In an interview special for Cuba Counterpoints, Cinema and theater director Juan Carlos Cremata-Malberti talks at length with Cuban American artist, writer, professor, and activist Coco Fusco about the governmental censorship of his 2015 staging of Eugene Ionesco’s Exit the King, in particular, and about artistic freedom, more generally. For the original Spanish/para español, click here.
2015 has been an historic year for US-Cuba relations, generating a great deal of speculation about prospects for political liberalization on the island. At the same time, 2015 has been a year in which cases of censorship against Cuban artists have received an unusual amount of press coverage in international media, prompting prominent members of the island’s cultural elite to speak publicly about policies and practices of the Cuban government with regard to artistic expression. The following interview focuses on the case of film and theater director Juan Carlos Cremata-Malberti.
In July 2015, Cremata-Malberti staged a production of Eugene Ionesco’s Exit the King, about a 400 year-old deranged ruler who does not want to relinquish power. The play opened to packed audiences just as Cuba and the US were reopening embassies in Washington and Havana. The National Council of Theater Arts and the Center for Theater in Havana shut the play down after two performances. After Cremata-Malberti responded to the censorship by publishing scathing critiques in Diario de Cuba, 14ymedio, MartiNoticias and several Spanish press outlets, Cuban authorities abruptly terminated his theater contract, effectively dissolving his company.
Juan Carlos Cremata-Malberti is one of the most critically acclaimed directors currently working in Cuba. His career in film, theater and television spans more than three decades. He began working in television in the 1980s, and graduated from the University of the Arts with a theater degree in 1986. He was in the first cohort of students to attend the international film school in San Antonio de los Baños and made an explosive debut at international film festivals with his experimental short Dark Caged Rhinoceros (1990), about a cleaning woman who discovers that her boss is making obscene phone calls. During the 1990s, he spent several years abroad as a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a student at the Sundance Institute, and a film professor in Argentina. He returned to Cuba at the end of the 1990s, committed to working from his homeland. In his 2001 feature film debut Nothing, Cremata-Malberti considers the ambivalent sentiments of a young woman who gets a visa to immigrate to the US. His 2005 film Viva Cuba, also about the impact of immigration on Cuban society, was the first Cuban feature starring child actors. The film won the best Children’s Film Award at Cannes International Film Festival, a first for Cuban cinema.
Although his films have won numerous national and international awards, his work has not been supported by ICAIC, the Cuban Film Institute. Nonetheless, Cremata-Malberti has continued to produce low-budget films independently, sometimes transforming plays by Cuban dramatist Héctor Quintero into films. In the 2000s, Cremata-Malberti also formed a theater company, El Ingenio, and has produced numerous plays that address social issues, often through allegorical means.
In the following interview, Cremata-Malberti discusses his motives for staging the Ionesco play, his relationship with state entities and Cuban audiences, and the possibilities for engaging in social criticism through theater in Cuba today. He also reflects on the challenges involved in trying to work independently as a filmmaker in Cuba and the ways that censorship distorts Cuba’s sense of cultural history.
— Coco Fusco
Coco Fusco is an artist and writer and the author of Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba (Tate Publications, 2015). Her most recent videos about Cuba are: La confesión (2015) and La botella al mar de María Elena.
interview with Juan Carlos Cremata (November 2015)
CF. How did you come up with the idea of staging a production of Ionesco’s piece Exit the King?
JCC: When in doubt, the first answer that always comes to mind is: Why not? I avidly seek out innovation and I am a spokesperson for all that is different. We artists are iconoclasts, sacrilegious, daring and irreverent. And when I learned of the existence of a piece with that title, I, of course, became interested right away. Finding it wasn’t easy. The play has never been published in Cuba, so I got it through a producer friend in Argentina. Later, I learned that productions of the play in many other countries had provoked similar reactions from authorities in those places. It is an explosive, fun and suggestive piece. Although many students knew about the work in Cuba, no one had dared stage it in our country, either because of censorship or self-censorship. The same thing has happened with Alfred Jarry’s Ubu the King. Our intention was not only to make little known texts available to our theater community, but also to use controversy to provoke, energize, enliven and stimulate Cuban theatre and reality itself.
