U.S.-Cuba "Cultural Interchange" OK.

It was in the year of 1998 that I came to the U.S. in the company of two of my artist friends. We came with the purpose of participating in a painting group show at a gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was the first time that my friends and I have entered the country. In our heads the distorted vision of a society, molded by a whole life of fear and hate conditioning condemning everything that would smell American. To our surprise, what we encounter appeared to our eyes as living in a harmonious life, in an acceptable level of un-happiness despite all the everyday work and responsibilities. No doubt, way more happy more relaxed that the people in Cuba.

Two weeks after entering the States I started having nightmares. I dreamed of myself taking a night walk in Havana’s Central Park. I would wake up in terror; eyes wide open in the middle of the night, seeing my two Cuban friends peacefully sleeping on the improvised mattress that our hosts Armando and Craig built for us while staying at their house in Santa Fe. Relieved that I was not in Havana, I would go back to sleep. Several times after these experiences, which lasted for years to come, I realized that living in Cuba was not a mentally healthy activity and thus I took the decision of staying in the U.S.

I was concerned by my family, which basically depended on me and the sales of my art work for their survival. I called my mother and told her that I was not going back to Cuba and that I needed her support if I was going to succeed in my chosen new life. She told me that she trusted my decision and she wished me luck. There was another reason why a decision of that kind had to be so dramatic. In my passport there was a permit, stamped by the Cuban government, authorizing me to go out of Cuba for 45 days, The rule was, and I understand still is, that if after 45 days I was not back in Cuba, I would be declared a defector and not allowed to enter back for 4 years. There is something enigmatic about this rule. I have ruminated on it for years in exile and think it have to do with one of those lugubrious Castro machinations to get rid of the opposition, and even criticism, or anything that his paranoia will consider destabilizing to the political system. My elucidation could be considered not so far fetched if we compare the two different ways sport athletes and artists are treated regarding travel and immigration issues. While Cuban athletes are under constant surveillance by Cuban counter-intelligence personnel when they go abroad, artists and intellectuals can go by themselves with no restriction of movement at all. This led me to suspect that since Castro’s government place a high value on sport players as tools of propaganda, Cuban artists and intellectuals, always or almost always critical of official policies are rather considered a burden and if they defect the better for the regime.

My rebel spirit has always told me that I should do whatever I please to do, counting that no harm to third parties is done. There are deep, violent, painful psychological roots to this way of life, so don’t try it if you are not a pro in psychological pain. In the other hand I have sold some paintings and with that money I saw fit to stay longer in the U.S., trying to further my art career. Jesus, at the time I was naive enough not to know that the art system in the U.S. is ruled and run by the white liberal left, the same elite that support the mediocre artists that stay in Cuba and that swiftly abandon the ones who place shop somewhere else, no matter how talented or full of good intentions they could be. Predictable, my art career came abruptly to an end.

But what was lost by one hand was gained by the other. I was able to outgrow myself by becoming part and parcel of the American society. Today I’m an American citizen with two degrees from two American universities and an artist with several group and solo shows in NYC under my belt.

More than a decade has passed since that year zero of 1998. The world has changed so much since then that it is no exaggeration to say that is as different today as day is different from night. The Cuban political and economic system, prone to problems, is in great trouble these days. Their leadership have become really, really old, and every day that goes by they are getting close of leaving a legacy of destructions, consequence of the many bad decisions that have caused the ruin of Cuba and the Cuban society.  Thus, it came as no surprise that the ubiquitous phenomenon that was in its toddler years when I came to this country, the Internet, is showing a propaganda video asking Cuban artists around the world to go back to Cuba and feel like they are a part of Cuban culture that never left. Really? After the 4 years of punishment for deciding to experience the world the way I wanted they are telling me that I’m welcomed back as if nothing has happened?

I remember an artist friend of mine, who now lives in the Mid-West with his beautiful American wife and family. He, like me, after having the opportunity to do a show at an American gallery, decided not to bend to the 45 days rule and stayed in the U.S.  But unlike me, he married an American girl. One year after his decision, he went back to visit Cuba with his new American family and introduce them to his father. They took a plane to Havana. Once they arrived at the airport, the Americans, allowed to enter the country, watched in astonishment how he, the Cuban artist was not allowed to pass the borderline and enter the country. He had to content himself by talking to his father for a few hours before being placed on another plane back to America. His father was left screaming and crying while his American family was already enjoying the niceties of the Cuban beaches, nightlife and tropical climate.

