578
PARTISAN REVIEW
tic value. The first awards , in 1969 and 1970, went to
Tiempo
de
cam–
bio,
by Manuel Cofiiio L6pez, and
Relatos
de
Pueblo Viejo,
by Juan
Angel Cardi, both collections of short stories that simplistically
contrast Cuba's corrupt past with its presumably heroic and exem–
plary present.
The Union of Writers followed suit, conferring its 1969 award
on a novel by Alcides Iznaga,
Las cercas caminaban ,
an unimaginative
critique of capitalist society combined with the obligatory heroic por–
trait of the Cuban guerrillas in the Sierra Maestra. At the awards
ceremony the president of UNEAC, Nicolas Guillen, warned that
any writer who failed to fulfill his political duty "would receive the
most severe revolutionary punishment. " At that session (during
which the executive committee expelled Jose Lorenzo Fuentes, win–
ner of honorable mention in a contest the previous year, as a "traitor
to the country"), the members of the Union were exhorted to "redou–
ble their revolutionary vigilance, to avoid all forms of weakness and
liberalism, and to denounce any attempt at ideological penetration ."
In 1971 the
Casa
de
las Americas
prize went to
La ultima mujer
y
el
proximo combate,
a novel by Manuel Cofiiio Lopez, praised as "revo–
lutionary" for its "clear political objective" in presenting the
development of a "socialist conscience ."
The First Congress on Education and Culture , in April of 1971,
(
officially ushered in the Stalinization of art which has prevailed in
.
Cuba ever since. In preparation, a campaign was waged to terrorize
the intellectual community. It culminated with the arrest of Heberto
Padilla, who was made to denounce his friends and colleagues. He
had failed to follow the basic guidelines recommended by Soviet
writers in Stalin's time: "Don't think.
If
you think, don't speak . If you
speak, don't write.
If
you write, don't publish.
If
you publish, don't
sign ." As a result, he had to obey the last of those rules :
"If
you sign ,
recant." Against the backdrop of Padilla's public embarrassment and
forced confession, the Congress proclaimed that culture, like educa-
tion, was not and could not be "either apolitical or impartial," and in
a speech delivered at the close of the proceedings, Fidel Castro stat-
ed: "We, a revolutionary people in a revolutionary process, value
cultural and literary creations with only one criterion : their utility to
the people. Our valuation is a political evaluation." That was to be
the governing precept for Cuban art thereafter, and because the
Communist party of Cuba has always considered itself the embodi–
ment of the will of the masses ("the highest leading force of society,"
as the Constitution says), in the final analysis Castro's remarks