Ionesco’s piece fits very well with the orientation of El Ingenio as a company. We had already experienced similar moments with other shows like The Stepdaughter by Rogelio Orizondo, works by Copi, The Misunderstanding by Camus, Cloaca by Maria Goos, Sleep by Jon Fosse, etc. The public’s reaction was always polarized: some were in favor, some against it, but the goal has always been to promote the evolution of thought, an exchange of ideas that would valorize openness to different ways of seeing and thinking. Unfortunately, this country is accustomed to the tendency to treat whatever does not conform to a single standard as dissident, strange, contrarian, suspicious – then deny its existence.
Making theater in Cuba requires a superhuman effort. Aside from facing the problems that come with artistic production in an underdeveloped, blockaded and extremely politicized country, you also have to fight with the country’s own institutions, which are supposed to support, guide and/or “control” the country’s cultural policies. Art does not abide by moderation, norms, recipes or permissible guidelines. Art is, by nature, free, insubordinate and unsubmissive. It is impossible to limit its path.
Many years ago, a harmful dictate was categorically and despotically issued, yet it continues to be as ambiguous today as it was when it was first issued: inside the Revolution, everything; against the Revolution, nothing. Who determines what is inside and what is against? Who assigns the condition of revolutionary or not? Behind this dilemma hides a ferocious, dangerous and backward idea that is very close to Fascist though — “who isn’t with me is against me.” As a result, proposals that approach the limits of what is permissible involve great risk in a country like Cuba. I realize this now, but that does not mean that I regret what I did in any way. I only recently learned that Ionesco, toward the end of his life, was also linked to voices that dissented from the positions of the cultural nomenklatura of his country. We have always argued that our job, above and despite all else, is to create, to open doors, not close them. However, this may mean the destruction of a concept, an archetype, or a mania. In this case, I discovered a very funny play that I could “crematize,” in other words, adapt to a reading of what is happening in my society. And I insist on using the term amusement, for this is another one of the indispensable principles of our work. The word “act” in English and French is similar to “play.” In Spanish, sadly, it has more to do with carrying out or performing. The play was a ludic experiment in which the spectator was confronted, through entertainment, with the limits on his or her freedom to think.
We were just having fun. That is why this shameful and lamentable process is indicative of a lack of a sense of humor on the part of our bureaucrats and opportunistic leaders. Exit the King not only speaks of the stagnation of power; it is also about an idea, a paradigm, a pattern. It is a satire and an assault on immobility, permanence, lethargy and starvation. And, since I believe that everything is in constant flux, the play seemed like the perfect piece to denounce paralysis, statism, regression and the obstinacy of an obsolete way of thinking that imposes itself by force and to which few people still ascribe. That they censored the show on its second night shows the fear they have of the new, the different, the contrarian, the opposite, of the terror that renewal causes them. Fear is natural, and it happens to all of us, but some people react by throwing themselves with valor into the vacuum while other reject confrontation, evade it or try to mask it.
CF. Originally, what was your aesthetic statement? What kind of social message did you seek to convey?
JCC. The essence of this Ionesco’s piece is the resistance to change. We are living, in Cuba, an uncertain period of profound movements, in a country accustomed to immobility and to unidirectionality in its ways of thinking, feeling and operating. I staged the play with all this in mind: How willing are you, as the public, to accept what is different? Will you break away from the established way of deliberating, acting or speaking? Will you listen out loud to what you think in secret? Where are the real limits of your personal freedom? We know that freedom isn’t about not having a master; it is about having the possibility to make one’s own decisions. And, in any case, I knew all too well that in our society, so sick and tired of politics, there would be a unilateral reading. Nonetheless, I took the risk and made a point of avoiding the obvious, critical comparison with–and open mockery of—either the “maximum leader,” Big Brother, or the Revolution’s historical leader (or however one might call Fidel Castro.
