By Mario Rojas Licea, in collaboration with the Free Press Agency for Oriente (APLO).
SANTIAGO DE CUBA, January (APLO).- In the general sense, the artistic sector in Cuba, confronts a series of limitations which prevent the artist or worker in this realm, to reach their goals and fulfill their aspirations.
For example, it is said that in Cuba there's freedom of expression, and this, as we all know, it nothing more than the appearance which is given to the world, because in reality, it is quite impossible.
In the first place, any artistic expression must be reviewed and studied by a commission, which is in charge of censorship according to the norms established so as not to tarnish the revolution's image.
In the second place, all must contain a political aspect which responds to the personal interests of a totalitarian regime.
In the third place, no artist is allowed to create a new tendency which has not been previously authorized by some other artist, someone with bad taste and even worse sense of what is artistic. That's why never, a writer or artist in the plastic arts, regardless of their talent, will be allowed to describe or paint the reality which surrounds him. If he were to do that, he could even be sent to jail, or, in the best of cases, would be censored and sentenced to live in obscurity.
And what of traveling abroad? Only those, who the government considers as worthy representatives of its interests, are allowed to leave, or when they go into exile. Some artists, who wish to leave the country, must run through interminable bureaucratic holds which, in some cases, lead them to desist, that is, in the best of cases.
It happens sometimes that if a person is invited to travel abroad and, if such invitation doesn't include an extended invitation for the head of the artistic department to travel as well, then such letter of invitation is buried as if it had never existed. Thus the artist misses an opportunity to improve himself, and his talent dies in anonymity.
This is further evidence of how, in our country, human rights are daily violated, the future of Cubans, as human beings, matter not. In this case, they violate Article 13, section 2, which says that "all persons have the right to leave any country, even their own, and to return to their country of origin". And Article 19, which says- to remind those who may have forgotten, or act as if it has been forgotten-, that "every individual has the right to freedom of opinion and of expression".
That is why here, in our city of Santiago de Cuba, we have decided to form, if the organizations and some artists in exile support us, to create a new artistic tendency to bring together all of those who wish to express through their art, the feelings which cannot be expressed about these times which we are living.
That is why we beg, all of those artists, musicians, and those persons who like progressive art, to help us in this task of renewing the arts in Cuba.
There are today a great number of artists who wish to undertake this beautiful task and to free the muse which have been jailed by the dictatorial regime, suffering since 1959.
Therefore, I'm hereby asking for the release of all those muse wishing to penetrate in the dormant minds of shell-shocked artists.