Cuban Minister Says Cultural Policy Decisions Belong to Artists

By: MRT Desk

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A rolling capsule to preserve the memory of the iconic Nakagin Tower

Mexico City, Oct 18 (EFE) .- Cuban culture minister, Alpidio Alonso, said this Monday in Mexico that “important decisions of cultural policy in Cuba are made by artists” despite criticism and controversy around to the censorship of dissident creators.

“There is a great campaign against Cuba, not only against the Biennial. We have been under an economic and commercial blockade for dozens of years and a fierce cultural war financed by the United States Government has been added,” said the minister at the presentation event of Mexico as guest country of the International Book Fair of Cuba that will take place next February.

In previous weeks, dissident Cuban artists called for the cancellation of the famous Cuban Contemporary Art Biennial scheduled for November, in the face of a climate of tension both due to the economic difficulties of Cubans and the arrests and surveillance of the dissident sector of the country’s culture .

“We are going to do the Biennial,” said Alonso, who argued that “the artists themselves” requested it after the cultural authorities called a meeting to decide on its implementation, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

For this reason, he insisted that the Biennial is not designed by “bureaucrats”, but “obeying enthusiasm” and with the guidance of the creators.

At one point, the minister said that he did not want Mexico’s presentation as a guest at the next “party” of the book “to become a topic about politics,” but he did not want to fail to mention that “there is a lot of misinformation.”

He insisted on not discussing the artistic level of the dissident creators, but described it as “very questionable” and assured that, in Cuba, “those who are waiting to be judged (…) it is because they have worked hard against the constitutional order and they are doing mercenary work “, guided by the United States.

Finally, he said, in reference to the International Book Fair, that the decision of the writers and artists who will come from Mexico is in the Latin American country and that the Cuban government never asks about that.

“The decision of the list passes through our hands,” said Paco Ignacio Taibo II, the writer and director of the state publishing house Fondo de Cultura Económica (FCE), who accompanied the minister at the event together with the Secretary of Culture of Mexico Alejandra Frausto and the Cuban ambassador to Mexico, Pedro Juan Núñez.

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