Cultural policy
in
Cuba
by Lisandro Otero with the assistance of
Francisco Martfnez Hinojosa
Unesco Paris 1972
\\
Studies and documents on cultural policies
In this series
Cultural polity: a preliminary study
Cultural policy in the United States
by Charles G. Mark
Cultural rights as human rights
Cultural policy in Japan
by Nobuya Shikaumi
Some aspects of French cultural policy
by the Studies and Research Department of the
French Ministry of Culture
Cultural policy in Tunisia
by Rank Said
Cultural policy in Great Britain
by Michael Green and Michael Wilding,
in consultation with Richard Hoggart
Cultural policy in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
by A. A. Zvorykin with the assistance of
N. I. Golubtsova and E. I. Rabinovich
Cultural policy in Czechoslovakia
by Miroslav Marek, Milan Hromadka
and Josef Chroust
Cultural policy in Italy
A survey prepared under the auspices
of the Italian National Commission for
Unesco
Cultural policy in Yugoslavia
by Stevan Majstorovic
Cultural policy in Bulgaria
by Kostadine Popov
Some aspects of cultural policies in India
by Kapila Malik Vatsyayan
Cultural policy in Cuba
by Lisandro Otero with the assistance of
Francisco Martinez Hinojosa
Cultural policy in Egypt
by Magdi Wahba
To be published
Cultural policy in Finland
The serial numbering of titles in this series,
the presentation of which has been modified,
was discontinued with the volume
Cultural policy in Italy
Published by the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
Place de Fontenoy, 75 Paris-76
Printed by
Presses Universitaires de France, VendSme
1972
International
Book Year
© Unesco 1972
Printed in France
SHC.71/XIX.11/A
Preface
The purpose of this series is to show how cultural policies are planned and
implemented in various Member States.
As cultures differ, so does the approach to them; it is for each Member
State to determine its cultural policy and methods according to its own
conception of culture, its socio-economic system, political ideology and technological development. However, the methods of cultural policy (like those
of general development policy) have certain common problems; these are
largely institutional, administrative and financial in nature, and the need
has increasingly been stressed for exchanging experiences and information
about them. This series, each issue of which follows as far as possible a similar pattern so as to make comparison easier, is mainly concerned with these
technical aspects of cultural policy.
In general, the studies deal with the principles and methods of cultural
policy, the evaluation of cultural needs, administrative structures and management, planning and financing, the organization of resources, legislation,
budgeting, public and private institutions, cultural content in education,
cultural autonomy and decentralization, the training of personnel, institutional infrastructures for meeting specific cultural needs, the safeguarding of the cultural heritage, institutions for the dissemination of the arts,
international cultural co-operation and other related subjects.
The studies, which cover countries belonging to differing social and economic systems, geographical areas and levels of development, present, therefore, a wide variety of approaches and methods in ciiltural policy. Taken
as a whole, they can provide guide-lines to countries which have yet to
establish cultural policies, while all countries, especially those seeking
new formulations of such policies, can,|profit by the experience already
gained.
This study was prepared for Unesco by the Consejo Nacional de Cultura
under the direction of Lisandro Otero, Vice-Chairman, and with the assistance of Francisco Martinez Hinojosa.
The opinions expressed are the authors' and do not necessarily reflect
the views of Unesco.
The designations employed and the presentation of the material in this
publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the
part of the Unesco Secretariat concerning the legal status of any country or
territory, or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitations of the frontiers of any country or territory.
Contents
9
17
Antecedents and origins of Cuban culture
The cultural framework
Training 17
Production 23
Distribution 27
Consumption 34
37
Other cultural institutions
Union of Cuban Writers and Artists
(UNEAC) 37
Cuban Institute of Filmic Art and Film
Production and Industry (ICAIC) 38
Casa de las Americas (House of the
Americas) 45
Institute del Libro (Book Institute) 47
Cuban Radio Broadcasting Institute 53
Antecedents and
origins of Cuban culture
When Columbus discovered a new world for the crown of Castille this not
only prepared the way for the coming of the modern epoch but also meant
the broadcasting of the seed of Spanish culture in the new lands of America.
The conquest of the Western Hemisphere was achieved by audacity and
valour, motivated by desire for wealth. The vice-royalties and the captaincies-general sent their gold and silver in streams to the mother country
and she sent them her ideology, language and culture. Cuba's history was
characterized by the lethargy of the nascent colony, reduced to the insignificant role of a supply point for the fleets of the commercial trading posts,
a victualling yard.
During the sixteenth century, in which the bloodless conquest of the
country was completed, the first Negroes were brought into Cuba, the trade
in slaves was started, and there was a growth of extractive industry based
on gold prospecting and using the native Indians as a labour force. It was
not long before the natives died out, leaving no solid culture behind them,
unlike the Incas, Mayas and Aztecs of the mainland. Livestock farming
began to develop and overseas trade was made a monopoly, this last palliated by the development of smuggling. For 150 years the island suffered
from repeated pirate raids. The earliest figure in our cultural beginnings
must be deemed to be Fray Bartolome de las Casas, who, in his Historia de
las Indicts, has left us a document of outstanding value for a knowledge of
the earliest years of our country's life.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, a school was opened in
Santiago de Cuba, attached to the cathedral, to provide instruction in
'grammar'. The foundation of this elementary centre—in 1523—is perhaps
the substructural factor in our culture. The first Cuban-born teacher and
the first musician was Miguel de Velazco, an organist who has also served
as professor of grammar at the cathedral school of Santiago de Cuba as early
as the mid-sixteenth century.
The first known concert music is the Son de la Ma Teodora, which was
Antecedents and origins of Cuban culture
composed towards the end of the sixteenth century and played by a small
orchestral group in Santiago, among whom was the Dominican Negro-freed
woman, Teodora Gines, better known as Ma Teodora. This is the earliest
known precursor of Cuban music.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, in 1608 to be precise, we
get the start of Cuban literature with a long poem, entitled Espejo de
Paciencia, written by Silvestre de Balboa. It is interesting to note that even
in the Espejo de Paciencia the word criollo is already used to distinguish the
Spaniards born on the island from the native islanders, the peninsulas, or
the Spaniards born in Spain.
At the start, the first wave of conquistadors fell upon the natural
resources of the island with desperate eagerness for gain, with a view to
seeing a quick pay-off for the risks taken and returning home as wealthy
men as soon as possible.
This first wave was followed by a group of colonists who settled on the
land and sought, with slave labour, to extract from the soil the wherewithal
for meeting their main needs, for trading and for growing rich. As a result,
men who started as adventurers changed into settlers, thinking in terms of
earnings. Settling the land and peopling the island, were to coincide increasingly and to pass by degrees to people born on the island. In other words, we
get the rise of a Creole class distinct from the Spanish-born bureaucracy in
charge of the colony's political affairs. During the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries the country's development leapt ahead with the introduction of
sugar, coffee and tobacco growing and the start and extension of a railway
system. All this was in part the work of a group of venturesome entrepreneurs who set the country on the way to a prosperous economy backed and
run by Cubans exclusively. Until then, Cuba could not be described as a
nation, for there was no awareness of nationality.
It was towards the end of the eighteenth century, in 1791, that the first
Cuban play known to us was produced; it was El Principe Jardinero o Fingido Cloridano, by Santiago Pita.
This century also saw the emergence of the first Cuban composer,
Esteban Salas, with whom our musical history really begins. Salas is of
notable importance, as the leading figure in the Cuban culture of his day. He
was choirmaster of the cathedral of Santiago de Cuba and wrote a 'seminar'
on the country's musical activities. His liturgical and secular compositions
evolve from a late baroque style to a nascent and struggling neo-classicism.
As regards painting in this century, Jose Nicolas de la Escalera, a disciple of Murillo, dominates the scene. All his work is characterized by
concentration on portraitive and religious themes.
The University of Havana was founded in 1728. Before that date there
were -already the College of San Ambrosio,- founded in 1689, and the Seminary of San Basilio el Magno dating from 1722.
A priest, Felix Varela, opened up new horizons to Cuban thought,
championing free inquiry and advocating eclecticism tending to reconcile
10
Antecedents and origins of Cuban culture
the rationalist doctrine, founded on induction and deduction and this with
positivism based on conviction and experience.
There was a need to transform the Cuban intellect. The new philosophical teachings of Father Varela rejected all authority that did not stem from
the human reason. And he championed as necessary and indispensable instruction in the physical and natural sciences.
Later the doctrines preached by Jose de la Luz y Caballero were to
join up with the work of education initiated by Father Varela.
Thus, as early as the mid-nineteenth century, we find an intelligentsia,
distinguished by the quality and number of the writers who developed the
notion that being Cuban was something other than being Spanish, and isolated the ideological substance to cover the economic structure thus far put
together.
A struggle developed between the caste of Spanish colonial officials
and the progressive Creole entrepreneurs. This type of Cuban, a 'capitalist
activist', worked with progress, espoused modern rationalism, and was in
sympathy with the achievements of the French Revolution. He was a pragmatist who was stifled by, and rejected, absolutism.
Concurrently with this phenomenon among the Creoles, with whom the
economic power lay, the colonial bureaucracy continued to misuse its powers
in the factorage sector which was exploited to the hilt, crushed with taxes,
and converted into a Tom Tiddler's ground by officials who looked on their
overseas posts as sinecures.
To define itself as a nation, Cuba had to fall back on negative definitions,
it had to be anti-Spain. In the island, Cuban was all that was not Spanish.
Typical Creole personalities and heroes of the emerging middle class were
Francisco de Arango y Parreno and Jose Antonio Saco. Arango y Parreno,
spokesman of the Cuban land-owning class, fought for the free import of
slaves and succeeded in getting free trade for Cuba. Saco was active in
public life at a later date than Arango, at a time when the slave economy
was entering a crisis and steam power had been introduced in the sugar
industry. Saco argued the possibility of using free labour instead of slaves.
Meanwhile, the differences between the colony and the home country began
to grow sharper with progressive attritions of the island oligarchy's facilities
for access to the management of the colony's affairs.
In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Cuban patrician class was
already in possession of nearly all the agricultural wealth and major industries of the country: sugar, coffee, livestock, tobacco. The captains-general
then embarked on a policy of isolating the Creoles and barring their way to
any representative position in the community which might bring them prestige and respect.
The nineteenth century also produced eminent men. of science like
Tomas Tomay, who introduced vaccination in Cuba; Felipe Poey, a worldfamous naturalist; Alvaro Reynoso, who taught Cuba the scientific method
of growing sugar cane, and Carlos Finlay, who made the most noteworthy
11
Antecedents and origins of Cuban culture
scientific discovery that Cuba, has contributed to humanity: identification
of a mosquito as the carrier of yellow-fewer.
As in the realm of ideology, Cuban literature attained great heights
during the nineteenth century. Jose Maria Heredia and Gertrudis Gomea
de Avellaneda created a powerful lyric poetry which helped to build and
also indirectly to interpret the sense of nationhood.
In fiction, Cirilo Villaverde is the principal figure with his novel, Cecilia
Valdes, which presents a wide panorama of customs in this period of Cuban
history.
Meanwhile, the Creole oligarchy had been prosecuting its struggle for
emancipation along two lines. One was to obtain from the Spanish Government a colonial reform giving Cuba a greater degree of autonomy; the other
was to seek to accede to the United States as an additional state in the
Union. When both these aspirations came to nothing, the most progressive
elements among the Creole landowners realized that nothing could be
achieved in those directions and started to consider the only remaining solution to the problem—an armed uprising for an independent Cuba.
The wars of independence that broke out in 1868 and were to last thirty
years, with alternating flare-ups and cool-ofFs issued finally in a formal and
frustrating type of liberty in the republic of 1902.
It was the final period of the war that saw the emergence of our greatest
figure both as thinker and man of action. This was Jose Marti, the organizer
of the final insurrectional phase, a major writer and a master of Spanish
literature. It was Marti who grasped most thoroughly the unitary character
of the Americas and the need for its increasing integration, and who saw
Cuba's independence as a step towards the fusion. It was also Marti who
drew attention to the chief threat to this development: the increasing expansionist and dominating character of an imperialism that threatened to
smother our economy and newly won independence, by conscripting for its
own aggrandizement the wealth, the talent and the lives of the emerging
American nations.
Once liberated from Spain, Cuba started along a via dolorosa, in the
course of which all of Marti's prophecies came true. Internecine strife,
American intervention, corruption, chaos in the public administration, were
the notes of this phase.
During the 1920s a new generation grew to adulthood which, finding
this state of affairs intolerable, was to raise anew the banner of Cuban independence and attempt a radical reform of the nation. It was then that an
anti-imperialist spirit emerged and solidified in pace with the emergence and
clarification of imperialist intentions.
The 1933 Revolution was the crystallization of these aims but was cancelled out by political manoeuvres, repression, foreign intervention and the
political immaturity of the mass of the nation.
In 1953 a band of young people attacked the Moncada Barracks in
Santiago de Cuba and this was the start of the final phase. The ideals
12
Antecedents and origins of Cuban culture
of 1868 and 1933 were carried to culmination by Fidel Castro's leadership,
and with the victory of January 1959 the process of implementation began.
