(Shorthand Versions - Presidency of the Republic)
We address you as the dear writers, artists and creators of the Homeland.
Once again, this is a congress that stimulates our thoughts and also stirs our emotions, passions and commitments.
I would like to acknowledge, first of all, the effort made by Marta to be here today when she has been in a crisis, I do not know whether to say health or personal, and she is here guiding this historic event (Applause), and that shows a high sense of responsibility and also of commitment with what we are discussing and with what we are trying to build from it.
I would also like to dedicate a sentiment of remembrance to those who are not with us today and who have been very active in these five years in the spaces where we have had the opportunity to debate with members of UNEAC, I am speaking in particular of Corina Mestre and Pedro de la Hoz (Applause).
And to my brother Guille Vilar I would like to say that recognizing the enormous link between what is Cuban and what is universal is not colonizing at all, on the contrary, that is how we decolonize ourselves. I agree with you (Applause).
I believe that the follow-up given to the proposals and agreements of the previous Congress is significant, because one of the data given in the documents circulated said that out of 68 agreements, 49 were fulfilled, 18 were in progress and one was pending.
The work developed in the reports presented by the associations and the permanent working committees of the organization is also highly recognized, taking into account that an important part of these five years were marked by COVID-19, which paralyzed us in a number of areas of the country's life. We had to put ourselves in function, above all, to save the lives of our compatriots, but culture did not stop and was also present bringing spirituality, bringing encouragement, cultivating emotions in our people. I believe that they made very much their own something that I asked them in the last Congress: they did not let the Congress die and they contributed for the good of the nation in these five years that have passed.
Therefore, I also want to acknowledge the contribution that this Congress is making in terms of discussion, ideas, proposals and, of course, they will have all the support and commitment to follow up on what has been agreed and approved here in the coming years, just as we have done in the five years that have passed between Congresses.
In retrospect, during this period, the country has suffered transcendental socio-economic impacts that are added, and this is not a minor fact, to the more than sixty years of economic warfare that the empire has waged against Cuba.
In the course of these five years, the persecution of the United States against Cuba has become extraordinarily acute, and culture has not been unaffected by these impacts, both in material terms and in the very spirituality of the nation.
We are facing a two-dimensional war: on the one hand, the economic war, designed to raise shortages to extreme levels and break the will of all the people, and in parallel, a cultural war that has a symbolic component, as Faya explained, a psychological component and a component of media intoxication, which have been put together in large operations by the operators of the counterrevolution and which are aimed directly against the unity of our people.
In the face of these threats, culture continues to play a determining role as it is the generator of ideas and values or the sword and shield of the nation.
In the midst of another very difficult circumstance, Fidel said that culture is the first thing to be saved. That idea goes far beyond art, it goes to the roots, to identity, to Cuban identity, in short, to what we are. That is why I welcome the motto of this Congress: "Culture is the Homeland," an idea of another great, Don Fernando Ortiz, who tells us the same thing in other words: "To save culture is to save the Homeland."
And what can culture do to save itself? What is saving the homeland? It is a question that we are answering together. You have the answer, you have given it and I am sure you will always continue to give it.
There is no way to impose creation: authentic art and culture are the expression of one's own feelings and ideas; the other is a copy. What is true, what lasts, has originality as its distinctive value: Cuba's powerful culture is the best proof of that.
Our identity was forged in the struggle for independence first and against dependence later, and those struggles were led by intellectuals and creators, whose traces are indelibly imprinted in great works of national culture such as the one that began this session when we all sang the Bayamo Hymn.
Fidel always distinguished the role of culture as a builder of the people's spirituality, so as not to be defeated and to overcome difficulties with one's own efforts. In such difficult circumstances as the ones we live in, that role acquires crucial dimensions.
Our spirituality, in all its dimensions, needs to grow in the reinforcement of the values that should distinguish a society in which we all recognize ourselves. That is why the theme of the role of culture in the current context has been very present in the debates. We have no doubt about the extraordinary contributions that culture can make not only to the Cuban nation, but also to the world.
Culture allows us to recognize ourselves as Cubans, essence and part of the project of nationhood that began in 1868 and transformed a colony into a country with character, identity, its own profile and a national being that springs spontaneously in any latitude in which it lives.
Culture stimulates and reinforces the feeling of homeland.
Culture is the fundamental and indispensable nourishment for the spirituality of the people.
Culture provides us with freedom. José Martí and Fidel said it many times, in different ways, but with the same meaning: without culture there is no possible freedom.
