News of his death arrived like a bolt of lightning that strikes without warning, reported the Ministry of Culture, while echoing the words of praise spread by the painter and critic Manuel López Oliva.

Death does not respect root makers either, it has just taken away one of the Cuban artists who knew how to fulfill -with poetry and generational roots- the human and expressive mission that life assigned him, affirmed López Oliva.

Likewise, the creator highlighted Moreira’s fidelity “to the Nation, his nobility of spirit, his values ​​as a draftsman and painter, the paternal and family substance exercised, and the weight of a diverse imaginary.”

In this sense, his prolific work stands out, which “went from his somewhat naturalistic notes of the visions elaborated on the Isle of Youth, to a poetic one that combined his work on billboards with a very professional one,” López Oliva highlighted.

Highlights of his career include his work as an illustrator of editions of the text Don Quixote de la Mancha, his participation in the murals of the Hotel Habana Libre and the building where the Prensa Latina agency was founded, the portraits of heroes and friends, as well as his erotic art. .

Professor of drawing at the San Alejandro Professional School of Plastic Arts, Moreira registered twenty personal exhibitions and dozens of collective exhibitions in his career, while his pieces remain in prestigious collections in Cuba and the world.

He conceived ornamental and symbolic compositions for fountains and urban spaces, “and also made his house – along with his wife, also a painter Alicia Leal – a friendly space for communication,” said López Oliva.

Deserving of the Distinction for National Culture, it is time to say goodbye, but not before thanking his legacy, the one that extolled Cuban culture from the visual arts and was imprinted on his disciples.

(With information from Prensa Latina)

Fifteen shows by eight Cuban companies and seven from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Martinique, Mexico, and Puerto Rico, were presented in theaters in the capital, Santiago de Cuba, Guantánamo, Holguín, Camagüey, Ciego de Ávila, Cienfuegos, Villa Clara, and Matanzas.

Both the visiting groups and the local ones performed their most recent stagings, and spectators could appreciate the plurality of discourses and themes being presented currently around the region.

In the words of Vivian Martínez Tabares, Mayo Teatral artistic director, a good portion of the pieces arriving this time “address controversial and pressing issues, of decisive relevance. This is theater for an uncomfortable time, always revealing.”

The outstanding critic explained how the Casa managed to attract “once again, a group of companies with varied artistic proposals, rigorous in their formal elaboration, and connected organically to social problems of their respective contexts, with proven experience in confronting spectators, and which thanks to their artistic rigor, are references in terms of high quality aesthetics and the diversity that results from the numerous expressive tendencies that characterize the region’s scene.”

Referring to the selection of Cuban participants, she insisted that the same principles and high expectations apply, stating, “We attempt to cover a broad spectrum of performance expressions, styles, and genres, and that groupings of proven experience and new groups coexist – tradition and experimentation.”

COMPANIES AND PERFORMANCES

Appreciated was the presence, after a ten-year absence, of actor and clown Hernán Gené (son of the eminent Argentine director Juan Carlos Gené), who brought to Cuba his Mutis, a one-man show based on the texts of William Shakespeare, which became one of the festival’s major attractions.

Two other one-actor performances were also noteworthy: from Martinique, Histeria, by artist Annabel Guèrèdrat, and from the Bolivian company LATEscena, Animales domésticos, by actor Piti Campos Villanueva.

Mateluna, from the Chilean company of the same name, staged and directed by Guillermo Calderón, is a testimonial, self-referenced work on the life of the group, showing the process of creation of a performance. The play is focused on the social situation and the judicial process surrounding the release of a former guerilla Jorge Mateluna, victim of false evidence – which the company refutes and condemns.

With an attention-grabbing title and content, El Divino Narciso, directed by Raquel Araujo, was presented by the Mexican group Teatro de La Rendija. According to program notes, “We started with Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz to arrive at our own take, provoked by the reading of El Divino Narciso, reviewing her verses over and over again, on the basis of our concerns as women living in a Mexico in constant transformation.”

The Brazilian company Ói Nói Aquí Traveiz, brought the performance ¿Dónde? Acción no. 2, that emerged from Viudas, a novel by Chilean Ariel Dorfman. With the lead taken by Tania Farias, actress and group leader, the play provoked debate and refection on the nature of the military dictatorship in Brazil, in an act of theatrical resistance of explosive beauty.

The performance begins with the women standing in front of empty chairs, asking each other: Where are those who disappeared under the dictatorship? The question still floats in the air today, unanswered.

Hij@s de la Bernarda, from Tojunto, Puerto Rico, directed by Rosa Luisa Márquez, is a piece inspired by La casa de Bernarda Alba, by Federico García Lorca, and the creation of the masterful Boricua Gilda Navarra. It was the first work of theater/dance presented at the San Juan Museum of Contemporary Art, where tickets were bought with food and medicine for those impacted by Hurricane Maria. The show included theater, performance, flamenco, and experimental dance.