From the beginning, it was my intention to make spectators uncomfortable, to take them out of their comfort zone and complacent attitudes, by entertaining them, while making them think as well. The Palace Yeoman would announce the beginning of the show asking them to stand up. And, since no one would, he would ask for the first few notes of the National Anthem. This would cause everyone to stand up. And he (we) would make fun of this Pavlovian- like reaction with its dogs and their “conditioned reflexes.” But in our production that musical phrase would also end with a Tropicana style dance move.
From the first performance, the spectators were troubled. “Why does he use patriotic symbols?” asked the more conservative of them. Athletes, drenched in sweat, were allowed to wrap themselves in the national flag, since that exalts national pride. But questioning patriotic symbols on stage was considered an unforgivable transgression. There were other moments of irreverence during the performance: like the appearance of an ancient king, angry and sclerotic, despotic and half mad, who at times looked more like an African tribal chief than a character from Versailles; the moral duplicity, hypocrisy before power, the desacralization of Jose Martí quotes and the impudence and indiscipline of a government. The climax is perhaps the death of the leader himself.
At the beginning, a flower was given to each member of the audience to throw when the king died. Since it was a more or less low-budget production, we could not afford the luxury of buying flowers for each night, so we knew how many we could count on each weekend. So everyone there threw their flower, and they all threw it at the dead sovereign, including those who later censored the show. They had fallen for the trick.
What they think is one thing; what they can do or are allowed to, due to their enslaved consciousness, is quite another.
CF. How about the audience’s reaction to the piece?
JCC. For me, lightning has struck on stage before, but never like hat night. There was a kind of guilty complicity among all of us. People laughed and looked at the person next to them as if to ask, “Did you also find that funny?” Things happened that we could have never foreseen. At the last minute, and only to guarantee better visibility, we put a platform at the foot of the throne, and when the leader fell, there was a general surprise, because everyone saw in it Fidel’s famous fall. I swear that we did not plan it, just like we did not foresee that the show would be censored; otherwise, we would have filmed the opening night and released it through social networks. There was applause at the end, but few stayed to greet the company. They were surprised, fearful, shocked, exhausted. Some sent me encouraging messages, although they were afraid that we had overstepped certain limits. I don’t think it was my best production, but there was catharsis in the theater. Unfortunately, there were friends and close collaborators who did not see the show because I had asked them to come at a later date when everything would be more cohesive, more mature and much more settled. But they did not give it time or space to mature. They knocked the wind out of it once it got off the ground. I must admit that the censorship surprised me. Everything that came after did not.
CF. Do you think that within the theatre world in Cuba there is enough space and the possibility to stage pieces that offer a critical view of Cuban reality?
JCC. I think so. There are essential names that have created a space for themselves. There is the important work of Carlos Díaz, Nelda del Castillo, Carlos Celdrán and Mario Guerra, to name just a few examples. There are also shows of lesser artistic quality with much more of an explosive charge than what we proposed. Comedians are allowed to say many things but they are not taken seriously. Even though they have a stable following, they do little more than allow people to escape their hypocrisy by laughing in a theater or a club, so that they can then return to their normal way of life. Our group, El Ingenio, was about to celebrate its tenth anniversary, and our audience had been growing with each production. The arts establishment was getting worried because our discourse was becoming more serious and less subtle. We were escaping their control, becoming ungovernable. A popular phrase says that it all revolves around “playing with the chain, but not with the monkey.”
