Former Censor
By ANITA SNOW
The Associated Press
HAVANA - The Cuban government's arts union Thursday backed protests
against the recent reappearance of a former top censor blamed for
Stalinist-type purges on artistic expression in the 1970s.
The statement by the National Union of Cuban Artists and Writers
appeared aimed at defusing a fiery debate among Cuban intellectuals both
on and off the island about the former top cultural official's
appearance on three state television shows this month.
The resurfacing of Luis Pavon Tamayo and others from the period known to
writers here as the "gray five years" has raised worries that Cuba's new
caretaker government was moving to tighten expression with ailing
President Fidel Castro on the sidelines.
Published in the Communist Party daily Granma, the union's statement
said it shared the "just indignation" of intellectuals disturbed by the
reappearance.
Since Castro ceded his powers provisionally to his brother Raul on July
31 after announcing he had undergone intestinal surgery, the younger
Castro has campaigned for fearless and critical debate within the
confines of the island's communist system.
In December, he encouraged university leaders to engage in public debate
while still remembering that final decisions will be made by leaders.
"That way we reach decisions, and I'm talking about big decisions," he said.
Last week, ideology chieftain Rolando Alfonso Borges called on
journalists for official media to report more on problems affecting
Cuban citizens. Since the fall, the youth communist newspaper Juventud
Rebelde has published a rare series of stories examining petty
corruption at state businesses.
"The people must see their problems more frequently reflected in our
media," Granma newspaper said Saturday in reporting on Alfonso's meeting
with official reporters.
In the flap about the former censor, the union statement did not name
Pavon and he could not be immediately located for comment. He evidently
is retired and is not listed in the telephone book.
Many Cuban blame Pavon for the censorship and purges of colleagues when
was president of Cuba's National Culture Council from 1971 to 1976.
During those years, writers and artists were expelled from their jobs
for being homosexuals or not toeing the government line. Some, including
Jose Lezama Lima, were hounded into exile. Beatles music and even long
hair were banned on the island.
The statement said union leaders met with writers who worried that the
new appearances by Pavon and other culture officials from that period
could "express a tendency other than the political culture that has
guaranteed and will guarantee our unity."
Desiderio Navarro, a Cuban cultural and literary theorist, living on the
outskirts of Havana, sent an open letter to his fellow intellectuals to
remember painful episodes of censorship.
The letter was shared widely among Cuban writers via e-mail and was
picked up on numerous Cuban exile Web logs.
"Are we really a country with such little memory that we don't remember
the painful situation that our cultural institutions were reduced to by
the work of the National Culture Council?" he wrote.
In his letter, Navarro asked: "Why precisely at this singular moment in
the history of our country, when all of our people are depending on the
convalescence of the Commander in Chief, comes this sudden glorious
media resurrection?"
Others making recent TV appearances include Jorge Serguera, who was
president of Cuban broadcasting during the same period.
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