In these days of confronting the destruction caused by the passage of a hurricane -and the hurricane is also an inseparable part of national life and of our condition as an island- we have witnessed how much impact a cultural action has on communities broken by a blow of nature.
Kcho, with the Martha Machado Brigade, now paying homage to General Espinosa, and the ever young protagonists of the Guantánamo-Baracoa Theatrical Crusade know what I am talking about and how much culture can contribute to the essential spiritual restoration in those affected communities.
Culture is the fundamental substance of unity, which is in turn the strategic element of survival of a small nation besieged by an empire, always hungry for power, which has never renounced to possess us by force or seduction. And if it has not already engulfed us, one of the greatest merits is that of Cuban culture, so powerful, so strong from root to top, like the Kapok tree of the Cuban mountain, and so authentic, that it cannot be supplanted or possessed no matter how much they try to do so.
That is why we are also talking about cultural colonization. To unite in the struggle for the emancipation of women, against all forms of discrimination, and against one of the most humiliating, racial discrimination, is also to fight to decolonize ourselves. We must observe that there are places in the country that are still identified with terms, with names or with traces of that racial discrimination, especially in colonial times. I believe that we must place visible, emancipating marks in places that meant humiliation for men who were enslaved.
The interconnection between cultural colonization and new technologies is increasingly greater in current times, because of the way in which they combine and manage to kidnap the subjectivity of individuals to the point of trivializing and vulgarizing their behavior, considering also that the relationship of individuals with new technologies occurs at a younger age.
Therefore, promoting authentic paradigms in ethical and cultural terms is not only a necessity, but an urgency for the institutions that have the tremendous responsibility of educating and training the new generations.
At a congress of the Hermanos Saíz Association, Fidel called for greater coordination among the efforts of the Association, the UNEAC, the trade union, all educational and cultural institutions and organizations, art instructors, creators and promoters, to prevent ridiculous conventionalisms, jealousies, compartments, divisions and superficial approaches from hindering the deployment among us of that basic instrument of liberation and spiritual growth that is culture, of the antidote par excellence to manipulation and consumerism, divisions and superficial approaches can hinder the deployment among us of that basic instrument of liberation and spiritual growth that is culture, the antidote par excellence to manipulation and consumerism, the way proposed by Martí to circumvent the colonial traps and settle in our roots and in the most fertile tributaries of the universe. And this has been clearly defended by my friend Abel Prieto.
To the ongoing cultural colonization, let us counterpose a decolonizing approach of well-being and happiness. Our paradigm is based on meaningful social relationships, on the concept of useful life and happiness to be contributed. It is characterized by solidarity, by the results of collective management, by the guarantee of basic rights, to social welfare, to a full life based on personal and national dignity, which we must continue to defend with creativity and work, even in the midst of the adverse situations that mark us today. This requires critical thinking as a form of liberation.
I am convinced that it is not by prohibiting that we will solve the great cultural challenges of our time. The challenge is to form and promote critical thinking in the face of the cultural consumption that is offered, almost all for free, to the youngest audiences in the increasingly numerous and diverse platforms in the network of networks. It is not easy, but it can't be postponed at a time when manipulation is crossing all known limits.
Here the fidelist maxim is imposed: always defend the truth, no matter how hard it may be; the truth saves, strengthens and is one of the fundamental forces of the revolutionary ideology.
To exercise and promote critical thinking is crucial to understand the moment the world is living and the values of the cause we defend. Only culture, together with education, has the capacity and the possibility to promote the exercise of critical thinking, the only antidote against the manipulation and idiotization of uncritical audiences.
In this purpose, a major role is played by the guiding cultural criticism that helps to promote and develop this critical thinking in a timely, attractive and constant manner.
The path that Rolando Pérez Betancourt, Pedro de la Hoz and other valuable intellectuals opened in the daily press for many years with their particular talents, has been sustained and continues to be sustained in specialized magazines and also in specialized digital spaces; but they need the support of new columnists who are not content with praising what is worthwhile and provide a deeper look at cultural products with due recognition to the artistic hierarchies.
I would also like to talk about cultural policy in public spaces with different forms of economic management and ownership. Fidel said that cultural policy should be decolonized and decolonizing, committed to authentic creation, Cuban and universal, that rejects the hegemonic vision of art as vulgar merchandise.
Here I want to insist even more strongly on what I said at the closing of the last Congress: "There is not one cultural policy for the state sector and another for the private sector. In both sectors, those who make true art must be promoted, defended and given space" (Applause). This includes tourism, which must become a window to the world for the best of our culture. Moreover, it is up to the institutions of Tourism to be as promoters of culture as the Ministry of Culture, it cannot be seen as an ornament or a complement to entertain, it is one of the most powerful attractions of a country that sweats culture from all its pores.