All this background material is essential for an understanding of the
period of our culture's crystallization. The triumphant Revolution inherited
a burden of corrupted values. The years of the republic, particularly in the
final period, had conduced to a so-called mass culture based on the commercialization of cultural property and of its profit-making potentialities. Every
expedient was used to banish the cultural values of the country, the falsification of history, the destruction and mutilation of our finest national
traditions, impeding cultural exchanges with the rest of the world, with
the end result that this debased culture became one more mechanism of
exploitation.
Culture thus became a means of control and oppression. The subjection
of the mass media to the laws of supply and demand and the requirements
of the publicity which stimulates consumption at certain levels had incidences in the sphere of illiteracy and low school enrolments, unemployment
and grinding poverty.
The so-called mass culture created its own spurious ideals and taking its
stand on the values of sensationalism and of facile entertainment value,
encouraged an escapist art in which man ignores his problems.
As a result of the Revolution the masses finally broke through into
Cuban history and claimed their right to work, to culture and to the full
dignity of human beings. From that point on, Cuban mass media changed
into handmaids of education. The press, radio and television had to devote
a proportion of their resources to literacy work, to the assertion of the
nation's values and to the placement, orientation and unification of the
entire people.
The appearance of a new type of 'consumer' of culture, who was at the
same time a producer of culture but who had not been privileged to receive
an academic grounding, demanded an adult approach to him by work and
image which at once informed him and invited his active co-operation.
But the Revolution had to face other kinds of underdevelopment: lack
of technicians, of material resources, a deplorable level of education, an
urban/rural imbalance. If we add the country's difficulties in the political
sphere—aggression, blockades—the magnitude of the task can be appreciated. The first years of the Revolution were spent in resisting attempts at
internal pressure and in preparing the public to confront the challenge of
history, to overcome the obstacles of earlier days, and to transform the life
around them.
From the beginning machinery was put in place for the achievement of
speedier development and an early economic take-off. But the Revolution
cultivates the habit of discharging parallel obligations. Concurrently with
defence and the foundations of the economy, it began to turn its attention
to cultural development. Then 1961 saw not only the military operations
forced on us by the Playa Giron invasion but, simultaneously therewith,
13
Antecedents and origins of Cuban culture
the completion of the cultural operations to rid the country of illiteracy in
a single year.
It is our understanding that, while education and culture lie in different
areas, they nevertheless are parts of a single complex and require to be dealt
with simultaneously. By stepping up literacy programmes and adult education we were laying the first stone for the pyramid of our humanistic
culture. To this a crash programme of school building, a speed-up in the
rise of enrolments and appreciable increases in living standards in rural
areas also contributed.
With the disappearance from our culture of commercial factors and the
prevalence of the criterion of enjoyment over that of market value as
regards cultural property, the way to greater achievements began to open.
The cultural policy of Cuba is based on complete freedom for the
creative artist. Each one makes his choice among trends, manners and styles
according to his needs of expression, thus ensuring variety and spontaneity
in the manifestations of artistic creativity. At the same time the State relies
on each artist's sense of responsibility for a close reconciliation of his freedom of expression and his revolutionary duty, setting a barrier against the
subtle ideological infiltration whose final goal is the destruction of the institutions that guarantee and promote his freedom.
The chief asset of a developing country in a state of revolution lies in
the people itself. It is logical for the debased and commercialized 'mass
culture' to be replaced by a true culture for the masses. It cannot be forgotten that for the greater completeness of that culture, the social and intellectual participation of the masses themselves must be secured. To achieve
this, a powerful amateur cultural movement has been developed. At the
same time, the regular circuits of cultural dissemination have been fostered
by the opening of museums, theatres, art galleries and libraries, the formation of orchestras, choirs and theatre companies, the production of books,
records and films and the extension of radio and television coverage.
At the same time attention has also been drawn to extending these
activities to the rural areas as part of a cultural policy whose objectives
include the elimination of the urban/rural imbalance typical of underdevelopment.
Another basic aspect of our cultural policy, as well as liberty of
expression and mass cultural participation, is the attention paid to the
national strain, the reflection in art of our traditions, history and cultural
origins. This revalorization of the autochthonous has to be passed under
a critical microscope to throw out the contaminated elements, the false
values. At the same time, in conjunction with this emphasis on our beginnings, a spotlight has been focused on a beginning of assimilating the cultural heritage of mankind. The adoption of new techniques and trends is
the best guarantee that traditionalism will not become a reactionary brake
on the updating of our culture. With this selective assimilation, adapted to
our needs of the most technically advanced and up-to-date values of art
14
Antecedents and origins of Cuban culture
ensures the retention of our dynamism and we avoid any possible regression.
As part of our policy of spreading culture more widely we are making
an effort to ensure that the centres of cultural dissemination be instructional
elements within the frame of reference of this country's great educational
advance; that they constitute functional and dynamic elements geared to
the needs of everyday life and neither holy temples, above and divorced
from man's necessities, nor store-houses of beautiful things created for the
aesthetic pleasure of a Maecenas.
The rounded personality of the man of tomorrow requires more than
mere passive spectator ship. For their physical and mental balance alike
human beings need to know and practise one of the arts.
Through the amateur cultural movement, lay participation is secured
engendering greater appreciation and the awakening of sensibilities and
gifts which, channelled through the schools, may issue in major work. But
this is not enough. To build a balanced personality the work must start in
the very earliest stages of education.
It is for this reason that an ambitious plan has been developed for the
teaching of the arts at the elementary level of schooling, in primary schools
using radio and television in conjunction with the elementary schoolteacher,
so as to continue to reach all our primary-level establishments.
This fundamental principle of our cultural policy—looking to the development of the children—will have as its results not only the emergence of
a 'fuller man' but the existence of deeper motivations in attendance at, and
enjoyment of, cultural activities of every type..
The Cuban Revolution has achieved the miracle of transforming a
hungry, underdeveloped, ill-read and partially-illiterate people into one that
is winning through to the gateways of culture through the union of their
wills and intellects with the fundamental goals of a revolution.
When we speak of mass culture it is not in the sense in which the term
is used by advertising, i.e. a culture to satisfy tasteless wants, cheap-jack,
vulgar, undistinguished, stimulated by an entrepreneur avid to create consumer needs.
What we mean by our 'mass culture' is the assemblage of powerful
individualities and developed to the full as a consequence of the process of
the personal liberation favoured by the revolutionary act which took place
in our country.
For a country which chooses the way of revolution to development, like
ours, the first thing to be faced is the fact of the immensely scientific, technological and humanistic complexity achieved which economic development
has attained to in the advanced parts of the world and which forms part of
that same development.
Accordingly, the country must set itself, as a matter of urgency, the
problem of raising the standard of living, improving agriculture and industrialization, and must fight hard to approximate to the level of the developed countries. This entails facing the fact of the immense lag in technical
15
Antecedents and origins of Cuban culture
and scientific capacity of a developing country for the achievement of access
to the full life, economically, materially and spiritually.
Nevertheless at moments when there was not the wherewithal to build
a factory, there was no faltering over school building; when money was
lacking for industrial investment, there was no hesitation over starting
research centres; when we lacked the means to raise the living standards of
the people, we unfalteringly spent money on technical and scientific advice,
on the training of scientific and technical elements, on the development of
a leadership in the fields of literature and art, on the creation of circuits for
cultural dissemination.
In our minds, the scientist, the writer or the artist is not only an analyst
of his subject, but also to the extent of his exercise of his intellect and even
in virtue of that alone, a man of action, a creator and a teacher. We believe
that if the man of the future is to be a full man and a balanced man, he will
in the final end be also an intellectual to whatever extent that he may be
master of the tools, the instruments, of culture and has access to that
domain not merely as a witness and spectator but also as a protagonist.
16
The cultural framework
Training
The intentions formed by the Revolutionary State in 1959 for the broadening of culture met with an immediate cheek in the limited human resources
of the arts. The task of satisfying the cultural needs of a people just beginning to participate effectively in all aspects of life, with their economic
bonds burst and the leash slipped on multitudinous longing for the things
of the mind, could in no wise be fulfilled with the small numbers of artists
and specialists inherited from a society in which the appurtenances of true
culture were exclusive to the minorities which controlled the wealth of the
society, leaving the people the assorted rubbish of a so-called 'mass culture'
founded on an assessment of the 'masses' long out of date.
The first problem, therefore, was to train the practitioners and teachers
of the arts required by the new life. But even for this training task, we were
grossly short of instruments. Broadly speaking, our facilities for teaching
the arts boiled down to one or two academies subsidized by the State, various private academies with a network of branches throughout the country
and a multitude of private teachers who gave lessons in their own or their
pupils' homes, with no proper methods, with no coherence of techniques or
programmes, with piano teaching predominating. There were also three
schools of plastic art with similar deficiencies.
The first action taken by the Revolutionary Government with regard to
artistic training had logically to be on an ambitious scale and designed to
concentrate on the best available resources.
The outcome was the emergence in 1961 in Cubanacan of the Escuela
Nacional de Arte (National School of Arts), conceived as a mammoth arts
teaching complex. It comprises five schools: Escuela Nacional de Artes
Plasticas; Escuela Nacional de Artes Dramaticas; Escuela Nacional de
Danza Moderna y Folklore; Escuela Nacional de Ballet; and Escuela
Nacional de Musica offering eighteen special courses. At this writing there
17
The cultural framework
are 782 students at Cubanacan, of which. 454 are male and 328 female, all
attending under a fellowship system whereby the State covers all their personal expenses and affords them the resources needed for their training.
In addition to the art disciplines, students receive scholastic instruction
with the same curricula and syllabuses as the ordinary school of the country
up to the final year of the secondary level.
The National School of Arts is also the hub of a national system of arts
instruction with six provincial schools where ballet, music and the plastic
arts are taught, plus a number of schools in different regions and cities of
the country where students enjoy the fellowship system outlined earlier. In
all there are twenty-four schools of the arts in Cuba covering forty specialities, distributed as follows: music, eighteen; art, eleven; ballet, nine; modern
dance, one; dramatic arts, one. A total of 3,647 students are enrolled in
these twenty-four schools. The instruction is graduated from the provincial
schools up to the National School which handles the higher education role.
Although the distribution of schools of arts is limited to certain cities
and regions only, young people from any part of the country have their
chance to sit the entrance tests, as the selection boards cover the whole
island holding examinations, while information about the entrance requirements is circulated to all students in the national education system.
Entrance to the arts schools is decided by aptitude tests, and the aptitude element is kept to the fore throughout the course. On completion of
their studies graduates do two years of social service during which they pass
on the knowledge they have acquired to other art students as a contribution
to output of artists needed.
Social service is an important element in the country's education system.
For the arts, those liable are the new graduates from the fine-arts schools
and the 'arts' faculties of the universities. Social service is rural-oriented
with the object of achieving a balanced development of the separate zones
of the country, with the object of gradually eliminating the rural/urban cultural imbalance inherited from the previous society.
During their two years' service graduates pursue their respective professions and work as teachers, researchers and cultural promoters, thereby
making a dynamic and multifarious contribution to the cultural advancement of the region where they are stationed. To illustrate the meticulous
care the Revolutionary Government bestows on the fellowship-holders, let
a breakdown of the staff in the National School of Arts suffice: for the
782 students enrolled in this school, there is a staff of 457, employed as follows: teaching, 44.3 per cent; direct student care, 37.1 per cent; administration, 3.9 per cent; maintenance, 14.7 per cent.
To provide further technical training for' professional musicians who in
previous years were inadequately trained or self-taught as a result of the
shortage of schools and the cost of the courses, the Escuela de Superacion
de Miisicos Profesionales (Professional Training College for Musicians)
has been established as an integral part of the national system of education
18
The cultural framework
in the arts; though with a special purpose. One of the characteristics of this
college is the elaboration of individual study programmes for each student,
in the light of the features of the case and the student's level, professional
keenness and deficiencies.
Another school of special characteristics is the Escuela de Superacion
para Autores Musicales (Refresher College for Composers), conceived for the
purpose of raising the technical level of the composers of Cuban popular
music, who like its interpreters had had scant possibilities of formal study
of whom the immense majority did their composition by the light of nature.
This school is run as part of the Sociedad Cubana de Autores Musicales
(Cuban Composers' Society) but the orientation and management of the
courses is in the hands of the Direction Nacional de Escuelas of the Consejo
Nacional de Gultura (National Directorate of Schools of the National Council of Culture). The recycling of our professional artists takes the most varied
forms, using flexible methods to fit artists' situations and general work pro-
jects. Thus for classical music, teams of our best executants undertake
periodical tours in the provinces to arrange refresher courses for lessqualified musicians. Special seminars are organized in dramaturgy, stagecraft, make-up, and other aspects of theatre work. Soloists take refresher
courses as required by their forthcoming performances, concentrating on
the respects in which they are weakest.
One reason why this work is possible is that the artists now have a system permitting of the whole-time pursuit of their art, unlike their former
situation when they were obliged to do other work to earn a living since
their art was not a source of regular work.
