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To applaud and legitimize power, or to remain silent to survive and achieve professional fulfillment has been the tragedy of the Cuban intellectual since 1959, argues Dr. Ivette García González in an article published this Friday on the website of the Civic Thinking Lab Cuba x Cuba.
The Cuban professor and writer also analyzes the relationship between the dictatorship on the Island and its intellectuals 55 years after the repression cases involving the poet Heberto Padilla and the members of the Philosophy Department at UH, which, in the latter case, led to the dissolution of the journal Pensamiento Crítico.
The author identifies four types of intellectuals: those in the "ivory tower," those who engage in destructive causes, those who act as "political commissars" and "ideological administrators" of the regime, and those loyal to the commitment to reason, truth, and justice.
The essay outlines the origin of repression at two foundational milestones: Fidel Castro's speech "Words to Intellectuals" in 1961, and Ernesto Guevara's statement in 1965: "the guilt of many of our intellectuals and artists lies in their original sin; they are not truly revolutionary."
A particularly tense period can be delineated between 1968 and 1971, with the case of Padilla, from the award for his book Fuera de Juego (1968) until he was detained, confined in Villa Marista, and forced to make a humiliating public self-incrimination at UNEAC (1971). The closure of the Philosophy Department at the University of Havana, the hunt against the professors and social scientists who were part of it, and the shutdown of Pensamiento Crítico also distinctly mark this moment. These events "revealed the serious conflicts between power and thought, teaching and literature, the author reflects."
The speeches by Fidel Castro on July 26 and by Raúl Castro on September 27, 1970, determined the fate of those young Marxist professors, labeling them as "a mixture of ideological poverty and intellectual arrogance far removed from the ideals of the Revolution." Raúl added: "one thing is to investigate and another is to use knowledge to undermine the foundations of our ideology," the article states.
A new documentary element supports the text: confidential memorandums from the Cuban Institute of the Book, recently leaked, confirm that between May and August 1971 a secret censorship plan was executed with precise instructions: "it will not be published, it will not be distributed, it will be frozen, it will be removed from catalogs, it will be taken out of reading and exchange rooms."
The list of Cuban writers under "monitoring" included Heberto Padilla, Antón Arrufat, César López, Belkis Cuza, Reinaldo Arenas, Luis Rogelio Nogueras, Víctor Casaus, and Pablo Armando Fernández, among others, described in the documents as having a "known ideological stance but whose works we do not consider tactically prudent to withdraw, at least for the moment."
The professor García González elaborates that when intellectuals of the stature of Octavio Paz, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Mario Vargas Llosa signed two letters of protest regarding the Padilla case, Castro responded at the National Congress of Education and Culture on April 30, 1971: "You already know, bourgeois intellectuals and bourgeois pamphleteers and CIA agents... in Cuba... the entrance is closed indefinitely!". On May 20, another public letter arrived with 61 signatures.
The consequences extended for decades: generations of Cubans were deprived of their own cultural heritage, censorship became institutionalized, and self-censorship turned into a mechanism for survival. The Independent Library Network, created in 1998 and fiercely repressed, still had 162 locations across fourteen provinces in 2012.
García González also points out the complicity of part of the global leftist intellectual community, which has continued to "romanticize Cuba," from Noam Chomsky to Ignacio Ramonet, in what he describes as the "opium of intellectuals" that Raymond Aron wrote about.
The Cuban dictatorship tolerates inhabitants, not citizens; it is incapable of dealing with democracy, with the possibility of thoughtful beings that challenge it, concludes the author. "As a result, it has plunged the country into material misery, obstructed the knowledge and spirituality of the people. It is time to revise our consciences."
The repression of critical thinking in Cuban universities has led to the expulsion of professors, the closure of spaces for free debate, and an atmosphere of constant surveillance. Recent cases, such as the removal of Professor Abel Tablada from CUJAE, illustrate how public questioning of political or economic management can result in job penalties that affect the careers and personal lives of those involved.
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