Going back to the Cuban announcement about artists able to go back to Cuba, I wonder what is behind the change of heart that made the Cuban government open up his hand in a gesture of reconciliation with the Cuban diasporic artist community. The first thing that come to mind is economic reason, they need money and artistic production can be a source of income so needed in Cuba. The reality is that Cuban artists were always a source of income, especially during the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when at the beginning of the so-called special period –Periodo Especial--, their art sales helped influx cash into the economy. Millions of dollars and euros flew from Europe, Canada, Latin America and even the U.S, arriving in Havana and other Cuban cities in the body of art collectors eager to invest in the next big Cuban thing, or at least take home some sort of souvenir.

I wonder, is it really money, cash, the reason for such a sudden change of heart? Is it not rather that the new conditions of the Internet and social networking have put into the hands of opinion makers such as wonderful artists the power to influence public opinion? Places such as Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere are painting a grim picture of a Cuban youth scattered around the world, a sad picture of young Cuban artists separated form their families and friends during years, even decades. We are witnessing a truly pathetic image of the humanity of the Cuba revolution broadcasted by social media and the Internet. Perhaps the Cuban regime wants to put a favorable light into the perception of the way the Cuban government treats it own people. I venture to think that this is the real reason behind a propaganda campaign luring Cuban artists to go back to Cuba and “feel like they never left”.

Other issues come to mind, such as why only the artists are welcomed and not individuals from another areas such as architects, engineers, mathematicians, scientists, sports players, etc. That only put more weight into the thesis that artists have the capacity to influence public opinion with their work and that that’s the reason the Cuban government first found ways to send them out of Cuba, when their public opinion shaping skills was dangerous inside of Cuba. And that they want them back now that they are more dangerous outside of Cuba, since they help shape international public opinion on Cuba and thus jeopardizing the international material support the Cuban regime so badly need.

It is true that we are and will always be Cubans and part of Cuban culture, history and society, It is our inalienable identity. But years of living in other countries have made us also grow as adults who doesn’t want to be treated as children by any political entity with an agenda. Though we do want to be able to go back to Cuba and get out freely and without arbitrary restraints and impositions we also feel that we have the right to bargain in our involvement in the aid of Cuba. Yes, I do want to help the Cuban people although I don’t feel the least inclination to support the Cuban government grip. But although helping the Cuban people implies putting crutches to the falling down of the Cuban tyranny, it is also true that the years of the dictatorship are close to an end since life is limited. Cuban people need money in their pockets so that they will not fall prey to the powerful financial resources of other governments and countries. If the Cuba government really want the artists to go back to Cuba and produce work generating money and employment they will have to strike down the immigration and communication measures that impede in the first place the way of working of us artists and that impede the Cuban economy and society from being able to be solvent and evolve.

First, the visa that needs to be renewed every two years at the price of two hundred dollars has to be eliminated. If we are Cubans as the government suggest in the propaganda video, we don’t need a visa or a permit to enter or to leave Cuba, We should be free to go in and out of Cuba doing exhibitions and conducting business. Second, airplane tickets, currently at ridiculous high rates should be leveled down to realistic international rates. To give an example, a round trip ticket from New York to Havana cists USD 800.00; while a ticket from New York to Santo Domingo, D.R. cost less than USD 200.00. There is also the issue of communications and the Internet.. A phone call to Cuba costs 1.79 a minute, which is more than double than calling to Africa. Who can conduct business and transactions with these rates? And last but no least, in the time of free Skype and Gmail calls and video conferencing, Internet in Cuba needs to be available to the ones than can afforded, High speed internet service will create opportunity for jobs in this time when half a million people have been left un-employed by the state. It is time to reconsider the proposal made by some companies in the U.S. to lay down a fiber optics cable between the U.S and Cuba. We know that a fiber cable is coming form Venezuela, but that one is to be used to filter information and for spying, so nobody with two inches of smart will trust using that one for communications. The right environment to make the Cuba people and his economy be solvent, and his artists to helpi rebuild the country needs to be created with freedom and justice, not with outmoded cold-war era structures of paranoid and hate. What really concerns me is not so much the survival of the Cuban regime, which I trust is already collapsing, but that after the inevitable collapse, the Cuban people, depauperate and financially handicapped,, is going to fall prey to the interest of foreign powers.

