Blockade hinders dance development in eastern Cuba

 GUANTÁNAMO, Cuba, Oct 2 (ACN) Since she was a fifth grader, Ana Beatriz González León, a student at the Alfredo Velázquez Carcasés Dance School in the province of Guantánamo, has seen with regret many of her classmates drop out of art courses as a result of the U.S. blockade of Cuba, enforced since 1962 and responsible for the lack of required school supplies, the food shortages and the insufficient public transport, all aggravated since.

Today, as a high-school student who feels that dance is her life, enumerates the obstacles in her path to completing the contemporary and folkloric dance rehearsals she needs to move up to a higher level and the way the lack of the necessary equipment to take exams and have lessons tampers with her training.

“For example,” she says, “in ballet we have to wear socks for want of shoes that fit and even make our own costumes with the help of our parents. And we don’t have the music equipment needed for the matinees, the dance lessons and the development of listening skills to improve our performance.”

Nor do they have the proper percussion instruments because of trade restrictions. Therefore, the school has to resort to local—and more expensive—artisans, unable as it is to purchase them from the U.S., staff members point out. And the same goes for garments, which they only get through donations; video cameras to tape and screen presentations; music instruments as essential to teach ballet as pianos, of which the school has only two; and even opportunities to develop cultural links at international level.

While the school faces great challenges regarding its capacity to provide its 246 elementary and intermediate level dance students and art instructors from two provinces, the staff agree that they deliver quality graduates. However, they would be even better, they say, were it not for the said U.S. Cuba policy.

Between March 2023 and February 2024, the U.S. blockade caused Cuba damages amounting to more than USD five billion, as Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla highlighted in a recent report that will be submitted to the United Nations General Assembly on October 29 and 30.