Likewise, the relations between culture and the media, particularly our television and the alliances between artists, writers and educators, must be enhanced, strengthened and operated. In order to consolidate all this, we must finish strengthening the cultural industries. Not prioritizing them is to do without a fundamental tool to confront the neo-colonizing hegemony that is advancing, favored by the ever-increasing penetration of new information and communication technologies.
Speaking of these technologies of communication and culture, I believe that this does not mean that we have to be fiddled with technological development, quite the contrary. The problem is not in the channels of dissemination of ideas, but in the content and in the forms and in how we take advantage of these channels. We urgently need a more intelligent, creative and attractive use of digital platforms, and I am certain that there will be more and better results where creation is supported by new technological supports. The main challenge lies in the influence we achieve on the collective consciousness with our content and ideas.
If in 2019 we were concerned about the advance of neo-colonizing and trivializing contents in the networks, after five years this reality is even more worrying. Large media conglomerates serve as a platform for the productions of ideological laboratories that use the networks to manipulate information and generate emotions contrary to the law and social order in the country
Let us also talk about current cultural expressions. The transit through these five intense years has left us many lessons, one of them is the attention that we must pay from the institutions to the new cultural expressions that emerge. There are still expressions of contempt or underestimation from sometimes elitist positions. We are facing a cultural phenomenon that transcends the tastes sedimented for decades due to its strong component and social scope.
From these cultural expressions, which are mainly based on music, ideas, values, conceptions of life, signs of change of cultural paradigms that we cannot ignore or neglect are being generated.
I insist on what I said in the previous Congress and have repeated repeatedly: it is not a problem of artistic genre, the problem will always be what they promote in terms of values. But being absent from the phenomenon, keeping ourselves on the sidelines, we will never succeed in influencing their creations nor in adding them to the cultural policy of the Cuban Revolution.
The fact that subversive laboratories based in the United States have bet on exponents of this genre in recent times to reach popular sectors is a not insignificant sign of the impact they have on increasingly larger segments of the country and which we also have to know how to reach. This has to do with culture and Revolution.
In these five years the Revolution has been severely threatened with repeated destabilization attempts, manipulation of false news and constant attempts to dismantle history. In each of these circumstances we have witnessed, with no little pain, expressions and attitudes of artists and creators accepting as valid some enemy matrixes and even joining their dissemination in a thoughtless manner.
In the face of attempts to dismantle and distort history, mainly that of the Revolution, how are we supposed to react? Are the cultural industries designed to lie, manipulate, denigrate the heroes and martyrs of the Homeland? Do our media have to legitimize works that promote anti-values? Does our criticism have to be absent and not insist on these problems? It is not only a question of creative freedom, it is a question of ethics and principles. It is again a question of saving the homeland, which is also a question of saving culture.
Graziella Pogolotti insisted that to the extent that the man of today recognizes himself in his historical moment in today's Cuba, and achieves it through his daily action and the reaffirmation of his daily values, he will then be a fuller, more convinced, more integral combatant in all aspects of life.
Let us recall the message of Army General Raúl Castro Ruz on the occasion of the 55th anniversary of UNEAC: "Today we are doubly threatened in the field of culture: by the subversive projects that seek to divide us and the global colonizing wave. The UNEAC of today will continue to face these complex challenges with courage, revolutionary commitment and intelligence.".
Let us then develop the cultural and spiritual forces of the Cuban nation, those that generate emotions, generate passion, engage us, ground us in our historical and cultural roots, increase patriotic, revolutionary and humanist values and strengthen our revolutionary convictions and, above all, the pride of being Cuban men and women.
There is much to be done to support what we say; there is much to be done to improve, to strengthen; there is much to be done in community cultural work, in the teaching of history, in improving education, in creating economic wealth to distribute with social justice and to be able to sustain the immense social work of the Revolution, and to create more spiritual wealth.
In an interview with Teresa Melo, several years after the Special Period, someone asked her how we had survived when everything collapsed. She, as always, brilliantly answered: everything collapsed, except dreams.
Working together, with participation, with the soul rooted in the earth, with creative resistance, which implies robust cultural resistance with ethics and beauty; with science and conscience, with intelligence, implementing and following up on what was discussed in this historic Congress, only in this way will we find solutions.
I am one of those who believe that we can!
Thank you very much (Prolonged applause).
