A new law — reviled by many Cuban artists as another layer of censorship and control over artistic expression but promoted by the government as a defense against vulgarity, poor taste, mediocrity and low-brow cultural influences — went into effect Friday.
The new measure comes as artists and performers on the island continue to protest, and perhaps in response to those critiques, government officials said Friday that Decree Law 349 will now be rolled out gradually.
Ever since Decree Law 349 was first published in July in the government’s Gaceta Oficial , there has been plenty of pushback on the island and abroad and a flurry of meetings between government cultural officials and artists, who are still hoping for modifications. The law requires prior government approval for artists, musicians, writers and performers who want to present their work in any spaces open to the public, including private homes and businesses.
But beyond that, it also proposes fining painters and other artists who commercialize their art without government permission. Among the more chilling provisions is the prospect that “supervising inspectors” could review cultural events and shut them down if they don’t believe they meet government standards. Individuals or businesses hiring artists who don’t have prior approval also can be sanctioned.
“No one can say you are an artist or you are not an artist,” fumed Luis Puerta Batista, a Havana artist who sells stylized paintings of jazz figures, mostly to foreigners and on the internet, and teaches art. “Artists are going to keep creating. They are not going to be able to bar creating, but they will restrict selling.”
And with a family to support, that has him worried.
Fellow artist Roberto Loeje, who has a studio on the same street as Puerta, calls the decree law “anti-artistic and crazy.”
Cuban artist Roberto Loeje visits the studio of a fellow artist in Old Havana. Loeje says Cuba’s new Decree Law 349 is “anti-artistic.”
MATIAS J. OCNER mocner@miamiherald.com
He especially disagrees with the provision that bars art sales without prior government approval: “If a piece is mine, what is the problem with my selling it? Why is it different from having a piece of furniture in your house and someone comes in and says, ‘I’d like to buy that.’ ”
Dissident artists have staged protests and social media campaigns, and dozens of dialogues and meetings between unhappy creators from both inside and outside the government [dissidents excluded] and state cultural officials have been going on for weeks.
During an hourlong “Mesa Redonda” program Friday night, officials from the Ministry of Culture, the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) and the Hermanos Saíz Association, an organization that brings together young Cuban artists and intellectuals, emphasized that critics of Decree Law 349 don’t understand it.
Minister of Culture Alpidio Alonso Grau defended the breadth of artistic expression in Cuba, which he said is “scarcely found where the market is the censor.”
Alonso said the decree law would be applied gradually to both state and private sectors.
“There wasn’t an advance explanation of the law and that’s one of the reasons for the controversy that it unleashed,” Vice Minister of Culture Fernando Rojas told The Associated Press earlier in the week. When more detailed regulations are announced soon, he said, it will make it clear that “artistic creation is not the target.”
Until those regulations come out, Rojas told AP, inspectors won’t begin enforcement actions.
The law will be applied when artistic work has pornographic or racist content, promotes violence or has content damaging to human dignity, Rojas said on “Mesa Redonda..”
“The danger is who is going to be the inspector,” Puerta said. “The problem is that then art can be politicized. Different people have different concepts of what art is. I can create a piece of art and then someone else can judge it not by my but by their own criteria.”
Cuban artist Luis Puerta Batista reads through a copy of Decree Law 349 at his studio in Old Havana.
MATIAS J. OCNER mocner@miamiherald.com
In recent years, dissident and other independent artists who have not been able to display their work in state galleries or perform in other state venues, for example, have staged shows, concerts and performances in their homes. As self-employment has grown in recent years, there is also art available all over Cuba that is being produced by artists who aren’t affiliated with government cultural institutions.
Performance artist Tania Bruguera, activist artist Luis Maneul Otero Alcantara and several other dissident artists were detained Monday when they tried to stage a protest against the decree law.
It was at least the fifth detention related to anti-349 protest activity for Otero. Before his most recent detention, he said he planned to go on a hunger strike if Decree Law 349 went into effect. The law, he said, is a response to “the state seeing it is losing control of artists.”
Cuban dissident artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara wears a T-shirt opposing Decree Law 349 on artistic expression. Otero has been arrested several times for protesting against the law.
MATIAS J. OCNER mocner@miamiherald.com
Amnesty International has been expressing concern about the arrests of the independent artists protesting 349 since last summer.
“We stand in solidarity with all independent artists in Cuba that are challenging the legitimacy of the decree and standing up for a space in which they can work freely without fear of reprisals,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director for the human rights organization.
Such detentions, Guevara-Rosas said, “are an ominous sign of things to come. The lack of precision in the wording of the decree opens the door for its arbitrary application to further crack down on dissident and critical voices in a country where artists have been harassed and detained for decades.”
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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