The interpretation of art is not entirely in the hands of the artist, but in the minds of those who can appreciate it. That is why, in censoring the piece, they only highlighted the twisted interpretation that only they could make of our work. Every time someone accuses us of meaning something in what we do, we can reply that that is their interpretation. Some still prefer to say “there is something rotten in the state of Denmark,” while others prefer more direct language. The Cuban stage has always used and abused political satire. Historians say that the birth of Cuban theater, with that famous phrase, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, was vernacular. Then came the famed Alhambra Theater and the Shanghai Theater, where there was talk of rulers and corruption in plain language, where you could even see nude scenes—they took on topics without so much makeup, hiding or affectation. Things were said without nuance and subtleties, but, of course, it remained within the confines of those houses. At least people had the chance to see on stage what they didn’t dare say in the street.
Cuban theater in the 1960s suffered something from which it has not been able to recover. The witch hunts exterminated not only all that was seen as innovative, “politically incorrect,” “ideologically suspect,” controversial, homosexual, hippy, strange, experimental, but even what might have been truly revolutionary. This sowed fear. And when one sows terror, the harvest of terror, fright and anguish is irreparable and remains for a long time. It takes years to eliminate it – martyrs and an infinity of thwarted projects. The normal evolution of thought is paralyzed and artistic projects are frozen. People hide and accept a Kafkaesque situation, absurd processes, and repressive and senseless measures.
We cannot lose sight of the fact that censorship has also evolved, and now employs different methods and styles. The case of our crude censorship, and my subsequent firing and prohibition from doing anything with theater in Cuba, is nothing new. Although faces and names have changed, the ways of doing and thinking of those who try to push art in only one direction continue to be exactly the same. Those bureaucrats who enforce the rules do not really believe in what they are defending. They are only trying to secure their jobs and avoid reprimands from “above,” or in the worst of cases, they try to gain favors or promotions by repressing before getting reprimanded. Give them an opportunity to escape, and they will immediately show their true nature. We have already seen this many times. It is theater come to life, in power and government. There is nothing more theatrical than politics itself. What’s encouraging is that, despite what they do, our country has an endless fountain of reason and talent. Those who govern culture are neither cultured, nor are they interested in the least in what’s legitimate and well founded. There is a popular phrase: “you can take the ‘guajiro’ (Cuban peasant) out of the countryside, but you can never take the countryside out of the guajiro.” Those who censored me could be doing the same thing at the Ministries of Construction or Energy. And let’s be clear, I have heard them say it themselves. They are “dependable Party cadres,” and not theater specialists. Most of all, they don’t show any level of professionalism. They don’t know what they are doing. That’s why they rule. They surround themselves with so-called “specialists” or consultants, on whom they can depend despite their ignorance of the medium. Ask them about specific technical details and you would put them in a rough spot. To manage artists is an impossible task, I reiterate, because art is not “manageable,” unless it is molded by the hands of its own creators.
CF. Are there other examples of work like yours?
There are too many, as suffering seems to be our people’s fate. I think about the exile and silencing of the work of Virgilio Piñera and Lezama Lima, of Severo Sarduy and Gastón Baquero, about Guillermo Cabrera Infante and Lidia Cabrera. The destruction of the historical Guiñol, of the brothers Camejo, about José Triana’s work or the case against Anton Arrufat and his work Seven Against Thebes. The music of Celia Cruz and Olga Guillot (who still cannot be spoken of in Cuba even though they have become popular Cuban icons around the world), the estrangement of Lecuona, and many others whose works couldn’t even be seen, read or heard. The case of the film PM, which brought on the controversial “Words to the Intellectuals,” the disdain that is expressed toward almost every artistic work produced before 1959. The vicissitudes of Humberto Solas with his movie Un día de noviembre. The disavowal of the work of Roberto Fandiño. In other fields there are also examples that cause true shame: like the attempts by Rosario Suarez (Charín) and Caridad Martinez to create new spaces for Cuban ballet, the truncated work of the troubadour Mayke Pourcel, the expectation that we should ignore Albita Rodriguez, Donator Poveda or Gema Corredera, and that we deny the existence of a Willy Chirino, to whom all the rulers and their children listen at their private parties. Cuban filmmakers Sergio Giral, Orlando Rojas, Rolando Diaz, and Leon Ichaso are not mentioned much currently because they live, and supposedly fraternize, with “the enemy,” which is now a friend. People in Cuba have to pay for “packets” to enjoy the graces of Alexis Valdés, just as they have with Alvarez Guedes’s jokes since I have been alive. We should also include Herberto Padilla’s body of poetic work or the monumental and essential writing of Reynaldo Arenas.
