Today ends the XXX. Havana International Book Fair. In the midst of very complex circumstances, both economic and epidemiological, the most powerful cultural event in Cuba can be considered a success against all odds. There will be those who will only insist on pointing out the magnum opus’ blemishes (and there undoubtedly were), but it is undeniable that a great deal of editorial novelty has been placed in the hands of the reading public. A hundred artistic and literary activities took place throughout the city.
Of course, an event of this magnitude is a testament to the Cuban state’s commitment to promoting culture as an instrument of individual and collective emancipation; and at the same time it is the subject of furious criticism from the ideological opponents of the revolution, who are simply unable to objectively recognize a good deed by the socialist government. Some of them, with particular viciousness, attacked the price of some books and other items sold by foreign exhibitors. They unconsciously recognized an achievement of revolutionary cultural policy: the modest prize for printed literature in Cuba.
This achievement, expressed in the purchasing power of citizens in relation to the cost of books, has been historically defended in Cuba and will continue to be defended even after the restructuring, considering that the Cuban system spent it on this pressure of production, not an expense but an investment . It is enough to compare our reality with that of other latitudes, where buying a book is a luxury, to judge fairly the will of this small and blocked country to support the intellectual growth of its citizens.
And it can be said that the massiveness of the Mass is not a full guarantee that those masses will actually read. It’s true. It’s also true that we don’t always read the best or the most useful: a lot of frivolous literature is bought and sold. But politics, the will of the state, exists and is the materialization of two principles, one of Martí and the other of Fidel: culture as the sine qua non of freedom and reading as the antithesis of blind faith.
In a conversation with a friend, we disagreed about understanding the nature of cultural politics as a phenomenon. For him, it could only be “cultural policy” with all the letters to public practice, to the activities of institutions with state protection, since private sponsors could only fulfill the role of patrons. For me, patronage was the way in which the wealthy class tried to influence the symbolic narrative of an epoch: patronage was the cultural politics of the bourgeoisie.
Only the most naïve or the most insidious can deny that there is a connection between socialism, the constitutional socio-economic model that we Cubans have chosen in a referendum, and this massiveness that not only has the Book Fair but also other events such as the Festival of New Latin American Cinema. The culture that patrons fund is a culture for elites at best, or to numb the sensibilities of the majority at worst. The interests of the very wealthy, who assert themselves with a checkbook, seldom conform to a truly public, democratic agenda. Patronage is cultural politics paid for by private individuals trying to satisfy their vanity, their sense of beauty, or to create a mainstream market that drains of emancipatory desires a cultural industry that was created for bondage, not freedom .
The Book Fair, the product of public and popular cultural politics (which might be synonymous, but not always), is also a success because it shows that commercial logic cannot mean the struggle for the hearts and minds of a people. And it also shows that we must fight against patronage as the dominant way for the artist to find protection, be it what typifies slave, feudal and capitalist societies, or this new breed of patronage that sometimes a false domain over the coffers of Liborio, attempts to turn institutions into a vehicle for nepotism and influence.
The next fair, which we hope will be held under more optimal conditions, will offer a new opportunity to reaffirm the cultural politics of the revolution and to polish every bump, every flaw that might be pointed out. But we are certain: the right to read in Cuba enjoys and must continue to enjoy full guarantees without the need for patrons.