By JUAN O. TAMAYO
Herald Staff Writer
Cuba has replaced one of the last ``historic'' leaders of its revolution, Culture Minister Armando Hart Davalos, in a generational change at a time when young artists and writers are demanding more freedom.
Succeeding the 67-year-old Hart is Abel Prieto, 46, a long-haired writer whose politics differ little from Hart's but who has proven adept at addressing the young intellectuals' concerns without angering older revolutionaries.
Both Hart and Prieto recently defended the right of artists to criticize society, even as Granma, the Communist Party newspaper, harshly attacked a theater group in provincial Camaguey for ``disrespecting'' the Cuban flag.
``I don't think there will be great change. Prieto will continue the . . . very thoughtful way of thinking about culture that Hart began,'' said Pamela Maria Smorkaloff, a New York University professor who has studied Cuba's arts.
A brief Granma announcement Tuesday said Hart had been ``freed of his responsibilities.'' It gave no explanation, but said he was assigned to promote the work of Cuban independence hero Jose Marti. Ministers removed in disgrace are usually not given any such new assignments.
Hart took the reins of Cuba's cultural politics in 1976 and helped it overcome a decade of harsh Marxist-Leninist dogmatism in the 1960s and '70s, a period that Prieto last year called ``the black years.''
Cuban artists credit Hart with working to lessen the Soviet influence on Cuban culture in the late 1980s, and with easing travel restrictions to allow Cuban intellectuals to leave quietly and work abroad in the 1990s.
But his loyalty to the government was never in doubt.
Hart and his late wife, Haydee Santamaria, were clandestine members of Fidel Castro's July 26 Movement before Castro came to power in 1959.
Hart served as education minister from 1959 to 1965 and as organization secretary for the Cuban Communist Party's Central Committee from 1965 to 1976. He was a member of the party's inner circle, the Politburo, from 1965 until 1991.
But while Hart's status as one of the last historic leaders of the revolution gave him the power to protect artists critical of the system, he was considered too old by a young and restive generation of artists.
Challenges to conformity
Several challenges to conformity in the arts have been visible in recent months, sometimes as reflected in sharp reactions from above.
Just last month, a Communist Youth Union official blocked publication of a novel by Raul Capote, 30, even though it had won a top prize from the Union. The official said the work ``attacked sacred sectors of the country such as the armed forces.''
In November, Raul Gonzalez, director of Teatro Escambray, published a daring reply to a Granma review that lashed one of his productions, Moral Ambiguities, for offending the Cuban flag. Few Cubans would confront Granma, the party's voice.
And in October, two young Havana writers issued a public declaration attacking censorship and the scores of state-run intellectual organizations that slavishly follow Culture Ministry policy.
``Why create so many cultural organizations if in the end censorship and vigilance is imposed on artistic and cultural products [and] exile becomes the only road for a big part of the new generation of artists and writers?'' wrote Rolando Sanchez and Ricardo Perez.
Meteoric rise
Prieto, Hart's successor, was the author of two books of fiction before he began a meteoric rise in revolutionary politics.
He was elected president of the Union of Artists and Writers of Cuba in 1988. At a Communist Party gathering three years later, he was elevated to the party's 225-member Central Committee and the 25-member Politburo.
Prieto received mixed reviews in his first years in power at the artists' and writers' union, with some intellectuals saying he was quietly working to create space for different ideas and others complaining he toed the government line.
But he took a strong position for openness after President Castro's brother, armed forces chief Raul Castro, read a Central Committee report last March assailing any intellectual who was less than totally loyal to the revolution.
Meeting privately with writers and academics at the University of Havana, he assured them that the Central Committee report would not signal a ``witch hunt'' or a ``return to the black years of the 60s and 70s.''
Copyright © 1997 The Miami Herald