Alongside the regular system of training schools for professional artists, work was begun from the first years of the successful Revolution
towards the creation and development of an amateur artists' movement,
with the opening of schools for instructors in art subjects, e.g. Escuelas
para Instructores de Arte, which originally trained teachers in three special-
ities: dramatics, music, and the dance. In 1965, of these three specialities,
1,093 teachers graduated with whom the authorities formed a veritable
army of culture promoters deployed all over the country, with preference
to the zones furthest from a town.
The search for formulae which would make it possible to accelerate the
sensitization of the masses for participation, creative as well as passive, in
the artistic affairs so far beyond their reach until the triumph of the Revolution led us to create a new pro-culture factor in the shape of the arts
instructor, an officer with no comparable precursor in the life of the republic.
The instructor is not trained to be an artist but rather to detect, orient,
sensitize and stimulate artistic activity in the different sectors of the
population.
With the backing of the appropriate social entities, the arts instructors,
of late years, have accomplished a great deal at mass level in the promotion
of amateur theatre, music and plastic-arts groups, which have enabled the
19
The cultural framework
man. in the street to canalize his artistic talents to a great extent and to
develop his aesthetic perceptions.
The programmes of the schools for arts instructors have evolved in content and scope until today they have a five-year course—three of intramural
studies and two of practice—after which the instructor starts specialist
studies. At this writing there are training schools for arts instructors offering the following specialities: children's theatre, adult .theatre, plastic arts,
music, and children's storytelling. The total number of students is 243.
At the start, the shortage of qualified personnel for the great tasks we
had set ourselves in the cultural field was not confined to the artistic personnel proper. In the situation produced by underdevelopment, shortages
make themselves felt as keenly with regard to functionaries to direct, coordinate and organize the cultural activities, particularly when these activities are emerging from the narrow circle of the private mercantile class and
have to be fitted to a new social dimension. We ourselves could not divert
our few creators or executants to organizational duties—in any event they
had to be called on as technical advisers—and at the same time a minimum
level of specialized training and information was needed in the echelons
concerned with organization and administration.
Appreciation of this need led us in the early years to many expedients
—seminars, study circles, short courses, lectures, or attendance at regular
courses on these subjects. Later the training effort was institutionalized in
the School for Cultural Activities Promoters (Escuela de Activistas de Cultura) under the National Committee for Cultural Dissemination (Direccion
Nacional de Extension Cultural). The school does not claim to train artists
or specialists in a particular branch of the arts. Through it there pass those
officials with responsibilities in cultural work to improve their knowledge of
all manifestations of the arts alike in our own culture and in that of the
world in general. According to the dynamic of our development the school
also arranges specialist courses designed to train the personnel required for
various specific cultural activities or plans.
The School for Cultural Activities Promoters is in essence a boarding
establishment where students' entire needs in training are provided free and
they continue on full pay throughout the course.
Another important element in the artistic training of the people consists
in the arts vocation centres, run for the past ten years by the arts instructors. Through special study programmes, 'culture buffs' are provided with
systematic instruction in that branch of art for which they have gifts. The
centres do important work first in disseminating culture and second in harnessing unrealized artistic talent among the masses. At the time of writing
the following centres were in operation: plastic-arts centres, sixty-three;
theatre training centres, thirty-two; music centres, seventy-six; dance
centres, eighteen. These 189 arts vocation centres are served by 413 instructors in the various branches. The plastic-arts centres present the special
feature of being at once free studios for creative art where in addition to
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The cultural framework
technical guidance the amateurs are provided with the materials required
for their work absolutely free of charge.
These studios are the source of an abundant output of plastic art from
which the best items are selected for travelling exhibitions which first tour
the country and are then presented to work centres for their collective use.
The work of the aits instructors has succeeded in building up a powerful
movement of amateur artists throughout the country who often achieve a
technical level such that the term 'amateur' means only that they are parttimers in their art and in no way reflects on their level of skill.
Currently there are 516 amateur theatrical music and dance groups in
urban areas, and 367 in rural areas. They have progressively increased the
number of shows put on for their fellow workers up to the appreciable figure
of 41,256 showings last year or an average of 63.63 showings per group over
the year.
Amateur group activities are a significant factor for social integration,
when individuals with the widest diversity of trades meet on the common
ground of their art. In this way, theatre, music, dance and the plastic arts
serve towards free communication between man and man in their free time
while enabling them to use that free time to provide for the diversion and
aesthetic enjoyment of the people.
In this way the sensitization of the masses of art is handled not only
by the organs of the government but also by thousands of citizens, workers,
students, peasants, housewives and professional people who at the same
time develop and fulfil themselves.
As part of the plans for the all-round training of our young people an artistic education plan has been arranged known as 'Plan Cultura-Mined' [sic]
and based on the belief, expressed by Cuba in more than one international
forum, that education must combine study, work, sport, art, and recreation
to conduce to the production of the new integrated man—a policy which,
judging by experience to date, offers great prospects and possibilities.
This plan consists of the systematic application of specialized teaching
techniques in five art subjects: music, dance, children's theatre, children's
storytelling and plastic arts, integrated with all the general education subjects in a course completely unitary in conception in which the 'general'
subjects very often make use of basic applications of the art teaching.
On the same principle, the plan emphasizes the close relationship between music and dance by using the same music for songs taught in the
music course and for the dance course. The same subjects are used for children's stories and children's theatre, and the plastic arts are a definite help
in making puppets and the illustration of stories by the children.
Again, map-drawing, the drawings required in classes as the new mathematics and all types of graphic work involved in the various general subjects are considerably helped by what has been learnt about the plastic arts,
while activities involving speaking or reading aloud are assisted by the children's stories and children's theatre assignments.
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The cultural framework
In music, the medium for teaching and illustration is the radio, which
makes up for the lack of specialized personnel for each school. A half-hour
programme three times a week provided by a procedure of systematic
repetitions which includes: a music lesson, voice techniques, music history
and appreciation, interpreted by highly qualified artists, supplemented in
the class-room by pictorial representations executed by the best artists plus
the teaching notes supplied to the class teacher.
The eurhythmies classes use the same technique as the music classes
with a half-hour programme twice a week, which supplies suitable sound
images on which the children can improvise natural rhythms of their own
invention.
Children's theatre is of three types: theatre with actors, theatre with
puppets, and mime. It is given in the schools by the regular class teachers
who receive technical advice from the theatre instructors as for children's
storytelling.
In the plastic arts, the essential content consists in the principles and
elements of drawing. The basic items of the plan are developed in a book
in which the exercises on the principles and elements of drawing are closely
tied in with the themes round which the different courses in primary schools
are built.
As we see, the arts subjects not given by radio—children's theatre, children's storytelling and plastic arts—require the direct participation of the
arts instructors to assist the teachers whose training did not include the
subject-matter and methodology of art education.
It is, nevertheless, the teacher who is in every sense the lynch-pin of the
class, and it does not seem desirable to introduce a new personality liable to
disrupt a union established by one who, through his continuous contact with
his pupils, knows all the incidences of the learning and moulding process
and has all the threads in his hand. In music teaching, radio is preferred to
television to avoid introducing a fresh personality to the class-room.
These considerations have led to an immediate start on training in art
education for prospective teachers. To the body of serving teachers getting
instruction in the basics of the Plan for Art Education through seminars
will soon be added those graduating after the next course, who will then
have a full training in this field.
For the latter, teams specialized in each subject of the plan have prepared a programme on art education and its didactics for use in the teacher-
training colleges. This programme comprises two courses on the art element
of the subjects covered by art education, and two courses of art-education
methodology and teaching practice incorporated in the regular curricula of
the country's teacher-training colleges.
Our aim is to effect the propagation of culture en masse to the rising
generations from their earliest years at school, reaffirming our cultural roots
and assimilating the best of world culture. In the schools where the plan
has been put into operation an improvement in discipline and a change in
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The cultural framework
the child's attitude towards school is already apparent, inasmuch as the
whole student body is actually taking part instead of those of outstanding
talent being shown off. The development of children's imaginations and
manual skills have been other advantages noted.
However, we must wait six years for an assessment of the end results of
the complete plan until the children now starting school have completed
the primary cycle and thus gone through the whole plan.
No special schools have been organized to train creative writers although
there are 'Spanish' degree courses in the country's three universities which
turn out professors of literature, researchers, or authors indifferently.
"Writers in training attend literary workshops, which are periodical meetings of those young people of a particular community or part of town
interested in literary creation to discuss their writings. The meetings are
attended by professional writers or orienters from the Directorate of Literature. They evaluate the works presented to the workshop, offer criticisms,
comments, suggestions, etc. The best works are published in periodicals or
included in an anthology of new writers.
The rapid extension of the library network throughout the country has
brought about a serious shortage of qualified personnel to perform the various library tasks and training courses were accordingly started. The chief
professional training medium of the National Libraries Directorate of the
National Council for Culture is the Escuela de Auxiliares Tecnicos de Bibliotecas (School for Librarians), which was founded in 1962 as the Escuela de
Capacitacion Bibliotecaria (Library Training School) and has since evolved
to a level equivalent to a secondary technological institution. Currently the
courses last three years, and comprise all the subjects of higher secondary
education, plus the special librarianship disciplines. The second of the three
years is devoted to training on the job, preferably in libraries in the interior,
and the third year is a continuation of formal study and service in the
libraries of Havana which have become teaching libraries. These schools,
like those described earlier, are boarding establishments with grants covering all expenses and are linked with the Librarianship School of Havana
University, where successful trainees can continue their stiidies at an
advanced level.
Production
Economic insecurity, subservience to the tastes of the ruling class, the commercialization of art, the scanty possibilities of getting to the top, and the
intervention of unworthy political considerations were the characteristics
of the milieu in which art in Cuba had to be pursued, with great difficulty,
before the advent of the Revolutionary Government.
Since 1959, everything done in the sphere of culture has served towards
the creation of set-ups of a new type informed by [freedom of artistic
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The cultural framework
creation wherein creators and executants, freed of economic insecurity, can
devote themselves entirely to their work and to the full development of
their gifts.
In each branch of the arts the set-up is different, as we shall see. In the
sphere of action of the National Theatre and Dance Directorate there were,
at the time of writing, thirty-seven companies whose members receive
guaranteed salaries regardless of the number of performances at which they
appear, of the amount of the takings, or of the success of the production.
In addition to salaries, each such company gets from the State its headquarters for rehearsals, the actual theatre for the performance, the services
of theatre workshops for scenery, wardrobe and the making of all the props
required for the production; the priority of the programmes, publicity, light
and sound facilities, and the use of recording studios in addition to the handling of the administrative business which confronts a new production, all of
which are no longer a worry to the actors and creators. A theatre documentation and information service is provided through the Centre for Cultural
Information and Studies. The centre provides this service for all branches
of art. It also runs a specialized library and periodical room.
Theatre groups can experiment with the new trends in the world theatre
or look for new forms, and can often call on foreign dramatists who participate in the staging of their own works or on specialists who help to give
the productions technical polish.
In the theatre companies we get a process of organized study, sometimes
lasting several months during which actors and creators continue to receive
their salaries, on the strength of the view taken by the Revolutionary State
that research and experimentation is one of our duties, in the artistic sphere
as well as elsewhere.
Two specific examples can be cited of groups which concentrate on
'experimental theatre', which, however, as the object of their experiments
is to find new ways of relating to the public, we call social theatre. One is
the 'Teatro del Tercer Mundo' (Theatre of the Third World) which is evolving as a 'strolling' theatre playing anywhere but in regular theatres, in public
squares, in the street, in places of work and dealing with overtly political
themes. The other is the 'Teatro Escambray', which constitutes the most
original element in the Cuban theatre movement. A group of theatre people,
some with substantial reputations, is moved out to one of our major mountain ranges, the Sierra de Escambray, in Las Villas province. All aspects
of this artistic experiment are totally without precedent in our country:
performances are given in the open air without stage or auditorium; publicity for the performances consists simply in the fact that the group is in
the area. At the end of each performance there is an open discussion with
the public about the piece played and the theatre in general.
Perhaps the most significant aspect of this experiment lies in the fact
that, for a completely virgin population as regards the theatre, plays are
chosen from the finest in the world repertory and presented with the
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The cultural framework
strictest artistic vigour. The results after two years' work are astonishing
in a number of particulars.
One is that the communities through which the company circulates have
completely assimilated a cultural medium previously quite unknown to
them, attending performances in great numbers even after the initial phase
of curiosity had passed. During their stay in villages and hamlets the group
shares the inhabitants' labours for part of the day as a way of debunking
the actor's mystique and of bridging the gulf between artists and ordinary
folk. In return, the community helps provide for the group's material
needs.
As part of its projections, the group has carried out valuable sociocultural investigations in the area which has also been of service to the local
authorities.
Besides the thirteen drama groups, there are six dance groups of different kinds, the most notable of which is the National Ballet of Cuba which
has consolidated over the last ten years, growing gradually, developing new
artists and increasing its repertory which currently includes items from
classical and modern ballet and on stylized folklore themes. The Conjunto
Nacional de Danza Moderna (the Modern Dance Group), that came into
being under the auspices of the cultural policy of the Revolutionary State,
has also flourished and had successful tours in several countries. There is
also the National Folklore Group which has so far been working successfully
on the African origins of our folklore, collecting the absolutely authentic
music and dance sequences which it stylizes for stage performance.
