Minister: The Cultural work of the Cuban Revolution is undeniable

HAVANA, Cuba, Feb 12 (ACN) Cuba's Minister of Culture, Alpidio Alonso Grau, said Thursday that the cultural work of the Revolution is undeniable and that one cannot aspire to understand what the Cuban Revolution is without knowing what its cultural and educational policy has been.

Comparing "what this country was, with more than one and a half million illiterate and semi-literate people, with the country of today's educated men and women, with more than one million university students, full of cultural institutions from one end to the other, libraries, museums, bookstores, theaters and movie theaters, schools and universities," the minister said that there are reasons to celebrate.

In that sense, he spoke of the campaign of actions planned by the ministry this year to celebrate "in style" the 60th anniversary of the speech delivered by Fidel Castro in June 1961, known as Words to the Intellectuals.

According to the poet and editor, this is a founding speech, which is said to be the symbolic birth of the cultural policy of the Revolution, "there are the fundamental ideas, the principles of everything that has been done".

According to him, the commemoration is intended to be a celebration, "because we have to feel proud of the cultural policy we have, which is not perfect, much less when it has to be done in the conditions it has had to be done, which have been of trenches".

Regarding the attacks on Cuban culture and its institutions in recent times, the minister declared that they clash against the spirit of participation, against the work of writers and artists, against the revolutionary Cuban artistic movement, against the truth and the cultural work of the Revolution.

They have been ignoring what the work of cultural institutions has meant, what the UNEAC and the AHS mean as channels and spaces for the debate with the institutions on issues inherent to the cultural policy, he said.

They want to make this work invisible, they have ignored the complexity of the art we sponsor and that is why they attack the institutions, because without them it would be impossible to do everything we do, the level of coverage and response to the cultural expectations of the population, what they mean to maintain a cultural dynamic like the one we have, the minister continued.

That is why, he emphasized, the anniversary of Palabras... will be celebrated all year long, together with the 60th anniversary of UNEAC and the 35th anniversary of the organization of young people and artists.

Without culture our socialist project would be inconceivable, that is why they are attacking it, they want to fracture the unity between our writers and artists and our institutions, they want to fracture the unity between the artistic vanguard and the political vanguard that was developed during all these years, they want to fracture our identity, he stressed.

Alpidio Alonso said that it is well known what the voice of our intellectuals means, "the shock wave generated by an intellectual's opinion and that is why they are trying to attack culture".

But we count on the shame of our people, on the patriotism shown by our writers and artists, on the commitment that has been seen in this last year of work, which has been extraordinary, he stressed.