Cuban intellectuals and artists have their Congress this weekend
Havana, 25 Jun (RHC) The 9th Congress of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba has been and will be much more than the two sessions planned for 29 and 30 June at the Havana Convention Center.
The Congress began from the very moment when the call was proclaimed, a year ago, just as we were commemorating the 57th anniversary of the Words to the Intellectuals pronounced by Fidel Castro, and then had a wide and intense tour in the specialized sections and provincial branches of the Associations that concluded with the recent assessment process in all the territories of the country.
In a transversal and multidisciplinary way, hundreds of members of the organization, grouped in working teams, tackled an agenda that addressed issues related to the social projection of culture, artistic education, links with young creators, the media and social networks, cultural industries and the art market and the impact of art on tourism.
The journalist Pedro de la Hoz, who participated in and witnessed these events, said that the most relevant part of the process is the reaffirmation of the commitment of the intellectual and artistic avant-garde to the continuous revolutionary transformation of reality, which will lead us to a society where spiritual plenitude, the ideals of justice and equity, and ethics of solidarity are more and more intimate.
This is a commitment to the destiny of the Fatherland and a shared willpower with a people who, far from renouncing the construction of socialism, are working to make viable the model to which we strive for and deserve.
Critical, dissatisfied, proactive, with the very functioning of the organization and that of cultural institutions and social dynamics, writers and artists, with complete freedom and a high degree of responsibility, understand the debate as a manifestation of their participatory vocation and exercise of an irreducible duty that takes into account the particularities of the historical moment and at the same time directs the gaze towards how much they can contribute from creation and their involvement with the various sectors of national life.
In this sense, they pronounced themselves in favor of placing the analysis of artistic and literary creation itself and its promotion at the center of the activity of the Associations, because only through a diverse and qualitatively qualified cultural production. That articulates tradition and actuality, links lines of continuity and points of rupture, and decanting the substance of the superfluous. Conditions are created to satisfy the demands and needs of the public and to open these new horizons.
Throughout the process towards the Congress, emphasis was placed on the essential alliance between education and culture. The formative role of the Cuban school would not be possible without cultural contents and styles, understood far beyond art and literature, but from an integrative and integral perspective.
In Words to Intellectuals, Fidel announced the imminent foundation of Uneac and urged that it should be “a strong association of artists and writers” that would contribute “with all its enthusiasm to the tasks that correspond to them in the Revolution.
That spirit has prevailed in the process towards the 9th Congress and corresponds to the confidence deposited by Army General Raúl Castro when, on the occasion of the 55th anniversary of the organization, he expressed: “The Uneac of the present will continue to face these complex challenges with courage, revolutionary commitment and intelligence”.
(Taken from Granma in Spanish)
Written by Radio Grito de Baire