            The main preoccupation about Cuba’s future is in which hands is going to fall to. There is no doubt that Cuba cannot sustain by itself, as it has been demonstrated by decades of dependence first in American imports, then on Soviet subsidies, followed by Venezuelan oil traded for human skills. Once the Castros are gone corruption is going to be king. Desperation, necesity and simple greed are going to dictate the behavior of politicians, judges and business people alike. The assets if Cuba are going to be sold to the best bidder, whether Spaniard, American, Saudi, or Iranian. Cuban people are going to be left even more disenfranchised that what they are now.

Cuba’s cultural body is a made of European organs extended by some African appendixes. But the spinal cord and the nucleus of its nervous system is Christian. We are  not Anglo-Saxons but we are not Muslim or Buddhist either. Nothing more strange in our history that having to form alliances out of political conjunctures with people and cultures that bear not resemblance with ours. Cuban identity and history has been twisted by a generation whose ineptitude and improvisation has engendered an aberration of who we are, where we come from and were are we going.

The world of today is different form the Cold War world and the main forces fighting for its conquer are divided by religious and cultural lines. We Cubans are part of the West hemisphere; that is our identity. To side against the West is just to self-destruct. In times of danger you have to help your kin, not the one who attacks it. The history of the relations between Cuba and the U.S. needs to point in a new direction, one in which the two countries don’t see as enemies anymore. The reality is that this has happened already and the only obstacle for the normalization of the relations between the two countries is the obsession with power of the Castro regime.

This grip on power of Castrogerentoly extends to every aspect of Cuba’s culture and thinking.  Propaganda and public opinion are managed through isolation, filtering of information and editorialization of political views and hate. In order to defuse this situation there would be nothing more effective than to open up the fences of information and communication with Cuba. The so-called cultural interchange between Cuban artists and American artists, intellectuals and scientists is a good one step in this direction. Unfortunately the intention behind the interchange has been misunderstood by a great part of the Cuban community in Miami, the performance of Cuban artist being interpreted as Castro’s way of propagandizing and sending money back to Cuba. Although there is some truth in the propagandizing and sending money back, they are so miniscule that we can consider them as ineffective. The balance sheet leans on the side of the opportunities of communication and information that the cultural interchange represents for the Cuban people in Cuba. When Los Aldeanos say that “We didn’t come here to sing to the Cuban exile; we come here to sing to the Cuban people”, what he they really saying is that the Cuban people are one, despite that they live in two different political geographies. This is one of the most revolutionary declarations I have heard form a Cuban performer in the last years. For once it is recognizing the unity of the Cuban people, helping bring down the artificial divisions that the Cuban government is interested in keeping. For another, it is implying that the U.S. territory is the same than Cuba’s territory, and the Cubans have rights to claim both of them as the same. When Hugo Cancio says that if “you don’t go visit Cuba you are losing the opportunity to interact with the wonderful Cuban people”, his implying that beyond political considerations what really matter is to help and communicate with the Cuban people so that their distorted vision of the U.S. and the world, conditioned by years of total propaganda by the Cuban government, collapse. There is no doubt that there are others motives behind Cancio’s interests on artistic interchanges between the two countries, since he is an entrepreneur interested, as all capitalist entrepreneurs are, in profit. And if he is an immoral entrepreneur who deals with a rogue regime, he is not the only one. The history of the U.S. and capitalism is full of examples where money interests trumps morality. And what history proves is that doing business with rogue regimes is not always a good decision, as the Google case in China proves. If some backlash against Hugo Cancio’s and Los Aldeanos would occur, let it come from the Cuban government rather than from the Cuban community in Miami. That will show that the “cultural interchange” is against the interests of the Cuban government*.

There is relation between access to information and communication and political freedom. The Cuban regime needs isolation for its survival and anything that helps bring down the isolation barriers and open up communications will speed up the collapse of the dictatorship. The so-called “cultural interchange” is a good tool to that end. All the Cuban artists coming back and forth to the U.S. should be welcomed by the Cuban community.
* In a recent interview to DiariodeCuba, Hugo Cancio says that "Mi gestión como productor musical no es una forma de vida o el sostén de mi familia. Mi solidaridad y compromiso con mi país, con nuestro pueblo, es impermeable, impenetrable, irrompible e irrevocable… Ojo, entienda usted bien, dije nuestro pueblo, con esto quiero decir, con esos que usted llama víctimas, con los que no se consideran víctimas y con los victimarios. Todos formamos parte de la nación cubana." Bt this he is stating that his motives are not pragmatic, i.e. money, but political or some other obscure motive.