December 22, 2003
Two Cubans: In Order NOT To Forget
by Jerome du Bois
I'll be posting a long essay on Cuban art, the Eighth Havana Biennial, and the Arizona State University Art Museum (ASU) in the near future, but in the meantime I can introduce the theme by introducing you to two Cubans. One is Kcho, a now-famous Cuban artist who often employs a boat theme, as in this one that ASU is so proud of owning:
KCHO, Para Olvidar (In Order To Forget), 1996, ASU Art Museum Collection
When I first saw this piece in the "Irony and Survival on the Utopian Island" exhibition back in 1998 I was, of course, deeply moved. And completely ignorant, like most people, of the true irony and price of survival on that dystopian island, where a doctor qualified to practice in the United States earns twenty dollars a month.
Well, I've been educating myself in the interval. Today, I read in the Art Newspaper an illuminating update on Kcho, who, in the interval, seems to have done quite well for his well-fed self:
. . . an anonymous collector from Monaco paying $11,000 for a drawing by Kcho, an artist whose signature motif is a simple boat that might be interpreted as an allusion to Cubans’ efforts to escape the island. Somehow Kcho has been co-opted as a quasi-official artist, painting backdrops for Castro speeches and occupying a huge government house.
Now I would like you to meet Sr. Manuel Vazquez Portal:
He is a working, award-winning journalist and former teacher. He doesn't live in a huge government house. (He's pretty skinny, too.) He's in one of Castro's prisons. You should go read his letter on Val Prieto's invaluable Babalu Blog. Sr. Vazquez Portal's wife smuggled his diary out of the prison in June, and even though he knew his words in the world could bring him physical pain, he said: "I am prepared. If for the simple act of working as a journalist I was given an 18-year prison sentence, nothing else can be more unjust or excessive."
Here's the beginning of his letter:
Aguadores Prison, October 1, 2003
Sra. Yolanda Huerga Cedeño
My Puchita:
My birthday will be on the 9th. I will not be able to enjoy your company, and Gabriel, who already misses me, will not be able to wake me up, with his eyes beaming for joy, to remind me that I'm getting older. When will we be able to enjoy these basic pleasures that we were used to, and which have been denied to us by the injustice and ferocity of a deadly regime?
To this question, I cannot but answer the same way I always answer those who ask me when this hateful regime will be over: This will end when Cubans wish it. If we suffer under a tyranny, it's only because we put up with it, and so we deserve it. Until the Cuban people, in spite of the government's repression, decide to be free, we will continue to be slaves. As long as we continue believing the regime's barrage of propaganda, we will continue, like mesmerized toads, living in the muck.
I don't know the etymology of "Kcho," but to me it now means "mesmerized toad." I wonder if he'll send Sr. Vazquez Portal a card for the holidays? After all, he knows where he lives, and where he might be until he is seventy years old.
[UPDATE: And, for a vivid and sad portrait of everyday life right now on that dolorous island, go to Cubanet and read this.]