JCC. The silence around the entire body of work by Eliseo Alberto Diego (Lichy), the scarce distribution of Abilio Estévez’s novels. There are more recent examples: the attempts to suffocate Ulises Aquino’s Opera de la Calle (Street Opera), the censoring of the film Return to Ithaca by Laurent Cantet, the ignorance of the important award to Yordanka Ariosa because the movie The King of Havana was not allowed to be filmed in the country. The entire body of work by Zoe Valdes, some of the works of Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, the constant questioning of Leonardo Padura’s opinions and his sad and scarce presence in the official Cuban press, despite being the most read writer inside and outside the island today. All the years that we were prevented from listening to Pedro Luis Ferrer or Carlos Varela on the radio or seeing them on television. The scarce presence in the official media of Pablo Milanes because of the opinions he aired on Stalinism in Cuba. The most notorious example lately was that of Tania Bruguera, an intelligent and talented visual artist, whose life was made impossible for something completely irrational. Even more recent cases are evidenced by the “low profile” that some artists are keeping, artists whose names I would not want to mention so as to not affect their survival even more. Important people will be remembered no matter what, while their censors will be lost in the depths of anonymity and oblivion. Today it is more difficult to silence everyone, even if they try to control the use of internet. There are many more ways to make one’s opinions public. Word of mouth continues to work well here, unlike elsewhere. And now cell phones help – information does not run, it flies.
CF. How do you explain or understand the establishment’s reaction to your artistic work?
JCC. They have neither explanations nor understanding, no matter what way you look at it. Sometimes I believe that this is a settling of scores, a personal act of revenge. Maybe they are trying to make an example of me, although the effect they are achieving is quite the opposite of what they wanted. Look, I am a very open homosexual in Cuba. I have lived years outside of the island, I try to be well informed, to foster my culture daily and I am soaked in the existence of a different world. I am one of those we call citizens of the universe, or a “neon sign,” as a psychologist friend pointed out to me recently, one who doesn’t mince words. I do not do speak out of malice. I do so because it is part of my nature. I take pleasure in the exercise of irony, mockery, the unadvisable, within the limits of respect for the rights of others and coexistence. I refuse to lie; I don’t know how. That is likely not a virtue, but it is who I am. I understand that this provokes applause and solidarity, but also rejection and censorship from those who possess and abuse power.
The step the establishment has taken in my case is so disastrous that it has created a wave of terror in many artists who see the resurrection of old times. It is very sad to confirm that censorship happens in these times, for it goes against the official discourse of alleged opening and supposed freedom. It is as if an immense blanket covers us when things like these happen. They try to make me believe that my problems are strictly personal. Neither the president of Live Arts, nor the Minister of Culture can stand me. They could swallow me before, but they have never been able to digest me. They have never shown signs of sincere respect. We don’t have to respect or be nice to those who don’t respect us, those who see us as something funny, capricious or bothersome at times. With them, the ones that “lead” (very badly, by the way) in culture, communication was closed. I am sick and tired of their lies and hypocritical speeches. It sounds like a meaningless litany. I prefer classical music to the fatuous and politicized reggaeton.
