Decree 349: a second ‘Década Negra’ in Cuba?
This July marks the fourth year of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara’s
incarceration in a Maximum-Security Prison in Guanajay, just South of Havana,
Cuba. As leader of the San Isidro Movement, a group of artists, journalists,
and academics, he is charged with insulting national symbols, disobedience and
public disorder following his protest of President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s Decree
349. It is reported that in prison Alcántara has been subject to attacks and
provocations by state security and has been denied treatment for paralysis and
an eye injury. To this day the Cuban performance artist continues to suffer in
solitary confinement in a punishment cell. When Decree 349 was promulgated on 7th
December 2018, Fidel Castro’s war on ideas was reborn.
The decree enforces strict state control over the circulation, display
and performance of artworks in Cuba, echoing Castro’s speech to the so-called
intellectual rats fifty-seven years earlier: ‘Within the Revolution,
everything, against the Revolution, nothing.’ From 1971 onwards the then head
of Cuba’s National Cultural Council, Luis Pavón Tamayo, led an assault on
artistic freedom, moving from a cultural policy based on discussion and
tolerance to one characterised by repression, censorship, and harassment.
During a period known as the Década Negra, artists were banned from creative
spaces, prohibited from exhibiting their works and their international travel
was restricted. These years also saw the attempted purge of African culture
from the Cuban mainstream. Art was only valid if it served the Revolution,
giving the state sole power to define the purpose and boundaries of
culture.
In a similar fashion, artists in Cuba must now obtain advance permission
for public and private exhibitions and performances. Decree 349 bans art that
is deemed to contain sexist, vulgar and obscene language and art using national
symbols to contravene current legislation. Sanctions include fines and the
confiscation of works for those breaking the law. Moreover, artwork cannot be
sold without government approval. Artists and intellectuals in Cuba are now
facing what is arguably a return to the bitterness of the Década Negra. Those
who depend on art as a source of income risk their livelihoods being
compromised by excessive state intervention. The decree has provoked worldwide
outrage and has been publicly condemned by Amnesty International both for its
ethical implications and its direct contradiction to International Law.
In particular, Amnesty has drawn attention to Cuba’s tepid commitment to
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which they signed on
February 28th 2008 but, crucially, did not ratify. Cuba therefore has no legal
responsibility to honour the agreement, which aims to protect the freedom to
seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds including in the
form of art. Amnesty has stressed that laws which restrict insult to heads of
state or public figures, the military or other public institutions, flags or
symbols are prohibited under International Human Rights Law. Ergo, the
imprisonment of Alcántara for wearing the Cuban flag during one of his
performance pieces is in direct conflict with the International Law which Cuba
had previously taken steps to uphold.
Cuban performance artist Tania Bruguera has also been vocal in her
opposition to the decree, calling it a muzzle to artists which serves only as a
tool for political blackmail. Indeed, Bruguera has been a symbol of Cuban
resilience since the 1990s. Her body of work is preoccupied with exposing the
strict system of governance and control in her homeland. Her controversial
performance piece Tatlin’s Whisper #6, showcased at the Havana Biennial
in 2006, featured a temporary platform for free speech where visitors were
invited to a conference-like space. After addressing the public uncensored for
one minute, military guards would abruptly remove them. The public used this as
an opportunity to outwardly criticise the Cuban government, which resulted in
Bruguera’s arrest and temporary detention.
Bruguera’s forms of protest have not always been so overt, however. Her
rejection of authorship is a more muted act of dissent, which could imply a
subversion of traditional copyright. Bruguera has described herself as ‘not an
author but an initiator’, and she insists that to create really good socially
engaging art you must allow others to see it as a model, one which can be
changed and manipulated to create new versions. Her subtle protest is most
notable in the Catedra Arte de Conducta project (Behaviour Art School),
a self-founded school where she encourages students to use her artwork to
inspire their own. She teaches politically and socially engaged art to promote
the tie between art and activism, with an aim to carve a space for performance
art within the traditional Cuban education system.
Her Homenaje a Ana Mendieta (Tribute to Ana Mendieta) also
plays around with authorship conventions. By directly copying the performance
art of another major Cuban artist, Ana Mendieta, she questions the self-imposed
authority of the government to dictate what she can and can’t produce, and
reproduce, in her artwork. Essentially, she refuses to operate within a legal
system that she perceives as damaging and oppressive, to the extent of
shunning the laws which are laid down to safeguard creativity, such as Cuba’s
national copyright law. Bruguera champions the idea of educating and promoting
a new generation of Cuban free-thinking artists, even if it means abandoning
intellectual property rights entirely.
Bruguera defines the aftermath of Castro’s psychological war on Cuban
intellectuals as the postguerra condition. It is a war which extends beyond
temporal constraints, and is constantly shaping the socio-political landscape
of the country. Decree 349 not only reinforces the permanence of the postguerra
condition, but appears to set the country back in time to the height of
cultural and artistic censorship. It would be up to the international artistic
community to amplify the voices of Alcántara and Bruguera, to bring an end to
Cuba’s second Década Negra.
Author: Zoë Storey
