaceta de Cuba sold 15 copies of the magazine. A number of people also signed up to be contacted about subscribing to the bimonthly.
Candace Wagner is a member of the United Transportation Workers Union in Washington, D.C., and active in the D.C. Hands Off Cuba Coalition.