On this date in history, Cuban communist dictator Fidel Castro declared any art created outside his socialist revolution to be illegal and punishable by prison or even death.
Via Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter:
#OTD in 1961 Castro declared to artists and intellectuals ‘Within the revolution, everything; outside of it, nothing,’ and the regime continues to jail free thinkers today
Totalitarianism continues in Cuba under Raul Castro.
On June 30, 1961 Fidel Castro gave his speech to [Cuba’s] intellectuals where he summed up the limits of artistic expression: ‘Within the revolution, everything; outside of it, nothing,’ he told intellectuals and artists. Nearly a decade later on April 27, 1971 the case of Heberto Padilla underscored the limits of artistic expression in Cuba.
Index on Censorship described the aftermath of Padilla’s interrogation and self-criticism stating, “whatever the reason for his confession, it served as a harbinger of what was to follow: a period known as the Grey Five Years in which dozens of Cuban artists and writers were banished from public life.” This was how intellectuals and artists would be dealt with who strayed out of the prescribed limits imposed by the Castro regime.
The war on artistic freedom is not unique to the Castro regime, or a mistake, but a feature of communist and fascist systems. Totalitarians have had a hostile relationship with the arts, and with artists seeking to control them. In the Soviet Union modern art was declared subversive by Josef Stalin, and socialist realism with an optimistic tone the politically correct style. Artists destroyed or hid their work that did not accord with the new aesthetic. In Nazi Germany, modern art was declared degenerate and a style that mirrored in appearance their Soviet counterparts, and repression was visited upon artists that did not adhere to the official style.
Sixty years after Castro’s infamous speech and Cuban artists and intellectuals are persecuted and jailed for advocating for greater political and artistic freedom on the island.
Continue reading HERE.
Just look at the bastard–and this is how he looked in his “prime.” How could rational adults have possibly failed to see that he looked like a manic, histrionic, nasty and downright dangerous BS artist/demagogue? How could Cubans have fallen for such a creature? Whose fault was that? Not his, liar though he surely was.
Lord have mercy.
And by the way, to commemorate (and celebrate) officially the 60th anniversary of Fidel Castro’s infamous “Words to the Intellectuals,” the regime is publishing a book about the pronouncement–meaning it is still considered the equivalent of holy writ and fully upheld by Castro, Inc. Of course, no foreign intellectual worth his or her salt would ever support a regime that lived by and enforced such totalitarian dogma, which obviously indicates that a great many foreign “intellectuals” are bogus–as in full of shit.
Alas, I’m afraid that falling for someone like Fidel Castro is simply not respectable–and I don’t mean now, when it is well beyond indecent, but even at the beginning, when it was at best atrociously infantile (and indicative of absolutely appalling taste, if nothing else). What does that say about Cubans? Don’t ask.
Asombra writes:
“Just look at the bastard–and this is how he looked in his “prime.” How could rational adults have possibly failed to see that he looked like a manic, histrionic, nasty and downright dangerous BS artist/demagogue? How could Cubans have fallen for such a creature? Whose fault was that? Not his, liar though he surely was.”
I’ve often wondered that myself. How the hell could Cubans hand over Cuba on a silver platter to that creature? Vile, disgusting and smelling [literally!] And Cuba was no mere latrine country in 1959. It was a country with considerable gold reserves, with an impressive infrastructure, the largest middle class per capita in Latin America, and an influx of Europeans waiting to migrate to the island. All of this blindly bequeathed to that thing!
I think that its the nature of Cubans. There’s a sayng in Spanish, “dime de los que presume y te dire de lo que carece.” [Tell me what you’re boastful about and I’ll tell you what you lack]. and Cubans have always boasted about being “listos,” y “espabilados,” and they are anything but that. They are, also, people who let their passions get the better of them. They hated Batista, so they had to get rid of him at all cost even if it meant replacing him with something worst. Look at all of the coup d’etats Cuba had leading up to castro. To me one of the worst was what they did to Machado. For all of his alleged brutality, Machado had been a general in the Cuban War of Independence, a war hero, he, also, helped built Cuba, He did more for Cuba than any one before or after. He built the Capitol, the Central Highway, enlarged Havana University, expanded healthy facilities, under his administration, the Asturian Center was built, the National Hotel and he sponsored a tariff reform bill in 1927 providing protection to certain Cuban industries, yet, the Cubans unceremoniously got rid of him. He barely escaped with his life and had to live his remaining years in painful exile.
There seems to be no middle ground with Cubans. They are like chlldren who have no perspective, no sense of middle ground, impulsive and willful. Just look at el exilio. Sixty years later and the castro dynasty is still in power and its not because castro was so intelligent [no, I don’t give him that credit, because he wasn’t], it was because we were so stupid and divided. Everyone wants to be a chief, no one wants to be an indian, because Cubans will spend more time attacking each other than attacking the regime.
In the midst of people of that particular nature, a fidel castro could hope to rise to power. If castro had been born in the UK, Switzerland, Sweden or Denmark, etc… intead of being made head of state, he would have been thrown in prison or in an insane asylum.
There were multiple factors, internal and external, behind the catastrophe, but clearly Cubans blew it BIG time, and there’s no way to explain that gracefully. There was indisputably huge immaturity amounting to irrationality, not to say stupidity, as well as a sadly typical tendency to trivialize and underestimate–meaning lack of seriousness and sense. The problem is that the magnitude of the consequences makes it extremely difficult if not impossible to excuse those responsible.