Díaz-Canel: ‘The choice is socialism or barbarity’
Last week in Havana, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, First Vice President of the Councils of State and Ministers, addressed the Eighth Congress of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC). Because his words reflected the thinking of the highest institutions of government, Progreso Weekly has translated them and publishes excerpts below. The complete speech, in Spanish, can be found in this issue of Progreso Semanal.
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In recent and clarifying speeches, President Raul Castro acknowledged the presence of manifestations of social indiscipline, illegality, crime and corruption unacceptable in our society and said that we are undoubtedly a well-taught people but not necessarily educated or learned.
He also referred to the new modalities of subversion that our enemies are trying to put into practice, whose principal strategy consists on the establishment of a platform of neoliberal thinking and the restoration of neocolonial capitalism, directed against the very essence of the Revolution for the purpose of generating an ideological rupture between generations, all of which is an attack on the national values, identity and culture.
The recent disclosure of a plan by the government of the United States to promote subversion in Cuba through a message network aimed at young people, with the intention of unleashing a “Cuban spring,” is a true expression of these sinister intentions. […]
Culture must accompany the effort being made today to deploy the country’s productive forces as well as its moral reserves, thus achieving a prosperous and sustainable socialism where what distinguishes the human being is not material possession but the wealth of knowledge, culture and sensitivity.
One component of this prosperity, of this quality of life that we hope to attain, is the spiritual dimension offered by culture. The idea is to seek economic development and growth but with our souls full of feelings and spirituality. And that is achieved by saving the culture, simultaneously saving the Motherland, the Revolution and Socialism.
This demands that we became more effective every day in the defense of our national identity, in the promotion of authentic values of Cuban culture, on the part of both the young and the teachers, looking to the enrichment of the spiritual life of the entire people. […]
We cannot ignore today that the principal instrument of domination in the hands of imperialism is cultural and informative. [The enemy] has arranged for the standards of its entertainment industry and the media machine at its service to prevail overwhelmingly throughout the world. At present, humanity suffers the onslaught of a major-scale operation of cultural colonization. The idea is to impose the frivolous and unjust model of the so-called American Dream, denounced by our JosÈ MartÌ.
A few, very powerful corporations impose the paradigms, idols, fashions and lifestyles that currently predominate in our era. Their messages, varied in appearance, are part of a single hegemonic discourse that associates happiness and consumption, success and money, that issues a constant apology for capitalism and imperial superiority, that insists on disqualifying every independent thought and any cause that opposes its interests. Along with a permanent instigation of consumerism, it promotes the individualism and selfishness that strips away ideology and demobilizes.
Cuba is also subjected to that influence, to which are added the specific plans of subversion against our Revolution, which include among its targets the intellectuals and artists, with the aim of separating them from every social intention and preoccupation so that the cinema, the literature and the theater may reflect and uphold the lowest human feelings, the most perverse and noxious ideas, and every type of immorality.
Thus they pretend to sow in you banality and frivolity, to distance you from political and social commitment and create chaos and confusion. […] In the present conditions, to maintain the coherence of Cuba’s cultural policy is a priority in the face of the enemy’s attempts to divide the artistic movement and manipulate it with mischievous purposes. […]
Our main challenge lies in the battle against the pseudo-cultural messages associated with the exaltation of consumerism, the devaluing of the national culture and their intrinsic universal projection. […]
We must prepare ourselves better for the confrontation of ideas that is being set up on the fields of culture, social sciences and thought; we must defend our socialism and its betterment as the only alternative to save our culture, one of the main achievements of the Revolution.
Let us not forget that the choice is socialism or barbarity. And precisely for that reason, the spiritual dimension must not be overlooked. We have to come out ahead in economic issues and simultaneously in the fields of values and conscience. If not, we won’t have an independent and socialist nation. […] We must confront with arguments — of which we have plenty — the tendencies to distort and dismantle the revolutionary history and sweeten the capitalist past.
The artistic vanguard must defend our truths without shame or fear of being accused of being “officialists.” The opportunism of those who want to set themselves apart and become “personages,” winking at the enemy, must be dismantled in our publications and the social networks. We have to differentiate the person who posits doubts and criteria with honesty in our spaces for debate from the one who seeks notoriety, especially outside the country, with opportunistic stances.
We must struggle tirelessly for the unity of the revolutionary intellectuals and artists, a unity that cannot be based — as [President Castro] has warned us — on slogans and rhetoric. A unity that must be articulated in an environment of transparent, serious and constructive dialogue, wherein flow different ideas within the framework of our principles and we reach proposals that will help decision-making at this transcendental moment. […]
The new technologies today allow people to individually decide what to consume, in terms of culture. As we know, it is a false “freedom,” because the market and advertising impose upon them a very limited repertoire where authentic values seldom have space.
However, we need to differentiate public spaces from private spaces. Of course, the State cannot interfere in the cultural consumption that citizens may choose in their homes. But in the public spaces, the diffusion of music and audio-visual materials must be regulated. […]
[The State] must reserve the decisions about what is being shown, what is being promoted, what appears on the media, what is commercialized through the institutional circuits and how it is commercialized. At the same time, it must legislate on the presence of art in those spaces of public service that function under non-state forms of management. […]
We need to take into account the trends of the market, but we can never leave our cultural policy in the hands of the market. […] We cannot allow the naive tendencies of trusting in capitalist mechanisms of promotion, or the inclination to weaken or eliminate the institutional system that has been the axis and bastion of revolutionary culture. The strengthening and defense of institutionality are vital. […]
We cannot demolish the institutions. The enemy wants just that: destroy the revolutionary institution. Our response must be to improve [our institutions], debureaucratize them, make them more efficient.
[Photo of Miguel Díaz-Canel with Miguel Barnet, president of the UNEAC, on his right.]