In the sphere of literature, the picture has altered radically in recent
years, primarily through the expansion of the material possibilities of getting works published brought about by the Revolutionary Government
through the Instituto del Libro (Cuban Book Institute) with twelve publishing houses at its disposal. In the last two years 23 million books have
been printed.
Several literary competitions have been instituted through which promising literary figures have been brought to light. The competitions include
the Casa de las Americas Prize, one of the most substantial Spanish
language literary contests in the world of today; the Union of Cuban Writers
and Artists Prize; the David Prize for new writers; the Revolutionary
Armed Forces July 26 Prize, and others. Apart from the growing numbers
of books published there are extensive opportunities for publication in the
many literary reviews, to name but a few: Revista Casa de las Americas,
Revista Union, Gaceta de Cuba, Caiman Barbudo, Taller Literario, Revoluciony Cultura, Pensamiento Critico, etc.
In Cuba copyright has been abolished because it is felt that a work of
art should not be subjected to commercial mechanisms which, for that matter, are not operative in our country; because it is deemed that the product
of man's intellect is the property and heritage of all mankind and, finally,
because, for a creator in a society like ours, the act of creation and the
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The cultural framework
possibility of giving the thing created to the people is incentive enough.
However, a writer like any other worker must be given a regular income to
cover his needs reliably. As in most of the world, writers in Cuba work as
journalists, critics, teachers, researchers, scriptwriters or editors. There are,
nevertheless, various arrangements whereby a writer can devote himself
exclusively to producing or concluding his work, on full pay for the requisite
period, which ensures that in no case shall the creator be prevented from
writing by financial] pressures which thus deflect him from his true vocation.
Plastic artists work as industrial designers, book designers, poster or
commercial artists, or as teachers in our art schools. Just recently the State
started on a progressive plan to professionalize the country's plastic artists,
whereby the artists receive a salary commensurate with their needs and are
given the necessary working materials and in exchange a proportion of their
output, determined by agreement between the artists and the State, goes
to swell the collections of museums and art galleries for use in the execution
of the plastic-art activities in the programme of the National Council for
Culture. This status, acquirable voluntarily by artists, will become commoner as the years pass. All plastic artists without exception may enter the
various contests organized annually in our country, among them the Salon
de Artes Plasticas, under the auspices of the Union of Cuban Writers and
Artists, dedicated in alternate years to painting and sculpture and to drawing and etching.
The Union of Cuban Writers and Artists also organizes a biennial competition for new painters and the Casa de las Americas organizes annually a
competition known as,the Havana Exhibition, which is the most notable
plastic arts event in Latin America.
In recent years an original pop-art movement lias been gaming ground.
It is wholly a product of the revolutionary period and can be reckoned the
most significant plastic-art development of recent years. Here the poster is
divested of the character of a propaganda medium to become an object of
art in its own right and therewith loses its commercial character.
Also noteworthy is the utilization of the plastic arts as a means of mobilizing the people for the great social tasks, such as health, education or productivity campaigns, for historical commemorations, etc. Cover design has
been boosted by grant book editions as also record sleeves and review and
magazine covers which again are mass media of art expression new to our
country.
In sculpture we get a comparable process to that in graphic art where,
concurrently with their individual work, sculptors commit themselves for
community works, contributing to the beauty of large-scale residential or
industrial schemes.
The 'professionalization' of all the country's musicians has been
completed, thus putting an end to the instability and insecurity which
characterized their avocation when they were often forced to do jobs <juite
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The cultural framework
unrelated to their art to ensure their subsistence, or in other cases were
obliged to undertake musical work wholly alien to their personal bent or
qualifications but which suited the book of the music impresarios.
The professionalization of musicians also eliminated the former differences between musicians in large orchestras and in small groups
respectively; in assessing them, their grading depended on their individual
qualifications and not on other considerations of a commercial nature.
The far-reaching transformations of our society have also affected the
purpose of musical activities which today are essentially linked to the recreation of the whole people and with the great productive tasks.
Distribution
The labour of all our creators and interpreters working under the general
conditions described above issues in a vast cultural output which must naturally be brought to the public in the most satisfying manner. This upsurge
of artistic production automatically puts a strain on distribution mechanisms eliciting a corresponding expansion of the latter. Here are a few
relevant examples:
On 1 January 1959 the whole country had only six museums, all in a
shaky condition technically, artistically and as regards resources in general.
The most important, the National Museum located in the Palace of Fine
Arts, was in better condition than the rest, yet the building and its organization exhibited grave deficiencies in layout, and services to the public
made the vast structure of the Palace of Fine Arts a useless barrack. It
lacked storage space and the restoration workshop was too small.
The initial action of the Revolutionary Government in this regard was to
redesign the premises and to improve the service in the National Museum, to
restore and re-equip the museums of the interior namely: Bacardi Museum
at Santiago de Cuba; Agramonte Museum at Camagiiey; Remedies Museum;
Cardenas Museum and the museum in the house where Jose Marti, our
apostle of independence, was born.
The second stage was the provision of eleven new museums which are
already in service plus seven to be opened shortly. The eleven museums
already started by the Revolutionary State are the Museum of Decorative
Arts; the Napoleon Museum; Hemingway Museum; Colonial Museum in
Havana; Pharmaceutics Museum, Matanzas; Colonial Museum, Sancti-Spiritus; Indo-Cuban Museum, Banes; the Memorial Museum in the house of
Frank Pars, the martyr of our revolution; and the Siboney Ranch (the meeting place of the group of young men who, under Fidel Castro, launched the
assault on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba, to start our war of
liberation), plus memorial museums in the houses of Carlos Manuel de
Cespedes, Father of the Country, in Bayamo and of the poet, Jose Maria
Heredia, in Santiago de Cuba.
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The cultural framework
Under construction are the following: History Museum, Havana; Military History Museum, Castillo de la Fuerza; History Museum, Las Villas;
Colonial Museum, Trinidad; house of Ignacio Agramonte, Camagiiey;
Colonial Museum, Oriente; Sugar Museum, Trinidad, which with its equipment and contents will be unique in the world.
In addition to these museums under the National Council for Culture
there are other specialized museums run by various scientific and educational organizations, such as: the Felipe Poey Science Museum; the Medi-
cal Sciences Museum, Havana; the Science Museum, Santiago de Cuba.
Others in course of organization are: the Ethnological and Folklore Museum,
under the Academy of Science, the Montane Archaeology Museum of the University of Occidente and the Literacy Museum of the Ministry of Education.
To sum up, in only ten years of new management by the State the six
run-down museums we had in 1959—some of them mere store-houses
of uncatalogued articles—have grown into six completely renovated museums, fourteen new museums, ten museums in course of establishment. This
will make a total of thirty centres for the uplift and enjoyment of our
messes, wholly chargeable to the State in lieu of the creaking system of
administration by trustees with sporadic grants from earlier governments.
As regards the general work of the museums, the accent has been put
on the means of restoration and conservation of cultural property. Earlier
the State had paid little regard to this, so that the restoration experts spent
the bulk of their time on the restoration of objects belonging to private collectors. Efforts in this field since 1959 have produced an efficient team
of restoration experts made up of picture 'reliners', marquetry restorers,
metals, leather, ceramics and textile specialists; specialized cabinet-makers,
specialists in painting, photographers and auxiliary staff, to a total of
twenty-three. However, the growing amount of work and the fact that they
have to cover the whole country makes their number inadequate so that
we have to proceed to the training of more technicians in these branches
with the help of foreign specialists.
A notable work of the past decade has been the preservation of our
people's cultural heritage, for which purpose the National Council for
Culture started the National Commission for Museums and Monuments
in 1963, with the task of seeing to the protection and maintenance of all
sites, buildings or objects warranting preservation on artistic or historical
grounds. The commission is also responsible for the scheduling of national
monuments or areas of historical significance as well as for the supervision
of any works undertaken in such localities.
This commission has completed the reconstruction and restoration of a
number of the most representative monuments, taking special measures in
such overpopulated urban areas as Old Havana, where a variety of problems
of a material order make restoration difficult.
Though the attributes, objectives and functioning of the National Commission for Monuments are thus clearly stipulated, it has, nevertheless, not
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The cultural framework
been possible to tackle the gigantic task projected, inasmuch, as we are a
developing country in the initial transformation phase, we are obliged to
allocate most of our resources to developing our economy and productivity.
As regards monuments, the following conservation operations have
been completed: In Havana: Castillo de la Fuerza; Palacio del Segundo
Cabo; House of the Marques de Aguas Claras; House of the Condes de Gasa
Bayona (Colonial Museum); Parque de la Iglesia del Cristo; Parque Infantil,
Obispo 51; Muralla 256; Plaza del Convento de San Francisco and Fuentes
de los Leones; Teatro Marti; Church of Santa Maria del Rosario; Library
and Park of the Casa Natal de Jose Marti. In Matanzas: Teatro Sauto. In
Cienfuegos: Teatro Terry. In Sancti-Spiritus: Valle-Iznaga Residence (Colonial Museum). In Trinidad: Palacio Brunet and many fagades. In Santiago
de Cuba: El Morro Castle; the house in which Jose Maria Heredia was born;
Plaza de Dolores. In Oriente: Jiguani Fort. In Baracoa: Matachin and la
Punta Forts. In Manzanillo: La Demajagua.
Despite our material difficulties much restoration work is in hand, both
in Havana and the interior, which will contribute to the cultural progress
of our people.
The output of our creators and interpreters in drama and the dance
reaches the people through the drama and dance companies currently at
work, and mostly established in 1961 and 1962. Between 1959 and 1969 the
thirteen drama groups alone put on 1,042 productions, of which 788 were
first performances and 254 were revivals. During these same ten years in
the musical theatre sector forty-two operas and thirty-six zarzuelas and
operettas were presented. Of these seventy-eight pieces, forty-three were
first performances and thirty-five revivals.
In the dance sector, 331 productions were staged, of which 194 were
ballet and 137 were in the various styles of modern dance; 148 were first
performances and 183 were revivals. During this period, too, ten foreign
ballet and dance companies were presented to the Cuban public.
The same period also saw the breaching of the convention of performances indoors only. A system of nation-wide tours brings the companies
based in the capital to every corner of the countryside, and not simply to
the provincial theatres and halls but also to any 'playable' setting in the
localities visited, including work centres.
With the exception, up to a point, of the capital, the state of Cuba's
public libraries before the triumph of the revolution was deplorable. The
National Library itself, with a spacious and imposing building, entered 1958
with its collections in bad condition after more than half a century of exile
in military strongholds, mostly in the Castillo de la Fuerza, surrounded by
a great water-filled moat in the mediaeval style.
If we go by the scanty data of the day, before 1959 there were 175 public
libraries in the whole country, even including the libraries of the masonic
lodges, recreational associations, universities, etc., which were only open to
members of those particular entities (and do not now count as public
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The cultural framework
libraries), and even of the remainder the majority were non-lending. This
figure cited also included municipal libraries with book stocks varying
between 300 and 5,000 volumes, unbalanced in content (which was almost
entirely literary), housed in inadequate premises, with opening hours geared
to the convenience of officialdom, with staffs who were usually untrained
and with no activities to promote the reading habit apart from a few exceptions such as the municipal libraries of Havana, Marianao and Matanzas.
The figure of 175 also included the centralized network of the National
Organization of People's Travelling Libraries, an autonomous body set up
in 1954, of whose twenty-eight units the majority had no premises of their
own and were run by a single-handed, untrained employee in the sittingroom of his private house. Book stocks ran to 1,200 volumes with no possibilities of renewal or expansion, not to be removed from the premises and
with the pages often uncut. In most cases they were really ill-found reading
rooms to lend verisimilitude to budgetary provisions and the cultural propaganda of the government in power.
The Directorate appointed by the Revolutionary State to be responsible
for the National Library and the centralized public libraries had to begin
by setting itself to re-examine the purpose and scope of its dependencies.
In addition to being organized to serve researchers and educated readers
with more complex interests, the libraries needed to make their facilities
accessible to masses of inexpert users who had not previously had the
opportunities for systematic reading by reason of illiteracy and the high
cost of books.
To achieve this end it was necessary to carry out a job of far-reaching
cultural publicity, to create new services to attract large numbers, even
though these services did not confine themselves to a library's conventional
work with books and periodicals, but also included the offer of concerts,
picture shows and other items.
In this way, despite reinforcement of the role proper to a library of this
character as depositary and investigator of the national corpus of literature
of all kinds, new services developed, such as cataloguing, consultation and
reference, book selection, book exchange and others, which, although
already like the periodicals and reading rooms, functioned only sporadically.
In pursuance of the policy of expanding the services offered, new departments arose, such as the Cuban documents department, whose purpose is
to assemble, preserve and organize the publication of valuable Cuban
documents; the technical reading room; the map section, which today holds
more than 20,000 maps of our country and of the rest of the world, duly
catalogued, as well as many atlases both ancient and modern. Departments
of art and music also grew up; the former serves the needs of those concerned with the plastic arts for reading and information in their field by
intramural book loans and extramural loans of reproductions of famous
works, cuts and slides; it uses talks and small exhibitions to promote a
task for the plastic arts. It preserves and investigates valuable national or
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The cultural framework
Cuban art, sucli as posters, exhibition catalogues, etc. The music department performs a similar service for that field. These two departments had
no precursors in libraries of this type in Cuba.
