Díaz-Canel: “Culture must raise our people’s spirits”

“Culture and its creators are entrusted with the mission of raising the Cuban people’s spirits despite our current difficult socioeconomic conditions,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez said at the annual meeting of the Ministry of Culture (MINCULT), also attended by Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz.

“In circumstances marked by economic strangulation and smear campaigns, art’s avant-garde has to rise to the occasion. (…) All this pressure coming from the enemy of the North translates into a marked cultural colonization and attempts to break the essence and roots of the nation.

Díaz-Canel remarked that culture plays a cross-sectional role in the implementation of [Cuba’s] programs against Racism and Discrimination, the Advancement of Women, and the Comprehensive Policy for the Care of Children, Adolescents and Youth.

Alpidio Alonso Grau, Minister of Culture, stressed that MINCULT will work in 2024 on decolonizing projects that include a policy on visual art marketing, a Cuban Film Festival, and the establishment of a Film Commission to support national audiovisual production.

On his end, Marrero Cruz pointed out that artistic and literary creation must work as a function of cultural decolonization and unity and thanked the Cuban artists for their efforts to create despite the current difficulties.