Cuban groups added to the diversity exhibited by the visiting companies. Argos Teatro re-staged Diez millones, written and directed by National Prize for Theater winner Carlos Celdrán, and Santiago de Cuba’s Theater Studio Macubá, Caballas, directed by Fátima Patterson, another National Prize winner.

Two works by Teatro de las Estaciones, from Matanzas, were selected: Cuatro and Retablillo de Don Cristóbal and Señá Rosita. Also from this city’s Teatro el Portazo, presented was CCPC, La República Light, while participating from Holguín was the Trébol Theater with Jacuzzi, script, staging, and lights by Yunior García.

Teatro de La Luna’s Raúl Martín re-staged the work scripted by Alberto Pedro, El banquete infinito, and from the Centro Promotor del Humor, included in the program was La Cita, written by Andrea Doimeadiós, and directed by Osvaldo Doimeadiós, in which two young actresses, Andrea Doimeadiós and Venecia Feria, demonstrated “feminine and intelligent humor … and essentially critical.”

WORKSHOPS

Alongside the programming in theaters, the event included workshops organized around the theme of “Process-result,” chosen for this 10th edition of the festival. Martínez Tabares reported that this thematic axis was selected given the importance of both the process of creating a piece and the results obtained, as a reflection of a company’s work.

She explained that the result is what we see on the stage, but now groups are invited to artistically deconstruct the work from a conceptual point of view – addressing the methodology they used, the priorities in technical terms, that is, the problems of creation.

Workshops were led by dramaturges Rosa Luisa Márquez (Brincos y saltos. El juego como disciplina teatral and Raquel Araujom, with actresses from Teatro de La Rendija (Palabra y sentido. Sobre el trabajo del actor y el verso en escena), and the Brazilian collective Ói Nóis Aquí Traveiz, (in charge of Teatro Calle, Vivencia con la Tribu de Atuadores)

Over the course of these ten seasons, Mayo Teatral has provided an opportunity for dialogue amongst Latin Americans and Caribbeans, a festival for Cuban audiences, which has been able to enjoy the artwork of the continent’s principal exponents, such as La Candelaria, Yuyachkani, Teatro de los Andes, Matacandelas, and Malayerba – in perhaps not the most recent, but high quality works, for sure.

Mayo Teatral continued this history in 2018 with attractive stagings, organized moreover in such a way that the interested spectator could see them all during one spring month.

(Granma)

Given such evidence, it should not have surprised us to hear the leader of the Cuban Revolution’s last wishes – announced by Raúl in Santiago de Cuba’s Antonio Maceo Plaza – that after his death, neither his name or likeness should ever be used to name any institution or public site, nor should monuments, busts, or statues in his memory ever be erected.

Even prior to this announcement, certain media had been perplexed when President Raúl Castro Ruz communicated Fidel’s death this past November 25, and reported the Comandante en Jefe’s request that his remains be cremated.

More than one international journalist asked if plazas and other public spaces would soon bear the name Fidel Castro. Speculation fueled expectations. Some even recalled that Fidel had previously opposed honoring leaders with statues and avenues bearing their names, while they were alive.

The man who resisted the hostility of eleven U.S. administrations understood the dangers and consequences of personality cults. That is why one of the first laws adopted after the triumph of the Revolution, January 1, 1959, was an absolutely unprecedented prohibition on erecting statues of living leaders or using their names for any street, city, town, or factory… likewise ruling out official photographs of authorities in government offices.

Fidel, the statesman, talked about this law in a speech on March 13, 1966, saying, “It is not necessary to be seeing a statue on every corner, or the name of some leader on every town, all over the place. No! Because this would reveal a lack of confidence in the people on the part of leaders; this would reveal a very poor conception of the people, of the masses, as incapable of believing because of a lack of consciousness, or having confidence because of a lack of consciousness – artificially fabricating consciousness or confidence, using reflex responses.”

He referred to Karl Marx, Frederic Engels, and Vladimir I. Lenin in his remarks, saying that they never “made gods of themselves,” but rather “were humble their entire lives, until death, loath to cults,” he added.

Fidel knew the history of humanity and was clear on the role played by personality cults, without distinguishing between countries based on capitalism or socialism, ranging from Mao Tse Tung to Rafael Léonidas Trujillo, statues of whom proliferated across the Dominican Republic, where even churches were told to popularize the slogan, “Trujillo on earth, God in heaven.”

Reference texts indicate than the term “personality cult” was first used in 1956 by Nikita Khrushchev, secretary general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in a speech denouncing Stalin, during the 20th Congress of the organization.