A juvenile department was also created, designed as a library serving
the special needs of children and adolescents, with all the services of the
libraries for adults.
One of the most interesting initiatives was the creation of a department
to study, sift and adapt for storytelling to children the inexhaustible stock
of Cuban and other folk legends and the international corpus of children's
stories. The story-hour has developed into an essential institution of our
libraries and storytelling has spread to schools, hospitals and other institutions for children. Another new element in our library system is the
Cuban catalogue of scientific-technical reviews, containing listings of about
18,000 reviews of this type reaching the country's libraries. Other activities
leading to increased use of the usual library services are: book exhibitions
on great men, historical events, countries, periods, or seminars, lectures,
concerts, films of special significance.
The national library network at present comprises fifty-three establishments, five class A, twenty-two class B, twenty-six class C. Five of
these libraries own bookmobiles (mobile library vans) that penetrate the
farthest regions of the country providing a book-borrowing service. The
larger libraries arrange extension facilities through booksellers or in the
shape of State depots with small renewable book stocks, thereby increasing
the service points throughout the country to more than 100.
In 1969 the library network provided the following services: books circulated, 1,366,588; art reproductions shown, 40,323; records played, 43,839;
consultations and references provided, 65,061; technical assistance offered,
1,365; scientific, technical and literary information provided, 26,339; and
cultural extension weeks organized, 5,163. In the Jose Marti National
Library alone the services provided in 1969 totalled 343,744 items against
20,786 in 1956.
The requirements as regards library facilities are still not covered, so
that there will be further increases in services and units in the years to come.
Plastic-arts events before 1959 mainly took place in Havana, and
occasionally in other provincial capitals, and were confined to the exhibition hall of the Palacio de Bellas Artes and the galleries of certain private
institutions administered by boards of trustees.
The first actions of the Revolutionary State in this domain of the arts
were directed to organizing the national salons which became yearly events
with systems of awards consisting in the purchase by the State of the works
most highly commended by the panel of judges and their addition to the
collections of the museums.
In 1962 work was begun on the building of art galleries, first in the
provincial capitals and then in other major cities, which made it possible to
work out a scheme of circulating exhibitions, whereby the most important
31
The cultural framework
examples of Cuban and foreign plastic art have been shown all over the
country. At present there are thirteen art galleries, not counting numerous
exhibition halls organized by the provinces themselves, which have made
it possible for remote regions to get to know major works in the form of
reproductions.
Concurrently with this a promotion section was created within the
National Directorate of Plastic Arts which visited the people's places of
work, masterminding an extension activity which spurred large sections of
the populace who did not normally go to exhibitions to visit the galleries.
As regards music, a notable increase in the number of symphony
orchestras is observable: we now have one national and five provincial
symphony orchestras. There are ten choral groups. In 1969 the total of
musical events in the country was 40,410. In the last two years we have
had visits from fifty-three foreign musicians invited to perform with the
National Symphony Orchestra or to give recitals.
For the purpose of applying a coherent policy in the dissemination of
Cuban music, an entity was established, known as the Centre for the Development, Programming and Dissemination of Music, with responsibility for
effecting co-ordination with all the institutions connected with music
throughout the country. The centre follows and controls the work of music
arrangers and orchestrators in order to offer this service to the various
popular music groups whose members, being self-taught, lack the necessary
knowledge to do their own orchestration.
The Centre for the Development of Music also handles the entire casting
of companies selected to go on tour abroad, keeping in mind all aspects of
the performance: dancing, interpretation, acting, music and song.
The shortage of music arrangers and the great demand for their services
created the conditions for the establishment of mercenary relationships in
music production, flatly contrary to the notion of artistic creation upheld
by the Revolutionary State. Contracting these specialists under a system
of fair wages has made it possible to provide a rational service free of charge
to all musical groups. Despite these salaried music arrangers and those who
have offered themselves in a spirit of collaboration, the service is still inadecpiate for which reason we have undertaken the training of more,
using an intensive study course the satisfactory results of which have
already become apparent.
It is also a function of the centre to supply adequate information on
world music to our creators and performers through a specialized documentation centre which also has a library and a periodicals reading room.
During 1958 fifty representatives of Cuban popular music went
abroad as participants in international events, under the terms of cultural
agreements and under commercial contracts with impresarios in various
countries. In 1969 the number of representatives who went on tour was
fifty-five, and up to the date of writing in 1970 the figure approached
ninety.
32
The cultural framework
In literature, a novel movement has grown from the literary workshops
whereby literature is brought to the people, not only through periodicals
and books, but by teams of poets and storytellers arranging gatherings in
work centres and public places to read their works. Very often the readings
are combined with music and a new breed of troubadours is growing up
who recite their poems accompanied by musical instruments. Thus literature is taking on a new dimension in the encounter of the creator and his
work with the people.
Another novel procedure is the circulation exhibitions of illustrated
poems to halls and galleries. In Matanzas there is an exhibition hall specially
laid out for these poems, known as the Salon del Porta, to which hundreds
of persons repair, moved by the express desire to read poems.
It is to be noted that although we do not indeed consider literature a
show, experience has shown us that it can happen that hundreds of people
assemble for the sole purpose of listening to a group of writers reading their
works. In this movement of mass sensitization to literature an important
part has been played by the readers' circles organized among students or
workers at which recently published books are explained and analysed. For
those readers who already have a degree of sophistication 'book debates'
have been devised at which books read beforehand by the members are
discussed.
The National Council for Culture owns a music recording and publishing house for the production of phonograph records and sheet music.
In 1968-69, 976,336 records were issued. They included popular, classical
and folk music, recordings of literary documents, educational records and
records of children's music.
Before 1959 artists had to negotiate directly with the firms for recordings of their work and often had to contribute to the cost themselves.
Others were invited to record, subject to choice, the items chosen by the
entrepreneur from a strictly commercial angle under a system of remuneration which depended on sales.
Today all our artists have the possibility of recording the works of their
own choice, having regard solely to the work's intrinsic artistic value and
not the profits they may yield.
In pursuance of a policy directed to presenting to our masses not only
the values of our own culture but also the most representative examples of
the art of all the people, Cuba, over the last two years, has been host to a
considerable number of creators, interpreters and groups such as: the NaZabradly Group, the Coyoacan Drama Company, the Twentieth Century
Ballet with Maurice Bejart and Maria Casares, the Piccolo Teatro of Milan,
the Teatro Stabile of Genoa, the Teatro Hidalgo of Mexico, the Alondra
Group from Romania, the Folk Music Ensemble of the German Democratic
Republic, the British Aeolian Quartet, the Warsaw Quintet, and others
equally famous. In 1968 alone we had visits from nine major performing
groups, seven technical experts in cultural specialties, and sixty individual
33
The cultural framework
artists, among them Maia Plisetskaia, Arnold Wesker, Luc Ferrari, Luigi
Non, Yuri Boukof, Bruno Galletti and Marina Mdivani.
Cuba in turn was represented at the Paris Festival of Nations by the
Theatre Studio Group, the National Folklore Ensemble and the National Ballet
of Cuba, and these groups also carried out important international tours as did
the National Modern Dance Group and the Drama Workshop Theatre Group.
In the last two years this country has participated in the international
campaign to save Florence and Venice, the cultural Olympics of Mexico,
the Tokyo Biennale of Plastic Arts Festival, the Triennial Graphic Exhibition of Sweden, the Inter-graphic Exhibition in Berlin, the International
Ballet Festival in Varna, the Fifth National Humorists Salon of Canada,
and the Triennial Exhibition of Ingenuous Art in Bratislava.
In the last two years alone we have received exhibitions from some of
the most important museums of the socialist countries, such as the Hermitage in Leningrad, the Lodz Museum of Poland, and representative exhibitions, such as the Paris May Salon Exhibition and the exhibitions of
Hindu miniatures, English engravings and contemporary Mexican, Argentinian, Chilean and Peruvian painting.
In our country there have been international events, as important as the
Cultural Congress of Havana, attended by 644 participants from sixty-seven
countries who spent several days examining the problems of the developing
world; and the Varadero Song Festival in which 101 pop music singers from
nineteen countries took part.
In addition to the action by the country's national cultural entities, it
is permissible to speak of a cultural initiative by the community, possible
by reason, among other things, of the disruption of the commercial motivations of social life.
This action takes the form of spontaneous but coherent participation by
all the artists in a community in tasks for the diversion of the people
through music, drama or dance; in tasks for the embellishment of public
places, with plastic artists taking the main load; in the organization of
poetry readings, recitals, lectures, discussions; and even reaches the point of
co-ordinating mass efforts for the construction or improvement of cultural
premises, with the support of the local authorities.
In this way a locality ends up with its own cultural life, expressive of
the special traditions of the region and serving as a factor for artistic sensitization, which will enable the people to assimilate the major examples of
Cuban or international culture on this countrywide tour.
Consumption
If we observe the evolution of demand for and consumption of cultural
products in a country like ours in the process of emerging from underdevelopment, we shall see that changes occur, first quantitative, then quanti34
The cultural framework
tative and qualitative at once, which will call for a huge effort by the State
cultural entities for their satisfaction.
In the initial phase, once unemployment is eliminated and all citizens
achieve purchasing power, consumption of and demand for cultural goods
will at once increase, but essentially for the products of that art and that
culture to which the masses had had access for years past. At this stage
analysis of the demand will easily reveal the low cultural index of the
masses.
In the second stage, as a result of the literacy campaign, adult education
programmes, equal opportunities for education for all children, the range of
courses to raise the workers' technical standards, and the work of generally
sensitizing the public, developing its aesthetic perception, we shall see the
figures of cultural consumption and demand though still rising already
begin to relate to branches of art and aspects of culture which were previously of no interest to the masses. Our country is at this stage. Today
there is no cause for surprise in seeing throngs of workers queuing up for
ballet or opera tickets, flooding the libraries or jamming an art gallery. It is
natural that in this country editions of books of from 20,000 to 25,000 copies
are not enough to satisfy the reading appetite of the people, and no one is
surprised that in a public square hundreds of workers should listen in silence
to a poetry reading or music recital.
In Third-World circumstances, in a country in revolution, the rate of
growth of cultural needs considerably surpasses the capacity of available
facilities to meet them, and one day we realize that all our cultural institutions and technical means are quite simply inadequate in the face of the
awakening of the aesthetic sensibilities of a whole people which is moreover
equipped to participate as spectator, creator or performer in all cultural
manifestations. The tables below reveal some part of the current consumption of cultural products. The total number of users of cultural facilities
in 1968-69 was 57,809,263; the breakdown of this figure is given in the
first table.
Users of cultural facilities by activity in 1968 and 1969
Activity
1968-69
Theatre1
Dance
1 761 320
562 262
22 245 975
17 494 163
481 054
1 928 128
Music
Cultural extension2
Literature
Children's activities
Activity
Exhibitions
Museums
Zoological gardens3
Aquarium
Libraries
1968-69
1 959 418
502 140
6 309 420
840 263
3 725 120
1. Includes audience figures for children's theatre activities in 1968.
2. Includes audience figures for children's theatre activities in 1969.
3. In Cuba, zoological gardens and the aquarium come under the National Council for Culture.
35
The cultural framework
Urban/rural breakdown of attendances (at activities not confined to one place), 1968/69
Activity
Urban
Theatre
Dance
Music
Cultural extension
Literature
Children's activities
Exhibitions
1 530 459
514293
13603913
9395359
385 656
1 609176
1852304
36
Rural
230 861
47969
8642062
8098804
95 398
318 952
107114
Total
1761 320
562262
22245975
17494163
481 054
1 928128
1959418
Other cultural institutions
Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC)
The Union of Cuban Writers and Artists was founded on the occasion of
the Congress of Writers and Artists held in Havana between 18 and
22 August 1961.
The constituent Congress of UNEAC determined that the aims of the
new body should be as follows: to encourage the creation of works of literature and art; to promote conditions favourable to the intellectual work of
its members; to mesh the works of writers and artists with the major tasks
of the Cuban Revolution, procuring the latter's reflection and promotion by
such works; to organize free discussions of the problems of literacy and
artistic creation; to encourage works calculated to deepen the study of our
traditions and of everything concerned with defining the characteristics of
Cuban nationhood, bringing a critical eye to bear on our cultural heritage,
and incorporating it in the totality of the Cuban culture; to strengthen
the links with the literature and art of the sister nations of America;
to advance cultural relations with all countries throughout the world and
in particular with those whose experience of socialism may be rich in
examples to follow; to promote the development of new literary and artistic
talents, guiding their efforts and contributing to the dissemination of their
works.
To be admitted to the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists it is necessary
to have created or shared in the creation of literary or artistic works which
must have shown a specific standard of technical ability, qualityjand creative originality.
Members of the Union of Writers and Artists are grouped in conformity
with their particular specialities, so that there are sections for literature, the
plastic arts, music, theatre, cinema, ballet and the dance, although theatre,
cinema, ballet and dancing do not in practice have work plans of their own,
inasmuch as they pursue such plans through the Cuban Institute of Film
37
Other cultural institutions
Production and Industry in the case of films, and the National Council of
Culture in the case of theatre and the dance.