None of them has the potential capacity, nor the true disposition, for dialogue, because they are used to monologues; they decide on their own, even if many disagree with what they do. They do not take into account at all the opinion of other artists, the National Prize winners, or anyone who might be more sensitive. Today, there are very few sensitive ears to appeal to. And very few voices that can make themselves be heard. Opportunism reigns everywhere, and we can count on one hand the people who lead this country with sensitivity, humility, without arrogance, with intelligence, sanity and mostly with culture. How do you explain that an artist may be condemned to not being able to do what he has shown himself capable of doing and is his raison d’etre? How can one explain the arrogance of people who without proper education dictate the destiny of sentient beings, sensitive souls and in the end, the life and arts of our entire population? Who can be happy with the idea of a silent artist condemned to renounce his profession? Who can deny virtue, talent, faculties and vocation? An entrenched Communist, a human being tied to the old times, a henchman of ignominy, an insensitive soul, a ferocious regressive, a fascist on the inside, in short, a thoughtless human being. A short time ago, a young playwright from the provinces told me how he raised his voice to protest what happened to me and the response from those presiding over the assembly was that “in my case, a dialogue had begun.” The irony of this is that the person who stated it was a Vice-Minister of culture, who avoids looking me in the eye every time we cross paths. And we have known each other for a long time. And supposedly he was always happy to see me before. Nevertheless, even more recently, I ran into someone in an even higher position who had the decency to greet me, and to express his joy when he saw me. But there is a type of middlebrow functionary who makes it impossible for communication to flow between those who command and those who suffer.
They are professionally unprepared, trained only to fix problems, take measures, keep watch and repress, even though their discourse may indicate otherwise. For a lot less than what I did, they would have sentenced me to three life sentences in the hushed UMAP (Military Units of Aid to Production), which were a sort of concentration camps created at the beginning of the Revolution and of which they avoid talking about even today. That is why the official press does not repeat anything about what happened to me, although many journalist friends know about it. Information is power, and it is kept under control here. It is as if absolutely nothing happened, as if we lived in a dream country, in Disney’s magic kingdom with the rides damaged, the streets all torn up and the people impoverished, where only the foreign is horrible and everything national is blooming, triumphant and good. This all confirms that prosperous socialism is only possible in the speeches, in the loyal press or the news broadcasts. It is made of corrugated cardboard, pure invention.
CF. You have produced films outside of the ICAIC (Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art) for many years. How has it been possible to produce so much without the support of the institution that represents all Cuban cinema?
JCC. Let’s take it one step at a time, from the beginning. I have a bachelor’s degree in Theater Arts and Sciences and Playwriting from the University of the Arts, and was in the first cohort of the International Cinema and Television School of San Antonio de los Baños (EICTV). In 1996, I had John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, which offered me many opportunities, including the possibility of staying in the United States, and developing a career and a life there. However, I decided to return to the island because it is where I want to make art—in Cuba, for Cuba, and from Cuba. There was no judgment about exile in this. My peoples proximity is what fuels me. I must confess that I never learned so much about my country as I did during the time I lived outside of it. I was able to learn about many of the things and events that are still hidden in this land. And I was able to see it from outside, from a distance. But upon return to the land of birth, I felt the suspicion, mistrust, resentment and doubts of others. After almost seven years abroad, I was viewed with caution and apprehension. Still, I kept at it. I am persistent, a workaholic.
At that time, independent productions were starting to develop. Zafiros, locura azul, the film by Manuel Herrera, was becoming a reality. I tried to create a film that was more than independent. I like the term “alternative” to the industry models. In those years in Cuba, one could only produce through ICAIC. The film institute possessed the means of production, but technology began to become increasingly accessible outside of official channels and it reached the hands of many people. My first attempt was thwarted by official institutions. I had to wait two long years not only to build trust, but also for luck to favor me through the interest of a French producer, to whom I will always be grateful, because he was willing to finance this project. That is how I made my first feature film, Nada, which became a popular success inside and outside the country. After more than 20 years, there was once again a Cuban at the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs at the Cannes Film Festival. But the establishment at the time, still bothered by my thesis film from the International School of Cinema and Television –Oscuros Rinocerontes Enjaulados– Muy a la Moda, which is now archived at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, not completely pleased with my first feature film. It was shown during the Film Festival in Havana, it won some awards, but they waited years before broadcasting it on national television. Even now it has not been digitally edited and distributed. Nada was the first story in a trilogy that I longed (and still yearn) to build, but they closed the doors on me immediately. Too daring, too different. None of my other scripts were accepted.
