Leonardo Padura blames the regime for the stampede of Cuban artists and intellectuals

CubitaNOW Editorial ~ Tuesday, December 19, 2023

From Spain, Cuban writer Leonardo Padura Fuentes described censorship in Cuba as an “ingrained practice” that has not changed since the beginning of the regime.

“Censorship remains a sustainable practice, even in legal decrees whose formulation and approval were not necessary, because they were already implemented in the field of culture production and circulation,” Badura warned in an interview.

During a conference at the Casa de América in Madrid, where he was honored during Author’s Week, the novelist noted that “socialist Cuba in the 1970s openly and mercilessly practiced censorship and cancellation of artists, intellectuals and teachers (…) and said: “With the revolution everything is, against the revolution no something”. [Fidel Castro]Under this slogan, a battalion of enthusiastic oppressors harvested their crops.

For today’s distinguished writer, “the methods have changed, but the essence of that policy remains… its practice is ingrained in the system.”

Padura added in his intervention that “the long list of Cuban intellectuals, artists and writers who today live in exile is part of the effects of these restrictive policies,” but also “the no less dense list of censored or limited artists who still live.” in the country”.

On the other hand, for the writer, there is a great danger not only in dictatorships or totalitarian societies, but also in the democratic world due to cancel culture.

“All the freedoms promoted by certain societies are at stake today. The process is not new, just a review of history. The fear of abolition has spread and become entrenched as a painful state of mind and creativity (…) The practice of these positions can come from the far right and the far left, as it came from Fascism and Communism.” Padura Fuentes.

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