Two periodicals have been founded to promote the aims just described,
the monthly Gaceta de Cuba and the quarterly Union, while a publishing
department issues the works of contemporary Cuban writers in various
collections, such as Orbita, Bolsilibros, Cuadernos, Manjuarf, with a special
series for the young, the David Library. There have been 182 titles published.
Since 1965 UNEAC has held an annual literary competition for Cuban
writers exclusively, and in addition the David Competition has existed
since 1966 for the encouragement of new writers.
UNEAC has consistently followed a broad-spectrum publishing policy
as a result of which the most varied aesthetic lines and the most diverse
themes achieve publication. Only frankly reactionary or counter-revolutionary works would find no place in our publishing houses.
As regards the plastic arts the most significant activity is the annual
UNEAC Salon comprehending all art forms and aesthetic styles. The exhibition is reserved for painting^and sculpture one year and for drawing,
engraving and experimental work the next. There is also an engraving workshop and another for serigraphy. Teams of artists belonging to this section
are doing work for other cultural and States bodies. They have worked in
various schemes with the University Extension Department in Havana, for
the Fishing Fleet for the decoration of units of the fleet, and with a variety
of schools.
The plastic arts section also publishes a bulletin of the most important
happenings in that sector and of translations of material of interest to
artists. Another task being successfully carried out is the organization of
cycles on the art of particular countries as a means of cultural information.
The recently reorganized music section is starting a national competition covering all musical activities throughout the country and open to all
musicians in Cuba doing serious work in music in the idiom of each
speciality.
Administratively UNEAG. is, currently organized with: an'- executive
bureau as the highest directing organ, executives for the sections of literature, plastic arts and music to co-ordinate .the activities of each; with a
publications committee and an editorial board for the review Union and the
Gaceta de Cuba as auxiliary bodies.
Cuban Institute of Filmic Art
and Film Production and Industry (ICAIC)
ICAIC was set up under the Revolutionary Government's Law of
24 March 1959, the first Revolutionary Law on an ideological-cultural
activity.
In the law it is stipulated that 'Cinema is an art'...
38
Other cultural institutions
The nature of the Cinema is such that it is an instrumentality for working on
public opinion and for the moulding of the individual and the collective consciousness, and it can contribute to rendering the revolutionary spirit more profound
and sensitive and to sustaining its creative vigour.
Film-making requires the assembly of a highly technical and up-to-date
industrial complex and an equivalent distributing organization.
The development of the Cuban film industry presupposes a realistic appreciation of the conditions and possibilities of the national and foreign markets,
and as regards the former a campaign of propaganda and re-education of the
average man's taste which has been gravely prejudiced by the production and
exhibition of films made for commercial ends, which are dramatically and ethically objectionable and artistically insipid.
A film ought to be a challenge to the conscience and contribute to banishing
ignorance, elucidating problems, formulating solutions and present the major
conflicts of individuals and mankind as a whole in a dramatic and contemporary form.
The above paragraphs in Law 169 defining the aims and ends of ICAIC can
be summed up in two basic policy lines: (a) to enrich and broaden the field
of action of Cuban culture by introducing into it a new medium of artistic
expression; and (b) to form a public more complex and sophisticated, and
consequently better able to judge; more demanding and active, and therefore more revolutionary.
Tbe rise and development of a film industry truly national and consequently able to attain levels giving it international rank; the search for
a Cuban and Latin American viewpoint, contemporary and regenerative,
demanded a labour of criticism and working principles frequently breached.
It was not a matter of waiting for the best conditions or detraining the
artistic and teclmical elements on theoretical bases, or having time available
that might run into years. Far otherwise, it was essential for the new revolutionary body to take short cuts and speed up the attainment of its objectives. This necessitated improvising, taking risks while' at the same time
setting the most rigorous standards and fixing ways which would allow the
situation created to be overcome.
The mechanical, commonplace and money-grabbing use of the cinema's
technical media and the alignment of the inferior and irregular film output
of the years preceding the triumph of the Revolution with the standards of
the North American and Mexican industries, the reduction of our country
to erotico-tropical stereotypes, could not but arouse the scorn of the new
film industry. Hence the need for a serious and'revolutionary critique which
could establish the necessary scale of values. The real history of expression
through the film begins, in our country, with the triumph of the Revolution,
since it is then that it is tackled for the first time as a cultural proceeding.
Moreover, it is obvious that, given the technological complexity and the
amount of investment involved, only a revolution could make possible a film
industry capable of taking its place among the processes that are forging
39
Other cultural institutions
the nation. It is this intent and the results achieved after ten years of effort
that make ours a revolutionary cinema.
The cultural traditions of our people are precisely traditions of unremitting struggle and seeking, the history of 100 years of revolutionary
combat which have forged an awareness as lucid as it is steely. These traditions, particularly as regards ramifications of the arts, are the forerunners
of all new art. It is of no importance who once used a camera or such and
such a length of virgin film; what matters is where a handhold can, or
cannot, be found by a medium of expression which only recognizes as its
own the narration of that heroic story and the apprehension of the ideology
that made, and makes, its continuation possible; an endless fight for
freedom, and at the same time a constant forward pressure.
This was the manner and the spirit of the self-training of the first producers and cameramen, editors and writers who assumed responsibilities and
took charge of working outputs when they were barely out of the film-club
stage, making themselves one with the drama for which they had fought
and converting it into reality. And which was, as has been pointed out, the
need for a speedier rate of development, an inherent characteristic of all
the plans of the revolutionary process in a developing country, called for
a degree of improvisation, revolutionary dynamism and dedication and a
stern devotion to study and professional improvement, practical and theoretical, made it possible to get through that first stage. Thus our cinema
from the very first recorded the achievements and combats of the triumphant Revolution and with those images initiated its own vision of the
film. This connexion has not been broken. It has grown more complex and
varied, and even now enables the Cuban cinema to take an aesthetic standpoint which is self-derived, founded on its own experience and its own
repertoire—feature and medium-length films, documentaries, news-reels
and animated cartoons. This necessary and in no way conformist aesthetic
standpoint can be defined in terms of one particularity: the Cuban cinema,
turned inward on itself, is refinding the Revolution. This is of real importance. The art of the cinema does not think in rehashed bourgeois terms: it
is perhaps the first typically revolutionary cultural phenomenon.
In the absence of cinematographic antecedents and traditions of our
own, the consequent adhesion to our own country's most authentic art
forms activities, the determination to incorporate the new medium of
expression in the process of our culture's forging does not proceed from a
bent to restriction or from a deliberate rejection of foreign influences. It is
more a matter of producing the assimilation and re-creation needed in
freedom from colonial (or semi-colonial) patterns and complexes and from
the imitation which is their subtlest manifestation. This can only be done
on the basis of a policy, an attitude, that is the precise reverse of restriction,
that of the completely open door. In this, the critical spirit finds its greatest
possibilities of development. And everything assimilated assumes a new
character. It is not a matter of reinventing the idiom or techniques of the
40
Other cultural institutions
cinema, but it most certainly is an object to stamp them with a degree
of independence, freedom in creative experiment and regenerative revolutionary rigour, with talent and consideration of sobriety as the sole
restraints.
Thus our cinema's creators—producers, cameramen, writers and editors,
composers, etc.—have had the co-operation of some of the most outstanding
figures in the film industries of other countries, in some instances through
the medium of meetings, conferences or courses, and in others through a
more direct association with the work of creation. This policy of encouraging
direct contacts between our own film-makers and authentic representatives
of other major trends and schools in film-making, not only reflects our
concern to inform the public of these trends which are, for that matter,
accessible to it via the ordinary cinemas, the National Film Library, the
cine clubs, etc., but also our rejection of conditions likely to lead to intellectual impoverishment under the influence or dominion of a single style,
school or form.
If we be called to strike a balance, it will need to be pointed out that
the accelerated development pursued as a revolutionary answer to a legacy
of centuries of colonization and neo-colonialism already has in the Cuban
cinema a fund of examples going further than the solutions which have been
found to the concrete problems. Without going into detail, we shall find
that this situation has created the stresses and vigour needed for the
ideological and artistic training of the cinema's interpretative, technical,
and directing echelons. In this way it incorporates itself—according to its
own measure and significance—with the totality of the Cuban Revolution
in the revolutionary grappling with its tasks; in this case, as one of the
artistic manifestations of the culture and as a notable instrument of ideological and cultural formation and information.
The balance of ten years of film production shows in the first place that
the Cuban film industry, born with the Revolution, has been not only its
chronicler but a protagonist, a participant in it, enriched by Cuba's prime
reality—the Revolution—and enriching it in turn with its vision of it.
Inseparably involved in these ten years of struggle by our people, it has
been at their side in all their combats for the building of socialism and
communism. Rejecting superficiality, it has sought the most vitally and
authentically revolutionary dialogue with the hero and audience of its
entire production, the people of Cuba, successfully creating films of genuinely artistic significance, weapons of affirmation and combat, which have
come to form part of our cultural heritage.
This was already the case with the first films made between 1959
and 1961, which elucidated or prepared the ground for the first laws and
measures of the Revolution: Esta Tierra Nuestra, Tierra Ovidada or
Realengo 18 on Agrarian Reform; La Vivienda for the Law of Urban
Reform; El Negro, attacking racial discrimination; and Historia de una
batalla, Y me hice Maestro, Cada Fdbrica una Escuela, Una Escuela en el
41
Other cultural institutions
Campo, etc., on the campaign for literacy. So too with those which began
the story of our fight for freedom: Historias de la Revolution and El Joven
Rebelde, or which, like Muerte al invasor, gave the picture story of the
valiant fight by our armed forces and revolutionary militia and the mobilization of the entire nation against the invaders at Playa Giron.
This line has been continued and developed in more recent years with
the rise in film production and the attainment of an artistic and technical
level, an effectiveness and a character which have confirmed the status of
the Cuban film industry at home and abroad, bringing it a deserved prestige,
endorsed by public support—particularly in Cuba—and twenty-three first
prizes, plus numerous mentions and special prizes in international festivals
throughout the world.
The success of Cuban films exceeds all expectations and beats every
record. While Las Doce Sillas, El Joven Rebelde and Las Aventiiras de Juan
Quinquin have already been seen by 1 million spectators each, Lucia,
recently screened as a tribute from Cuba's film industry to the Centenary
of Revolutionary Struggles, is approaching the 600,000 mark. The same
will certainly be the case for some of the films presented for the tenth
anniversary of the triumphant Cuban Revolution.
The breakdown of films made during the period 1960-68 is as follows:
feature and medium-length films, 44; documentaries, 204; educational
films, 77; animated cartoons, 49; People's Encyclopaedia, 94 items; and the
ICAIC Latin American News Reel, 435.
Participation in international festivals has a twofold purpose: to compare the results of each year's work with the most significant films and
movements in the rest of the world, and to break through the imperialist
blockade. It must be remembered that each shot, each sequence, each
medium-length film, documentary or news-reel, deals with one theme
only—the Cuban Revolution. But though it may seem contradictory to say
so, this does not lead to sameness. A real revolution—and the Cuban one
is such—unleashes so many and such complex situations, so greatly enriches
life, so extends the range of action of the individual and the society, opens
up so many problems and discloses so many possible solutions, that no
other state of affairs can offer greater variety.
Among the many prizes received, a mention is needed of those awarded
at some of the most important international festivals, such as the International Festival of Documentaries and Short Films in Leipzig, the London
Film Festival, the festivals at Karlovy Vara and Moscow, and the festivals
of Latin American films at Sestri Levante in Italy. But none of these has
been so important as the first prize and the prize for an entire programme
awarded at the Festival of New Latin American films at Vina del Mar,
Chile, and the prize for his total work awarded by the jury of the Festival
of Documentary Films at Merida, Venezuela, to the producer, Santiago
Alvarez, director of the ICAIC Latin American Neivs Reel.
The Cuban doctunentary cinema is one of the most important of our
42
Other cultural institutions
time. Our producers are not content to record the events of the Cuban
scene, but are themselves involved in them and participate in them through
the instrumentality of the film. One illustration of this is to be found in the
instructional films for the publicization of technical methods and problems
with a close bearing on the development of agriculture and stockbreeding
or of industrial technology. Starting with the People's Encyclopaedia, running to a total of ninety-four items and perfected by the formation of
specialist crews, who are now extending their range of action and getting
a finger in documentary work of all kinds, seventy-seven documentaries of
this type have been made by ICAIC. But while educational films have
reached this stage of development, the contribution of the cinema in other
fields has been no less important, and notably in the field of international
solidarity. Cuban film-makers have worked in the Democratic Republic of
Viet-Nam (Hanoi, Manes 13), in Laos (La Guerra Olvidada), and in Africa
(the ICAIC Latin American News Reel); in co-operation with producers
from Latin American and other countries on the guerilla struggle or resistance operations, and reportages on the student movement.
Hasta la Victoria Siempre, based on the life and battles of Che Guevarra,
is the peak example of this documentary line. Our public was for years
exposed to the sustained impact of a programme selection composed to the
lowest political, artistic and ideological standards, which exercised a constant influence on taste, concepts and habits. There was no selection which
would enable the spectator to instruct and impose himself amply on
the whole panorama of the world cinema, and so enrich his vision of
reality.