That is why I thought of setting up an alternative project that even the most reticent authorities could not reject. That’s how Viva Cuba, the first Cuban movie with children, came to be. Nobody in authority could oppose a movie with that title. Why not Cuba Libre? –they said. “Because Cuba Libre is a drink and in that case it could also be called Viva Mojito or Viva Daiquiri” I replied ironically and jokingly. It was a road movie produced by QUAD, one of the most important publicity companies in France covertly financed by American capital and sponsored by the Casa Productora de la Televisión Cubana. After winning the Grand Prix Ecrans Junior at Cannes in 2006, and numerous awards after that (over forty), the movie became a national and international success. Cuba’s establishment had to recognize it, and appropriated its success to promote patriotism, even though in actuality it had tried to stop the production. This, and the fact that I fell gravely ill and surprisingly recovered during one of my international tours, made me return to ICAIC to produce my next installment: El premio flaco.
I had discovered an opening, and with the help of the school that I had graduated from and in which I was professor at the time –EICTV– I was able to produce an independent film with only 100 dollars. That’s how Chamaco appeared, which once again bothered the authorities because I talked about male prostitution and police corruption in our country. That was something hushed, taboo, covert. Up until now it has not been shown on TV, and, of course, the film has not been shown outside the country because it does not present exemplary behavior. Even inside the country, it is difficult to find it or see it.
Since making that film I have been moving between what the industry allowed me to do and what I could produce abroad. They allowed, in a moment of structural changes, and we really don’t know how, the production of a short called Crematorio, en fin…el mal. With the same resources we produced a second, and even a third that has yet to air. ICAIC opposed screening it, in spite of the fact that a pirate copy somehow leaked onto the streets and today it is a staple for audiovisual diners who take pleasure in the forbidden, the censored, the vetoed and hidden. With ICAIC’s old management, and because of the death of my friend, the great playwright, Hector Quintero, I was able to make my last and most recent work Contigo pan y cebolla. But then, suddenly, this all happened.
Since we made Viva Cuba, we had established a quasi-production company in El Ingenio that also became a group in which we began to produce our first theater shows. First under the sponsorship of Teatro El Público and thanks to Carlos Diaz, and then in a more autonomous manner. I can confirm with pleasure that I have done much more for Cuban theater than any of those bureaucrats who now negates me and censors me. I used to divide my time and scarce resources between my work in each medium. Now that they have cut me off from theater, I still have cinema. But I cannot lose sight of the fact that ICAIC is part of the Ministry of Culture and that tomorrow my association with the institution could be terminated by a “higher” decree, even if there are many people within it that love me, guard me and respect me. These are times of new economic scarcities, and with that as an excuse I don’t believe that they will ever produce a project of mine. I am left to judge to what point and how much cinema we can do in an independent or alternative way. But that will only be possible with financing or help from abroad, no matter how minimal. I have a body of work that many people love, admire and respect. Many actors and crew would work willingly with me even if the compensation is not enough. Let’s hope the current times and the rapprochement of Cuba and the United States open doors for independent productions on the island. We’ll see what happens with the control over those projects and how censorship may evolve.
CF. What are the benefits and challenges you face by filming independently?
JCC. There are many benefits: most of all a greater freedom of movement, not having to answer to anyone within the establishment about what we are doing. There are also many obstacles: the world is against us, objectively and directly. Having to negotiate the filming permits, the risk of having a policeman come and stop what you are doing, control over whatever we try to do, not to mention the precariousness of the production, the vicissitudes of throwing yourself into creating anything artistic without any support whatsoever in a country in which it is already difficult to survive. I resist speaking about concrete projects, precisely because now all eyes will be fixed on what we may attempt to do.
