The Fake UNEAC Congress

The Fake UNEAC Congress / Angel Santiesteban
Posted on April 26, 2014

Once again, the official intellectuals are summoned to "participate" in
another Congress of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), to
be used as political reaffirmation for the Regime, since they won't do
anything else, the same as on previous occasions.

Some will bleed for their suffering, the officials will pretend to
listen, and it will even appear that something will be done in this
regard, when the reality is that they will forget the problems, and they
will remain only in the memory of those who are present.

The dictatorship, as it always does, will allow the media to publish or
televise some sentimental intervention, to make us believe that it has
been a space for free debate, and thus hide the hand of censorship that
they constantly apply to us.

Those elected know that they would never be able to say what they hide,
their true thinking with respect to the dictatorship, and as in a double
game, they will also pretend that the first task is to save the culture,
when in practice they only save their lifetime stay in power.

Those intellectuals — the majority — entered into the process when they
were very young; today they are a litter of oldsters brought to heel who
ooze from the wounds made by Fidel Castro and who have overcome profound
humiliations: they carried out cynical condemnations and then couldn't
appear physically in society.

I remember when in the "war of the emails" — as a result of some
negative characters returning to public view, repressors in the cultural
sector in the '70s — the majority of intellectuals attacked that
possibility, and when the government understood that the protest was
growing, they ordered the ringmaster, Abel Prieto, to block the bulls,
and that they be the ones who watch the affair.

There were hundreds of letters, first nationally and then from every
corner of the planet where there was a Cuban who had been harmed by
those people. No one ever said that the guiltiest of all was Fidel
Castro. They only permitted themselves to judge the people, pure fallen
trees that already weren't of interest to the State, like the comandante
Papito Serguera and Luis Pavón, among others.

I dared to say, in my only email that I dedicated to the matter, that we
do nothing by condemning the officials who were removed suddenly, when
the intellectual author, Fidel Castro, was still in power, that those
who they attacked now were no more than repressors, executioners who
executed under the orders of the Castro brothers.

Now they had to endure the pretense that they, omnipotent leaders,
didn't know about the purges in the cultural sector, the persecution of
homosexuals or artists who shaped some critical revelations in their
work. The intellectuals – even in their letters – were not capable of
questioning the centers of Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP).

They played their false roles of bulls seated on the steps while they
watched the master of the toreros in the ring and the firefighter in the
cultural sector, Abel Prieto, manipulate the affair behind closed doors
with some conferences, to drain once and for all the spiteful feelings
provoked by the constant reactions.

It will be another congress without solid contributions to the cultural
process that strengthens the cultural sector.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Lawton Prison Settlement. April 2014.

Please follow the link and sign the petition so that Amnesty
International declare the dissident Cuban Angel Santiesteban a prisoner
of conscience.
https://secure.avaaz.org/es/petition/Para_que_Amnistia_Internacional_declare_prisionero_de_conciencia_al_disidente_cubano_Angel_Santiesteban/?fbss

Translated by Regina Anavy
14 April 2014

Source: The Fake UNEAC Congress / Angel Santiesteban | Translating Cuba
- http://translatingcuba.com/the-fake-uneac-congress/