Matanzas/The city of Matanzas celebrates from this Wednesday until next Saturday the Poetics Bridges poetry festival, a newly created event whose “international” caliber has been defended tooth and nail by the official press, although its “cantata for peace” has only been Three foreigners attended. The media coverage, which on other occasions would have let the occasion pass without pain or glory, is due to the presence of cultural commissioners, presented as “important poets.”
About 45 minutes after the scheduled time, due to “situations” that were not clarified, the cantata for peace began this Wednesday on the portals of the Sauto Theater, with the presence of Alpidio Alonso, Minister of Culture, and the national Literature awards Miguel Barnet and Nancy Morejón, to whom the festival is dedicated. One block from the building, a local police patrol cared for the “tranquility” of the event.
With this event, the regime once again praised Morejón a year after the denunciation of numerous intellectuals, led by the Cuban Jacobo Machover, motivated the withdrawal of the writer’s honorary presidency from the Paris Poetry Market. However, the themes addressed by the “more than one hundred poets” who, according to Rebel Youthparticipated yesterday in the reading, leave the poet aside and place the political cause of Palestine at the center of the event.
/ 14ymedio
The gathering, converted into a protest “against the Zionist genocide”, also had the presence of a Palestinian writer, Najwan Darwish, for whom Ediciones Matanzas published a title and who was described by the official newspaper as “one of the most read and translated in the world”. His presence at the festival, the press added, “is a luxury.” The Argentine author Daniel Calabrese and the American Katherine M. Hedeen will also participate, coming from countries with which Cuba has tense relations.
The opinion of the people of Matanzas, who had not seen such a wide cultural display in the city for a long time, has not been long in coming either. “This is an event designed to pay some money to national writers who support the Government. When you see names like Miguel Barnet, Nancy Morejón, Rito Ramón Aroche and Caridad Atencio, you immediately think that behind everything is the hand of the ruling party, promoting the same old discourse,” says Yanelis, a young writer, in conversation with 14ymedio.
Yanelis was one of those invited to read a text she authored in the Cantata, but decided not to participate when she noticed the true purpose of the event. “One realizes that they use us to achieve their goals when even the order of readings prioritizes foreigners. “The important poets come, collect their checks and leave, and the rest of us serve as their audience,” she laments.
/ 14ymedio
The official vision, however, moves away from these problems and perceptions. “This festival shows that poetry is alive and it is shocking to bring together so many good poets from different generations, defending life and justice,” were the words of the Minister of Culture – a poet elevated to the rank of official for his loyalty to the regime. who did not leave without reading one of his pieces and talking about Che Guevara and his ideal of the “new man.”
“It’s incredible how they take any pretext and turn it into a banner to take advantage of it. However, none of the poets who are here talk about all the injustices that are committed in Cuba,” highlights Leticia, a municipal museum worker, who has been forced by her boss to attend the event. “Before mark me and that they take my day off, I prefer to be here for a while,” says the museologist who, she says, did not take even an hour to leave the gathering.
For Leticia, these types of acts are only a facade to cover political interests while their cultural value is far from being of interest to citizens. The greatest proof of this, she argues, is that in each festival, project or initiative, the audience seats are occupied by the same people. “If we cultural workers did not act as an audience, the seats would be empty,” she emphasizes.
The festival still has conferences, meetings with young people from the Hermanos Saíz Association and scheduled visits to the city’s state institutions that have not yet faced any collapse and are still standing. The last tour on Saturday will be through the “centennial bridges” of Matanzas. Of course, no one will go to the rusty and dilapidated ones. The “poetic bridges” that the press promises are not for the people of Matanzas.