CF. You have been making cinema in Cuba for more than thirty years, and have always created very pointed works. Why is it that now the state has decided that your vision presents a threat so great that they must cancel your contract as theater director?
JCC. You should ask the state that silenced me on stage. It is something unheard of; it goes against what they preach loudly in their speeches about embracing a critical view of reality. We did not know that a theater director could be such a threat to the state. They seem to confirm it. I never knew of a play, a movie or a work of art overthrowing a government. And it was never our interest to demolish institutions. We didn’t believe that we could do it, unless but this administration seems to think that it is so weak, that I can finish it off.
CF. You have faced more than one attempt at limiting your artistic work in Cuba over the course of your career. Why have you decided to raise your voice now to question the right of the state to censor its artists?
JCC. All censorship should be denounced, but it is even more unacceptable in the field of art. Why now? Because I don’t have a hand to bite anymore. Because if they deny me the possibility of doing the only thing that I know how to do, the only thing I have left is to shout and let everyone know the terrible injustice they are committing. Because if I do not do it, it may become the standard for other cases in the future as it was already, sadly, in the past. Because I continue to believe in progress and I think that cases like this one should not happen again in history, anywhere. Because I learned, precisely through the Revolution, to denounce any injustice committed anywhere. Because I believe that being revolutionary means evolving and not sticking your head in the sand in the face of the unjust, the crude, the undignified, the arbitrary, the senseless and the wrongdoings.
CF. The artist’s condition in Cuba is very complex. On the one hand, the promotional infrastructure, the labor conditions and the economic context allow many artists to live off their art and to move within the international circuit. On the other hand, the state’s centralization of power, the politicization of culture as a place of ideological danger, and the lack of alternative areas of creativity in the island create limitations and aid censorship. How do you see yourself vis-a-vis this condition?
JCC. My situation is like that of all other artists. Now that circumstances have been aggravated and they forbid me to do anything in Cuba, I have to find alternatives or support to continue. The courtiers in positions of power will not be there for long. I have already seen more than a dozen other names pass through those positions. Some with more decency, and others with great recklessness. I hope that tomorrow gives us more capable, less deaf, more human and understanding leaders than those we have currently. Perhaps then I could return to theater, which is what many people already want. Everything passes. Art is the only permanent thing.
CF. Could one say that the situation has improved or worsened in the last few years?
JCC. Sadly, recent events show the opposite of improvement. Even after being censored, I believed in the possibility of an agreement, an understanding and in continuing forward. What is happening is very sad to many, but is a sign of the true nature of a system that refuses the participation of all and disregards the general welfare of the population. I reiterate once more: changes will happen whether they want them or not. What happened to me is the fit of a dying person, the last throes of a dying patient who refuses antibiotics. They will perish as tedious chapters in the saddest parts of human history. With these actions, the Cuban Revolution disgraces itself, accumulates stale ideas and ensures its own discredit. It is no longer that initial project of justice and equality in which many believed. If they don’t change course, the future will hold them accountable.
This is devastating for those of us who were born believing in the Revolution and for those of us who continue to believe in unquestionable human principles. It is as if as a religious person you found out that God does not exist. Or worse, that he hides behind a corrupt pedophile, a mobster without the trace of soul in his being. No one believes the speeches anymore. “To be, or not to be,” states a Shakespearian adage. They have banished us to NOT being. And in NOT BEING we will continue to be. And from there we will defend the rights of all of those who are not heard. We, the others, also have the right to exist. El Ingenio will then help us find a way to survive. Or we will be another Icarus fallen from on high. And once more we will fly.
(Translation from the original Spanish by Ernesto Ariel Suárez)