Royce Chocolate Chips

Cuba IV: Chronic Critical Observatory


Text: Dmitri Prieto Samsonov / Photo: Isbel Diaz
Composition: A.
Chaguaceda
The March 13, 2010, the day that marks the historic anniversary of the attack (in 1957) to the Presidential Palace by fighters of the Revolutionary Directorate, began in San Jose de las Lajas (Havana province) the Critical Monitoring IV sessions of Cuba, socio-cultural forum organized by the Red protagonist of the same name and featuring the auspices of the Hermanos Saiz Association.

In the morning session, the event focused on the experiences, studies and proposals of alternative lifestyles, more respectful of nature-based societies logical violent, authoritarian and commercial. After Dmitri Prieto Mario Castillo and present a historical overview of the Observatory, we have the presence of Tito Núñez, who together with a group of Japanese visitors were referred to the initiative of the restaurants vegetarian and organic, such as rosemary, located on sites at Las Terrazas (Pinar del Rio), which he heads and whose work was explained in detail.

followed presentations by Vanessa Vidan, Italian anthropologist who works in Cuba, about the habits of consumption in our country and its relationship to global capitalism; of Victorio Cue Villate, Cuban archaeologist, who referred to conflicts between certain practices associated with the religion of African descent and ecology, as well as the presentation of Mario Castillo about environmental anarchist Murray Bookchin. The debate revolved around the urgent need to implement productive self-management to promote healthy alternatives, organic and non-violent use and consumption of goods and generally to the satisfaction of human needs in a society that promotes emancipation. Also criticized the few possibilities for self-organization, the insufficient capacity of dialogue that social actors often have and what is necessary to contextualize anthropological research based on local and national level where they thrive. In particular, we noted an opposition to the cult of scarcity (but not thrift) as a supposed environmental virtue.

The luncheon was for basic feature that there is a vegetarian option, not only for the sake of respect to the existential choices of the participants but also as self-management experiment, because its preparation involved input from the members of our network to recognize that just be an experiment this time extension apparently was not perfect, which leads to reflect on the need to continue promoting our areas of social practices of self-organization.

In the afternoon, we started the session listening to the speeches of Charles Simon (University, culture and ideology), Zeta Dacosta (post-Soviet diaspora in Cuba) and Niley Reyes (Cultural dynamics in the Hershey plant in Santa Cruz del Norte) , all of them great burden controversy. Carlos Simón, professor at the Higher Institute of Art and founder of the Chair Haydee Santamaria, insisted from an analysis based on social history and ideas, on the urgency of changes in current approaches of university life, removing the Normalizing Cuban view individual student as "revolutionary" past the mission of promoting the community college revolution itself, from its autonomy and its role in critical theory and the search for social alternatives. Zeta

Dacosta noted the presence in Cuba of virtually invisible ethnic communities, whose origins also paradoxically the romance involved, ideology and geopolitics: the communities of immigrants and descendants of Soviet origin. Niley Reyes-student of Sociology, spoke of the past and present of batey Camilo Cienfuegos / Hershey, formed in early twentieth century about one of the most modern sugar mills owned by a U.S. company and which is currently being dismantled product changes in Cuban economic policy. In this case, there are strong feelings of nostalgia not for the capitalist system, but by a multifaceted cultural life that was lost almost all years before the plant was dismantled.

Discussions at the meeting led to reassess existing stereotypes about how they are local and ethnic communities that make up our nation, and to note the urgency of the ideological changes, experiential and motivational life of the Cuban youth to that questions of this political capital to become the revolutionary process of liberating the island and not a mere obstacle for deleterious and conservative policies.

These approaches remained present in the last session of the day, dedicated to socio-cultural studies of specific localities and creative manifestations. The scholar Ricardo Vázquez claimed the need to support the Afro-Cuban orality as part of the national literary corpus and the curriculum at different levels of education. Danay Ramos spoke of the history of cultural spaces in Santiago de Cuba, and Abreu Yenislaisy company focused on the "Light of the East", also from that city. The researcher of visual arts Ileana Orozco provided interesting analysis of these events in the city of Bayamo, where artistic discourses have prevailed based on a peculiar peripheral perception of life and the vicissitudes of history.

All these papers revealed the retention of important phenomena of domination and inequality, the urgency of subversion which insisted in the debate. The first day of IV Critical Observatory ended with the presentation of the book "Critical thinking in front of the thinking" of the German theologian Jorge Luis, Pinar del Rio and the magazine "The Drawer", published by the Association Hermanos Saiz and has a team independent editor.