Programme planning for cinemas—in large and small cities and in the
countryside—is today a complex operation in which account has to be taken
of the mass character of the public, the diversity of cultural levels, the
material circumstances—means of communication in particular—their tradition and the dynamic for their enrichment and elevation, plus the necessary intention to keep the artistic and ideological standards as high as
possible in the films. In the light of these principles, and of the advance of
the Revolution, the measures necessary which were adopted involved the
confiscation of all exhibitory facilities, the nationalization of film-distributing firms and the expropriation or purchase of all the country's cinemas
and exhibiting firms, to make sure of controlling the material means for
beginning the task of educating the new public by the mass screening of a
new type of programme.
But such measures benefited only the large urban agglomerations, while
the greater part of the peasant population continued in the scorned and
forgotten state in which they had been kept by the narrow economic
interests of the former society. To rectify this, the ICAIC system and
network of travelling cinemas was created to bring films, with its mobile
units, to the countryside, marshlands, cays, and in general to all the least
accessible areas. These units also undertake the provision of films to the new
43
Other cultural institutions
agricultural and livestock development areas, where increasing contingents
of brigadistas1 are concentrated (the Centenary Youth Column, the Isle of
Youth, mass mobilization of brigadistas at the time of the sugar harvest;
the Rural School Plan, etc.).
A special word is needed on the role played by the young driver-projectionists who spend twenty-five days every month travelling the regions
assigned to them and bring the cinema to the development areas, hamlets
and villages, to the mountain areas and to wherever other cinema facilities
do not exist. During the day they spend long hours showing educational and
instructional documentary films in rural schools. And when they return to
base they are busy with the care and maintenance of the travelling cinemas,
repair or replace the films and look to their own improvement. This last, of
course, finds its most authentic expression in the devotion they bring to
their work.
The mobile-cinema system, which has to date given 363,163 shows to
about 40 million spectators, ensures the large-scale circulation of feature
films and documentaries on revolutionary subjects, educational films and
the ICAIC Latin American News Reel. In this way, the old dream of the
film clubs has become a reality, the revolutionary reality of a new public.
For this ICAIC has concentrated all its force—and from the very first—on
abolishing the disparities between town and country and between the capital and the provinces. In 1958 there were no mobile cinemas; in 1968 there
were eighty-one. These gave 69,822 shows to 7,121,844 spectators.
On the completion of the nationalization of the country's cinemas
in 1965, ICAIC began to develop, by its own efforts and within the limits of
the resources assigned to it, a plan for the construction, reconstruction and
repair of cinemas.
Nineteen projects are under way at the present time, of which fourteen
are for new buildings and five for repair or reconstruction. Almost all these
cinemas will be opened to the public during the next three or four months.
Concurrently with the execution of these projects, other operations have
recently been begun on the maintenance and repair of seventeen cinemas.
Most of the newly built cinemas replace others closed down, or were in
such a bad states as to be near to it.
Nevertheless, a tremendous amount remains to be done in this field.
Many communities still have no cinema, and in others the cinemas are in
a truly lamentable state through long neglect. Private enterprise was
interested only in profits, and it was rare for buildings and equipment to
be given a proper degree of maintenance. Projects completed between 1965
and 1968 were as follows: new cinemas, 44; repaired or reconstructed,
59—giving a total of 103.
With the regular appearance of the Cuban Film Review (Revista Cine
Cubano) launched in 1960, with fifty numbers issued to date, the publi1. Young volunteers. The term brigadista is so used in all publications.
Other cultural institutions
cation of thirteen books of a theoretical and informative nature, and
ten numbers of the bulletin of the Information and Translation Service,
together with twenty-nine technical books and pamphlets for internal use,
ICAIC's publishing policy, now integrated in the plans of the Book Institute, has sought at once to meet information needs and to promote interest,
proportionate to level, in this complex cultural activity.
Cuba's National Film Library was started midway in 1960 as a cultural
department of ICAIC to ac<juire, conserve and classify all material relevant
to knowledge and study of the history of the cinema from its origins to
our own day (films, books, reviews, catalogues, publicity, unusual equipment, etc.), with special attention to the cinema in Cuba, and to ensuring
the exhibition of this material to the general public, and also in special programmes for students and groups of experts. In 1961 the Film Library was
accepted as a provisional member of IFFA (International Federation of
Film Archives) and shortly afterwards as a permanent member. It was
also accepted as a permanent member of UCAL (Union de Cinematecas de
America Latina) at the Constituent Assembly held in Vina del Mar, Chile,
in 1967.
Casa de las Americas (House of the Americas)
The Casa de las Americas, founded in April 1959, is the outcome of a twofold
need, to recruit a specialized team to make our country familiar with the
works and writers of Spanish America as a whole and, above all, to encourage rapprochement between the Latin American peoples through a real cultural exchange.
Since 1960 it has sponsored the Competitive Casa de las Americas
Literary Prize, instituted to foster creative literary work throughout Latin
America, with sections for the novel, plays, essays, poetry, short stories and,
from 1970, memoirs. Entries must be as yet unpublished and written in
Spanish, and those awarded prizes are published in Spanish in various
countries and translated into foreign languages. The competition brings
numbers of outstanding figures in art or letters to Cuba from all over the
world as judges or competitors. In 1969, for example, judges from fourteen
Latin American and European countries were received by the Casa. The
number of entries increases every year; thus in 1959 346 original works
were submitted, whereas for 1970 the figure rose to more than 500.
Book publishing is one of the Casa's tasks, and through it the public
of Cuba has come to know the most representative authors of Spanish
American letters.
The Casa organizes an annual engravings exhibition open to all plastic
artists in Latin America. It also runs the Latin American Art Gallery in one
of the halls in the actual Casa, where the most representative works of the
Latin American plastic arts are on show.
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The Casa publishes the bimonthly review Casa, which accepts contributions from Cuban and foreign intellectuals. The review has a committee
of co-operation made up of eminent Latin American men of letters, and
covers a wide range of subjects including Latin American cultural, artistic,
political and social problems.
The Casa's documentation centre, again, is extremely active in all
departments which comprise a specialized library on Latin American subjects, an acquisition and exchange department, a literary research centre,
and a study group.
The Casa periodically arranges recitals, concerts and talks on music,
presenting Cuban and Latin American composers. The 'Songs of Protest'
Centre, too, has published brief reports on its activities, for example on the
first meeting of Composers and Interpreters of Songs of Protest held in
Havana in August 1967.
Latin American poetry cycles have been organized with Latin American
poets reading their verses, thus bringing their most recent works to the
notice of the public.
The Casa's 'Jose Antonio Echevarria' Library has had exhibitions of
manuscripts and original works testifying to Latin American and the Cuban
struggle for independence.
Informal meetings are a regular feature of the Casa's activities with
leading Cuban and foreign intellectuals invited to discuss books, works,
writers and Latin American problems in general.
The Casa publishes the following book series:
Coleccion Premio (Prizewinner Library), presenting the annual prizewinning
titles and works commended by the juries.
Coleccion Literatura Latino Americana (Library of Latin American Literature), consists of literary works from all Latin America from the first
settlement, with fifty volumes published to date.
Cuadernos Casa (Casa Papers), presenting studies and essays on Latin
American cultural, political and social problems.
Nuestros Paises (Our Countries), monographs on the history, economics and
social problems of Latin America down to our own days.
Estudios Monogrdficos del Centra de Documentation, analysing miscellaneous
Latin American problems.
Coleccion La Honda, a series of short literary works by Latin American
writers.
Coleccion Casa, biographies of Latin American writers.
The publications of the Centre de Investigaciones Literarias (Literary
Research Centre), consisting of brief critical studies of Latin American
writers or literary panoramas.
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Other cultural institutions
Institute del Libro (Book Institute)
One of the most serious problems faced by the publishing industry in our
countries arises precisely from the fact that the reading public is limited as
a result, among other things, of illiteracy and under-schooling. Conditions
in Latin America have not been favourable to the growth of the reading
habit, except in the major centres of the region where there are to be found
not only all the bookshops, reading rooms and libraries but also those who
can devote part of their income to buying books.
Furthermore, Latin American books tend to be expensive. The absence
of large editions—a direct result of the smallness of the reading public—
makes it impossible to reduce publishing-cost prices.
The cost of book production is further increased in the region by the
price of paper and in some cases by out-of-date methods 'which do not
always meet the requirements of speed, flexibility and mobility necessary
for books in the world of today'. The poor rate of growth of reading in our
continent is evident from the fact that book production between 1961
and 1966 shows signs of falling off, that, in an age of paperbacks for a mass
market, editions in our countries rarely reach 100,000, that in a continent
containing 7.4 per cent of the world's population we have only 3.8 per cent
of world book production; and that the average size of an edition in our
countries is only 7,000 copies, i.e. below the world average. The foregoing
explains why, whereas book production in Latin America made very little
progress between 1961 and 1966, in Spain over the same period it rose from
11,950 titles to 19,040. More and more we are ceasing to be producers of
high-cost books and becoming buyers.
Such was the situation in Cuba as well.
Prior to the Revolution, books were distributed in Cuba via a few small
bookshops and reached a small number of readers. To what was this due?
Among other things, to the high rate of illiteracy and the small numbers in
school, amounting to only 840,908 pupils in 1958, most of them in primary
schools.
If to this mass of illiterates and the low rate of school attendance (of
whom a high proportion never got beyond primary school) we add the penurious condition of our workers and peasants who, even where they could
read, were unable to buy books, we shall have the full gloomy picture facing
the Revolution in 1959. The first thing to do was to eradicate illiteracy and
under-schooling rapidly and efficiently. In 1961 a vast literacy campaign
was launched and brought to a successful conclusion that same year. Of
979,207 illiterates listed, 707,212 were rendered literate, that is, illiteracy
was reduced from 23.6 per cent to 3.9 per cent. A total of 233,608 alfabetizadors (literacy instructors) took part in the campaign. The book trade
lent its assistance. In 1961 over 1 million primers were published to teach
the ABC of reading. The campaign was followed up by special courses in
adult education to make certain that the new literates would not forget
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Other cultural institutions
what they had learned. In this way the first step was taken towards creating
a vigorous publishing industry in Cuba. The other step of vital importance
was the elimination of the causes of under-education and drop-outs and the
nationalization of education and abolition of school fees which in fact
enabled us to become the only country in Latin America with a vigorous
and planned programme of textbook publication. On 15 March 1960 was
founded the first agency of the Revolution to take over book production.
A labour conflict between the owners of the reactionary newspapers El
Pats and Excelsior and the workers culminated in an assembly in which
Comandante Fidel Castro intervened with the suggestion of a revolutionary
solution: to set up a National Press using the newspapers' machinery. The
plan was set going and quickly took in the plants of the Diario National,
El Crisol, Diario de la Marina, Information and other papers whose owners
left the country. A feature of the National Press was its large-scale editions,
unprecedented in Cuba. Although it did not succeed entirely in satisfying
the country's most immediate needs, with the sale of 100,000 copies of its
first publication, El Quijote, at the incredible price of 25 centavos a
volume (for a four-volume edition), there began the great transformation
of the book industry in Cuba.
In an attempt to create a higher organization which would really meet
the growing needs of the industry, the Cuban National Publishing Company
(Editorial Nacional de Cuba), under the Council of Ministers, was set up
in 1962. The new body represented a higher level in the development of
publishing in Cuba by its diversification of publishing to the policy on textbooks. The books were now better in <juality, not only as regards their
content, but graphically as well.
The immediate experience which was to lead to the foundation of the
Institute del Libro (Book Institute) was a special project, in December 1965,
under the style of 'Edicion Revolucionaria', to cope with the urgent demand
for university textbooks, which it was possible to produce in Cuba as
a result of the prohibitive laws laid down by the various copyright
agreements.
Our point of view in the face of this situation was expressed by the
Prime Minister, Comandante Fidel Castro:
In virtue of all these notions of intellectual property, we found ourselves obliged,
if we were to meet the full existing demand for textbooks, to spend tens of
millions of pesos.. . . And yet it is most difficult to determine in practice where
so-called copyright vests in the case of the creators of our intellectual working
capital, if not in that of those who paid cash down in the market, whatever the
price—and, generally, a low one—for these products of the mind. Those who
held the monopoly in the books had the right to sell them at the prices they
saw fit. It was necessary to take a bold decision.
That decision took the form of Edicion Revolucionaria.
Our Prime Minister observed:
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Who pays Cervantes his copyright royalties?
Who pays Shakespeare? Who pays the inventors of the alphabet, of numbers,
of arithmetic, of mathematics? . . . We give notice that we consider all technical
achievements a legacy to which all men have a claim, and to which the nations
which have been most exploited have a special claim.
Cuba thus propounded the right of a developing country to have access to
all manifestations of culture. For we in the Americas are far indeed from
being those who should be most deeply concerned with copyright considerations: on the contrary we are those whom they directly prejudice. In the
final count, we, with the other developing countries, have paid heavily for
the level of development today enjoyed by other nations in the world,
thanks to which they have the scientists, technicians and intellectuals able
to write the texts which we need.
