A fair idea in the depths of the dungeon

A fair idea in the depths of the dungeon / 14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar
Posted on January 2, 2015

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, 31 December 2014 – In the mouse gray uniform
worn by inmates, as disheveled as usual and with eyes open wide, Tania
Bruguera sitting on a bench in the Acosta Street Police Station seemed
to be giving the best performance of her artistic career. At that point
at noon on 30 December 2014, they'd already arrested dozens of people in
the city of Havana to prevent them from answering the invitation to
gather at the Plaza of the Revolution.

As Arnold Hauser said, "Artworks are provocations, we can't explain them
to ourselves, at most we can argue with them." In 2009, at the Wilfredo
Lam Center, during the Havana Bienniel, Tatlin's Whisper had given us
much to talk about. An open microphone, where everyone could say what
they thought for one minute, was too much for the bureaucrats of the
Ministry of Culture's National Council of Plastic Arts, who arrived to
make public their indignation with the libertarian event. But this one
went further: it wasn't in a closed gallery space, but in the Plaza of
the Revolution, and it wasn't just any moment, but two weeks after the
announcement of the reestablishment of relations between Cuba and the
United States.

If what the performance proposed was to measure and demonstrate the
extent of the government's lack of tolerance for freedom of expression,
we must say it was a success, although for some it only highlighted a
self-evident truth. If the style of "slowly but surely" has
characterized the work of "the gradual revolutionary" in less complex
areas, such as self-employment or the leasing of land in usufruct, what
could be expected of civil liberties and politics a few days from the
beginning of the dismantling of this "besieged plaza," where all dissent
has been interpreted as treason.

Far from harming the normal development of eventual negotiations between
the participants in the old dispute, what happened in the final days of
2014 makes clear for both parties the limits within which conditions and
requirements can move. Above all, it sheds light on the absence from the
discussion table of alternative civil society, ordinary Cubans, the
people, or whatever you would like to call the most injured party in
this conflict on the path to extinction.

Source: A fair idea in the depths of the dungeon / 14ymedio, Reinaldo
Escobar | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/a-fair-idea-in-the-depths-of-the-dungeon-14ymedio-reinaldo-escobar/