The Intellectual, a Ruminant in the Castro Zoo

The Intellectual, a Ruminant in the Castro Zoo / 14ymedio, José Gabriel
Barrenechea
Posted on July 4, 2015

14ymedio, José Gabriel Barrenechea, Santa Clara, 22 June 2015 – Why
don't our intellectuals act like so many foreign observers expect? Why
don't they try to intervene in the debate about the future of the
country now that there is ever more open access to the Internet, whether
directly or through the exchange of USB memories, and ideas have started
to move with greater ease? Why don't they move, why don't they stir, now
that in Cuba the days of the reign of Castro II are coming to an end and
everything becomes so soft, so malleable that it powerfully inspires one
to get to work?

In part it is a problem of legitimacy. When in the last congress of the
Cuban Writers and Artists Union (UNEAC), Miguel Diaz-Canel insisted that
they prioritize the works and talents of the State, through its cultural
institutions, he wasn't talking of something minor and secondary but of
an essential aspect of politics thanks to which the regime ensures its
stability and its permanence ad aeternum.

Since about 1976, a pact has been articulated in Cuba between the
Castros and the Cuban intelligentsia. A tacit agreement, which largely
has built itself on the fly, and above all, in a not completely
premeditated way (otherwise it would accept a higher intelligence in the
leaders of the regime, or some intellectuals, where none of them seems
to have had so rare a gift). In it the Castro State guaranteed the
monopoly of a space for the intelligentsia, provided it does not attack,
and also as long as it fulfilled any mission assigned to it directed
toward the inside or outside of the country.

That space, guaranteed to the already renowned intellectuals, the same
ones who during the first 16 years of revolution had been so severely
beaten by the regime that they had ended up "learning a lesson," implied
something else. Someone had to define who could legitimately enjoy the
space among the newly arrived: that is, who was an intellectual and who
was not in the Cuba of Fidel Castro.

Although the mechanism has become more sophisticated with the passing of
years, in essence it is still the State that legitimizes the Cuban
intellectual. Or at least that legitimized that generation already
established, and that comes to mind to the uninformed (or rather to
those informed by the regime) when it comes to Cuban intellectuals.

Some are fully aware that they are only intellectuals within this small
enclosure in which the Castro regime has allowed them to graze. However
the rest, the majority, although they don't understand it differently
cling to this question: What will happen when others, who don't have
pacts with the regime, try to raise their tents in these small
paradises? Bearing in mind that this pretend intelligentsia only serves
to be exhibited, that it could never justify itself through its sales,
much less live off of them. A publisher like Capiro, for example, taking
into account an extended system of promotion, and a dozen and a half
employees, never sells more than 25% of its runs, no more than 500 copies.

Lobotomized, the pact-holding intelligentsia knows what is best for it
is that characters like Diaz-Canel are responsible for "establishing
artistic and literary hierarchies." What to do when being an
intellectual implies being truthful? Many are fearful of mentioning that
possibility, and therefore also of the possible demise of the Castro regime.

Do not expect much from them. And is it this that ultimately deserves
the name of intelligentsia? If anything, it has been nothing more than a
useful but misleading label of another "conquest of the Revolution,"
through which it tries to romantically justify its perpetuation within
the power of the Castros.

The spiritual life of the country, gentlemen, is elsewhere, never
through the bars of a zoo. But then, why do we persist in expecting
gestures from these poor fairground attractions? Vast are the fields of
Cuba…

Source: The Intellectual, a Ruminant in the Castro Zoo / 14ymedio, José
Gabriel Barrenechea | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/the-intellectual-a-ruminant/