Santa y Andrés and 'revolutionary intransigence'

Santa y Andrés and 'revolutionary intransigence'
PEDRO CAMPOS | La Habana | 12 de Diciembre de 2016 - 16:11 CET.

The bureaucratic decision to disallow the screening of the film Santa y
Andrés by Cuban filmmaker Carlos Lechuga at the 38th edition of the New
Latin American Cinema Festival in Havana illustrates the continued
predominance of absurd and narrow-minded "revolutionary intransigence,"
and that Cuban culture's new parameters are not so new after all.

People will see the movie, sooner or later, with all its compelling
human content – not "counter-revolutionary," as the inquisitors of the
official reaction wish to portray it, who strive to suppress those who
defy the country's bureaucracy, dissenters who embody the human energy
harbored by every Cuban and that "the revolution" has sought to crush,
to keep the people divided and sustain the hegemony of a ruling class
that has claimed a right to decide what others ought to think and do.
And that is the real cause of the ban.

Lechuga's film, which upholds freedom, simply shows how two people with
feelings and values apparently making them very different, even
opposite, end up recognizing and understanding each other, thereby
flouting official policy's predesignated parameters, rules handed down
by ideological guardians seeking to erect insurmountable barriers
between "revolutionaries" and "the others."

With a "clear sense of the historical moment" (the ultimate champion of
revolutionary intransigence just passed away), the custodians of
reactionary anti-culture, ensconced in their "revolutionary"
superstructure, argued that the film would not be presented in order to
"defend a people and a great cause."

While the film defends freedom, friendship, love and human relations
above policies and ideology, these new inquisitors must believe that the
people and that great cause – which is not defined– are actually opposed
to these universal human values. Hence, it is clear that their
conception of the people and of that cause is nothing like that embraced
by revolutionaries, democrats and socialists throughout history, but
rather corresponds to Manichean, extremist, antidemocratic and
Machiavellian ideas that underestimate and demonize all those human
values as "subversive" and non-functional under the totalitarian system.

This is nothing new. It has been part of the sectarian approach present
throughout "revolutionary" discourse on human and interpersonal
relations, to keep the Cuban people fragmented:
revolutionary/counter-revolutionary, natives/foreigners,
believers/atheists, homosexuals/heterosexuals, Havanans/easterners, the
educated/the uneducated, whites/blacks, old/young, and so on, always
seeking to keep the people squared off rather than united by human values.

This is the way of carrying out a stratagem as ancient as the Roman
Empire: divide and conquer.

It is also a sign of the regime's unwillingness to engage in the kind of
dialogue that Cuba so direly needs.

Cuba can hardly emerge from its current quagmire if these inquisitors,
enemies of dialogue, of human convergence, of reconciliation among
Cubans, pursuers of revolutionaries, opponents, or simply thinkers,
still wield this kind of power – which is, incidentally, arbitrarily
granted.

I trust that sooner rather than later Cuba will open up to
democratization, and the values of humanism and freedom espoused by
Santa and Andrés will prevail among Cubans.

Source: Santa y Andrés and 'revolutionary intransigence' | Diario de
Cuba - http://www.diariodecuba.com/cultura/1481555497_27354.html