Tuesday, January 16, 2007
by Anthony Boadle
HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters): Cuban intellectuals are seeking an apology from
the country's communist authorities for the reappearance of an official
responsible for Stalinist-style cultural purges three decades ago.
Their anger was aroused by a television appearance on Jan. 5 of Luis
Pavon Tamayo, who as head of the National Culture Council from 1971 to
1976 led witch-hunts against writers and artists not toeing the party
line on proletarian revolution.
"I lost my job and was sent to work in a library basement for nine years
tying parcels of books with rope," said Anton Arrufat, Cuba's most
celebrated playwright. "I was not allowed to publish for 14 years," he
said on Monday.
Writers who were later rehabilitated have led a chorus of unusually
public protests through an avalanche of Internet messages that led Cuban
Culture Minister Abel Prieto to meet with 20 of them a week ago to
discuss the issue. But Prieto offered no apology.
Pavon was interviewed on a program featuring guests who have made
important contributions to Cuban culture, but no mention was made of his
role in censoring writers.
"This is an attempt to revive the darkest period for Cuban culture,"
said award-winning writer Reynaldo Gonzalez in a message posted on the
Internet.
Cuban leader Fidel Castro has not been seen in public since July 26,
suffering from an undisclosed illness that forced him to hand over
leadership of Cuba to his brother Raul Castro.
Dissident writer Raul Antonio Capote said it was no coincidence that
hard-liners were resurfacing at a time when Cuba's one-party system was
facing an uncertain future.
"Orthodox communists are trying to bolster themselves by turning to
people from the past," he said. "Not much has changed in Cuba, but that
was the blackest period."
PERSECUTION
Dozens of writers were hounded and expelled from their jobs - some were
driven into exile or sent to labor camps - in the crackdown on cultural
expression and homosexuality at a time when Castro's government was
deepening Cuba's ties with the former Soviet Union.
Miniskirts and Beatles music were banned as examples of decadent
capitalist culture and officials stopped long-haired youths in the
street to cut their hair with scissors under rigid cultural parameters
set a decade after Cuba's 1959 revolution.
Gonzalez, who like Arrufat was persecuted for being a homosexual,
recalled major Cuban writers Jose Lezama Lima and Virgilio Pinera who
were censored and died with no official recognition.
The Cuban Radio and Television Broadcasting Institute (ICRT) told the
offended writers in a meeting that they did not realise who Pavon was
and his television appearance, showing medals and pictures of him with
the Castro brothers, was not intentional, Arrufat said.
But other former censors have also resurfaced in television appearances
in the last two months: Jorge Serguera, the head of broadcasting at the
time, and Pavon's deputy Armando Quesada, whose role in purging the
theater movement won him the nickname "Torquesada" after the Spanish
Inquisition's Torquemada.
Fidel Castro moved to curtail criticism soon after his 1959 revolution.
In a speech to intellectuals in 1961 he said: "Within the revolution
all; against the revolution nothing."
http://www.caribbeannetnews.com/cgi-script/csArticles/articles/000051/005155.htm
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