In these circumstances the notion of ownership governed by copyright
becomes a brake which denies us the possibility of possessing ourselves
of works to which our countries' poets have also contributed: we are
denied access to the information and knowledge needed for our scientific,
technical and educational development. In other words, one right is overridden by another, there is a right which condemns this state of affairs, by
whose denial we should be guilty of complicity with those who deny the
right of something that is the heritage, not of one country, but of mankind.
The countries which have succeeded, with the sweat of our brows, in establishing a solid social and economic basis that enables them to have a large
number of technicians and scientists, are also the major producers of books.
And yet, are we to concern ourselves with authors' royalties when we know,
that by the very structure of our foreign trade, it will always be extremely
hard for us to obtain foreign exchange to spend on books?
When a country suffers the upheaval ours has, and starts a process in
which the training of thousands of technicians and scientists necessitates
large quantities of books, copyright becomes a hobble and a leg-shackle on
that country's development, and consequently an inacceptable obstacle.
In 1967 our Prime Minister, speaking for Cuba, rejected the observance
of copyright as it is commonly practised under the Berne Convention.
On 29 April he made the following statement:
If there exists a universal legacy which mankind has handed down to itself, it is
culture, science and technology. Our underdeveloped and economically poor
countries are entitled to demand their share of the world's cultural, scientific and
technical store.
The first successes of Edicion Revolucionaria showed that the moment had
arrived when the country's publishing policy needed to be reformulated.
Accordingly the notion was conceived of a body which, informed by the
same dynamic and innovating spirit as Edicion Revolucionaria, would promote a complex and ambitious publishing programme.
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This body was expected to follow up the experience of the past and base
its publishing policy on the needs of the Revolution, and of advancing
culture and technology. But it was also required to treat books not just as
products of an industry, successive result of an industrial technology, but
above all as products of the culture of mankind: the expression of its scientific, artistic, literary and technical ideas. The new body was required not
to look on books as merchandise, but as a powerful instrument of education
and culture. •
For the first time in Cuba, for the first time in the world, the books
published by Edicion Revolucionaria contained slips reading: 'This book is
of great value, and that is why it is offered to you free. It is valuable by
reason of the accumulated toil represented by the knowledge which it contains; for the hours of labour spent in manufacturing it; and because it represents a step forward in the struggle of men to be truly as men. Yet its
greatest value will come from the use you make of it. Because we have faith
in your right use of it, and because of its great value, we offer it to you free.'
In 1967 we get the appearance of the Institute del Libro applying from
the start the experience of Edicion Revolucionaria and marrying all the factors entering into Cuba's book policy. It became, in fact, a vast combine
putting books through the whole complex process until they reach the
reader, the result being a coherent and homogeneous policy of production
and distribution. The institute had to tackle, as a problem of vital urgency,
the mass production of textbooks for all levels of education, technical books
and scientific books. In 1967, of a total output of 8,722,000 books,
5,685,140 were educational textbooks. The dramatic increase in the number
of students and the constant arrival every year in the world of books of
thousands of new readers resulted in the institute increasing its total production in 1968 to 13,066,417 volumes, that is, almost two books per capita
per annum. Of this impressive total for a country of 7 million inhabitants,
8,221,068 copies were textbooks for education at all levels.
The plan for 1969 called for 15 million volumes (total figure) of which
9,006,500 were directly devoted to the education drive.
Annual book production in Cuba rose from a little over 1 million volumes
before 1959 to 13,066,417 volumes in 1968, with 15 million volumes planned
for 1969.
Lastly, when it is considered that more than 70 per cent of these
13,066,417 volumes were issued to the people free of charge, it can be fully
appreciated that we are faced in Cuba with a cultural fact which will have
unpredictable consequences.
The Institute del Libro comprises the following publishing organizations:
Edicion Revolucionaria, produces textbooks which are issued free for our
three universities.
Pueblo y Educacion (People and Education) which produces textbooks
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for primary, secondary and pre-university levels; also texts for teachers'
refresher courses for the Worker-Farmer Faculty and MINFAR (Ministry
of the Armed Forces). These publications are issued free.
Ciencia y Tecnica (Science and Technology), in the main, publishes scientific and technical textbooks for secondary and higher level. It also handles
the technical material needed for qualifying agricultural technicians and the
scientific and technical books required by the various State agencies.
Next year, the institute proposes to start the 'Cuban Medical Science
Series', which will publish works by Cuban writers.
Gente Nueva (New People) which publishes books for children between 5
and 9, and for youth.
Next year this series will be subdivided into several series (classic
authors, educational books, Cuban authors). A children's bookshop, the
first of its kind in the country, will be opened shortly in Santiago de Cuba.
Arte y Literatura (Art and Literature) publishes a number of series of
literary works and works on the literature of all ages:
Huracdn (Hurricane), large-scale editions of novels, short-story collections,
memoirs, and books of travel and adventure for all tastes.
Cuadernos Populates (People's Notes and Queries), discussing scientific,
technical and humanistic questions of general interest.
Biblioteca del Pueblo (People's Library), novels by classic and contemporary
writers.
Poesia, anthology of poetry, country by country.
Biblioteca Bdsica de Autores Cubanos (Basic Library of Cuban Writers), the
works of our best novelists, essayists, short-story writers, poets and
dramatists.
Letras Cubanas (Cuban Letters), the best of the contemporary Cuban
writers in a luxury edition.
Dragon, the best fiction, detective fiction and suspense literature.
Cldsicos (Classics), the basic works of world literature.
Cocuyo, contemporary novelists and essayists.
Pluma en Ristre (Pen in Hand), brings the works of the younger Cuban
writers before the public.
Arte y Sociedad (Art and Society), essays on art and literature.
Cuadernos de Arte y Sociedad (Art and Society notebooks), short essays on
art and literature.
Ediciones de Artey Sociedad (Art and Society Editions), art books and illustrated books on art in special bindings.
Testimonio (non-fiction), biographies, autobiographies, diaries, reportages.
TeatroyDanza (Theatre and Dance), essays on theatre, ballet and the dance.
Repertorio Teatral (Theatre Repertoire), plays.
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Social Sciences, publishes the following works:
Ediciones Politicas (Political Publications), historical material, documents,
memoirs.
Ciencias Politicas (Political Sciences), university-level political studies.
Filosofla (Philosophy), philosophical thinking from the Greeks to our day.
Historia, history.
Centenario 1868 (1868 Centenary), testificatory works on our independence
movement.
Guairas, on the development of revolutionary and anti-imperialistic thinking in Latin America.
Vietnam, Memoirs and reportage on the Viet-Nam people's war.
Teoria Economica (Economic theory), high-level economic textbooks.
Biblioteca 1EI Oficial' ('Officer' series), military textbooks and memoirs.
Tridngulo, true spy stories.
Polemica, speeches and writings on controversial subjects.
Ediciones Deportivas (Sporting Publications), handbooks on athletics,
swimming, boxing, medical aspects of sport and, in general, books on the
many facets of sport.
El Instito, in co-operation with the Organizacion de Solidaridad con los
Pueblos de Asia, Africa, y America Latina, published Tri-Continental.
Also printed and distributed by the institute are the following publications of the Casa de las Americas, i.e. works of, or on, Latin American
literature, research on Latin America, monographs on our countries, etc.;
publications of the Union de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba (Union of Cuban
Writers and Artists). The institute likewise publishes training, informative
and popularization material for the various agencies of the State.
When a technician or a scientist in a country blockaded like ours wants
to consult a specific bibliography, or merely to inform himself of the latest
titles on his speciality published in all parts of the world, what does he do?
One task of the recently opened Exhibition Centre of the Institute del
Libro is precisely to afford everyone whatever information he requires not
only on technical and scientific books and reviews and books of general
interest published in Cuba, but on those published abroad as well.
The Exhibition Centre arose from the need to concentrate in one place
of easy access to the public all possible information on the new Cuban and
foreign publications, observing that the imperialist blockade has directly
and indirectly obstructed the normal channels. Currently the centre affords
the various public organs, information centres, libraries, etc., extensive and
regular bibliographic news which will enable them to lay out their foreign
exchange to the best advantage when ordering books from abroad. On these
lines a more rational and effective import and distribution policy has taken
shape which redounds to the advantage of the various bodies served by the
institute through its centre. Further, it is from the Exhibition Centre that
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the institute's different series of publications are fed: up-to-date and regular
bibliographic information is a guarantee that the scientific and technical
works published in our country are really the latest and most up to date in
their respective branches.
Cuba now possesses a School of Printing Trades Technology which
trains the senior technicians who will be needed for the development of our
printing industry. Candidates for entry to the school must have passed the
eighth grade of general education and are chosen on the basis of their aptitudes and keenness. The course lasts three years and pupils may specialize
in photomechanics, retouching, photoengraving, hand-setting and mechanical setting, direct and indirect printing, hand-binding and mechanical binding. The school has already turned out hundreds of young people who have
taken intensive courses there as boarders on full scholarship. In the printing
sphere, Cuba is well on the way to the stage when it can rely upon having
a skilled engineer in each technical post, of every department of every
printing works, and at present (with the means of production now the property of the nation) it is the only country in Latin America capable of
directing its efforts towards a 100 per cent increase in its technical capacity.
We are also setting up a school of book design and production for secondary-school leavers with a call to the old and ever-new art of making
books. The course is three years in length and students can progressively
find out their real potentialities for expressing themselves through design,
photography and typography. Thus Cuba will train some scores of highly
qualified designers who will elaborate the books which the Revolution is
today making available to a vast and increasing mass of Cuban readers. As
from January 1970 the institute will also have a special school for the
training of editors, translators and sub-editors.
For all three schemes our country has the assistance of a considerable
number of foreign teachers and specialists.
Cuban Radio Broadcasting Institute
This institute is responsible for all radio broadcasting and television
throughout the country.
As a mass-communication medium, all that it does is directly or
indirectly related to the nation's cultural development, but in addition the
institute has particular radio and television programme series through
which the various branches of art reach millions of people.
Programming on these lines was not possible under the commercial system, when the sponsoring firms had to be guaranteed a cultural product
easy for the masses to assimilate at the low cultural level which then marked
them.
The emotional reflexes exploited to get a hearing were the same as those
employed in 'comics', women's magazines, novelettes, etc.
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Persistance in the cultural programmes and didactic character of some
of them have been important factors in the aesthetic sensitization of the
people.
The radio broadcasts the following special daily cultural programmes:
Along the Broad Path, serial broadcasts of famous works in literature.
People of our America, on Latin American novel writing.
The Story, a daily broadcast in which a story is presented in dramatized
form.
Lands and Men, recounting the lives of world figures who have contributed
to the progress of mankind.
An Unforgettable Novel, classic novels of the world.
You, the Word and the Night, literary comments, with excerpts from all
types of literature, and critiques of writers, with the aim of arousing an
interest in reading, with excerpts from selected works presented in dramatic form.
Adventures, a selection of adaptations of the best works of this category
throughout the world, in short series.
The Great Adventure of Mankind, dramatized presentations of the peak
moments in world history.
The Two O'Clock Novel, the most celebrated novels in world literature presented in dramatic form.
A Tale for You, a selection from world literature of works with a marked
social content.
Men of Cuba, biographies of the most significant Cuban figures in action,
the arts, literature and science.
This is Where it Began, a selection of the best examples in world literature
of detective stories, thrillers and science fiction.
As regards Sunday programmes, the following may be mentioned:
Short Stories, presenting the best examples of this literary genre.
Theatre, the outstanding works of world theatre adapted for the radio.
Television offers the following special cultural programmes: What Does it
Say?, aimed at helping viewers to become more familiar with our language
and to speak and write it more correctly. We also try to bring the most
famous literary works before the public:
Our Children, to inform the public, and make it aware of the basic problems
involved in the upbringing and education of children. To demonstrate
the factors in the family, school and social spheres in the form of
erroneous ideas, customs and concepts influencing deviation. To offer
guidance to parents, teachers and adults in general on the tremendous
importance of a combined effort by all for the sound education of
children.
Teachers, to show our teachers, by means of the examples screened that the
premisses of the teacher's work are teaching and inculcating positive
traits in their pupils to get better citizens.
Literature, to bring the public the best works of literature in an attractive
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form and introduce our masses to the beginnings of culture. To acquaint
audiences not only with the works, but with their authors as well, setting them in the context of the period when they lived, and describing
the literary, political and social currents that influenced their work.
Art and Folklore is to increase our viewers' culture as regards music, the
plastic arts, the folklore of various countries, etc.
Read and Write, is designed to 'teach without tears' by disseminating miscellaneous general knowledge, exploiting the drawing power of the programme's amusement content.
Man and His World, as in all our programmes, we aim at increasing the
sum of viewers' knowledge in an agreeable and entertaining way.
Science and Development, our aim in this programme is to educate and
instruct in an entertaining way.
Education Today, the implicit object of this national television programme
is to keep all viewers informed of educational achievements and projects.
Art and Culture, is intended for students, and its object is to raise their level
of culture in regard to the arts.
Teatro ICR, the best plays from the world repertoire.
The Short Story, the best short stories from all over the world.
Great Novels, the best novels of all ages.
There is also a radio transmitter reserved exclusively for serious music and
cultural programmes.
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