In Rosental and Ludin’s Dictionary of Philosophy, it is defined as “blind deference to the authority of a figure, excessive consideration of real merits, the conversion of a historical figure’s name into a fetish.”

Maintaining a philosophical lens, it is not difficult to see that underlying such cults is an idealistic conception of history – as Thomas Carlyle would say – which considers the will of individuals, as opposed to the action of the masses, as the determining factor in making history, precisely as Francisco Franco would have his compatriots believe his self-proclaimed status as god’s messenger and ruler of Spain by the grace of god.

As Fidel stated in 1966, events have confirmed the Marxist precept, “It is not men, but rather peoples who write history,” while at the same time recognizing, “The revolutionary leader is necessary as an instrument of the people, necessary as an instrument of the Revolution.”

In more than one international forum, Cuban researcher and journalist Luis Toledo Sande has spared no words denouncing the allegations of a personality cult of Fidel in Cuba, noting that such accusations are coming, in fact, from countries where university degrees are granted in the name of monarchies.

Toledo, who has also studied José Martí, noted that in Cuba, for example, the names of leaders’ family members are not attached to public institutions either, no matter how charming they may be, although it is here, some allege, where a personality cult exists.

Toledo recalled, years later, that his comments were not included in the summary of the event during which they were made, due, he was told, to space limitations. Nevertheless, he has said he would have liked them to have been published, so no one might think they were excluded because he used the metaphor, “the noose in the house of the hanged man.”

The supposed personality cult of Fidel and the media campaign against Cuba are two sides of the same coin; that is both seek to discredit the leader as well as his most important work: the Revolution, in which the people play the leading role.

When Nicaraguan Tomás Borge was asked about the issue, he responded, “In a country like this one, it is very difficult for some form of absolute power to exist, because Cubans, with their idiosyncrasies, their mentality, argue everything, analyze everything; it could just as well be baseball, agriculture, politics, anything; Cubans discuss it all, they have character, a special idiosyncrasy.”

These virtues, verified in the people by Fidel, are far removed from the perspective of Plato, the first to address the elements associated with the charisma of leaders, who described the masses as ignorant and malleable, at the whim of charismatic individuals.

Leadership and political charisma, are terms which have inspired many to think:

Aristotle, Machiavelli, Weber, Freud and Bourdieu, and have been epitomized in the person who headed the Cuban state for more than 50 years and survived

638 attempts on his life, emanating basically from the entrails of the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency, looking to eliminate his example that inspired the world.

Despite such real – not mythical – greatness, his body was reduced to ashes, which have been resting, since December 4, inside a massive rock in Santiago de Cuba’s Santa Ifigenia Cemetery. The site dedicated to his memory, could well have been placed on top of Mt. Turquino, exemplifying modesty and austerity, contrary to the forecasts of detractors of the man who did not seek glory, but encountered it along his way.”

(From Escambray newspaper)

This according to a judging panel presided by Pedro de Oraá, winner of last year’s coveted prize, and featuring Ever Fonseca, Ernesto Fernández, Nelson Domínguez, José Villa, Osneldo García, also National Prize winners; Adelaida de Juan, recipient of the National Art Critics Prize; artists Wiliam Pérez and Nelson Ramírez; critics, researchers and curators Chrislie Pérez, Grethel Morell, Blanca V. López, and Caridad Blanco; and Margarita González judging panel secretary.

Other nominees included: Eduardo Roca (Choco), Zaida del Río, Alberto Lescay, Lesbia Vent Dumois, José Ángel Toirac, Alexis Leyva Machado (Kcho), Manuel Hernández, Roberto Salas, Rafael Zarza, Ernesto Rancaño and José A. Choy.
In 1976, at 20 years of age, Fors enrolled in the San Alejandro Academy of Art. He presented his first exposition in Plaza’s Casa de Cultura in 1983, but officially established himself as a visual artist five years later with Golpes de vista(Villa Clara provincial museum) and La tierra(Provincial Art and design Center, Havana).

Noteworthy among his personal exhibitions are El paso del tiempo (Wifredo Lam Center, 1995); Los retratos (6th Havana Biennial, 1997); Las cartas (Casa de las Américas, 2004); Historias circulares(National Museum of Fine Arts, 2006); and Pormenores (11th Havana Biennial, 2012); as well as international expositions including Los objetos(Belgium, 2003), and Ciudad fragmentada(California, 2012).

His work has been included in important collective exhibitions in Madrid, Milan, Brussels, Paris, Tokyo, Río de Janeiro, New York, Miami, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and Toronto among other renowned settings within the global art world.

In regards to his aesthetic, Fors invokes personal and historic memory where “the anatomy of the intimate emerges as humankind’s true space,” according to art curator and critic Corina Matamoros.

(Granma)