For the Cuban American living here...it is always incredibly painful to watch people right here who are FREE disregard the CUBANS who are not FREE in Cuba. A friend of mine said recently, THis Fight for CUBA is exhausting....There is an ART GAllery who has decided to bring ARTISTS work from CUBA to display HERE!!! AGAIN ...my throat is so sore from SCREAMING all the time..... IM sure you all roll your eyes.....There goes Loli again ....I want to share another BEAUTIFULLY written letter protesting this ART SHOW......PLEASE READ...... PLEASE HELP US!!!!! March 28, 2104 Dear Sir or Madam, We are Cuban-American collectors who have purchased work from previous Carriage Barn art shows. We were saddened to receive this invitation for your upcoming exhibition of work by Cuban artists living and working in Cuba. For 54 years, Cubans have been oppressed by a totalitarian Communist dictatorship. The island is a tropical gulag, a source of curiosity and entertainment for travelers and cultural tourists but a prison for its people, who run on meager rations and sheer ingenuity. For years art has been one of the islands main exports, and artists have been carefully groomed, financed, and deployed to the benefit of the Castro regime. Probably, you will say your Absolut Kuba show is not political or partisan, that it represents open cultural dialogue. This is an illusion. There can be no open dialogue in Cuba. Human rights abuses in Cuba are legion (see Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch), and artists well know the line they must tow to continue working there and--more important--have their work promoted to the outside world. Scores of artists have left Cuba to work according to their own convictions. While they remained in Cuba, their art was a hot commodity, redolent of the revolutionary mystique so many critics, curators, and collectors on the outside find heroic and nostalgic. After having defected to the United States, such recognized talents as Arturo Cuenca, Tomas Esson, Carlos Rodriguez Cardenas, and Gory have virtually disappeared from the radar. Why have so many of their voices been omitted from the dialogue? There are two sides to Cuba: what travelers enjoy, and what the ordinary Cuban endures. The Cuban people, silenced by decades of intimidation and imprisonment and execution with no recourse to justice, dont dare speak about this reality. To do so would mean risking their own and their loved ones lives, and why bother? Travelers bearing dollars and euros want to praise the revolutions so-called advances in education and healthcare, when in fact the islands standard of living prior to Communist takeover was among the highest in all of Latin America. Then, Cuba boasted a burgeoning middle class; today, the country is bankrupt. Once dependent on the Soviet Union, Cuba’s current keeper is Venezuela. The U.S. trade embargo, the Castro brothers last scapegoat, is not to blame. In fact, our trade embargo does not prevent Cuba from transacting business with any other nation in the world. It is imposed so that Cuba may not receive material support from the U.S. on credit (read: for free, funded by American taxpayers). Despite this embargo, Americans are traveling to Cuba in record numbers, Cuba is a darling of aid organizations, and groups like yours are every day promoting cultural exchange--propping up the dictatorship that continues to deny Cubans the rights free nations take for granted. Note that none of this travel, aid, or “exchange” has improved the lives of ordinary Cubans. Accommodations have been made for those accommodating enough to exploit them, including artists and other members of Cubas cultural elite. But accommodations are not rights. By staging a show like “Absolut Kuba” (is the K for Kremlin?), the Carriage Barn has itself accommodated the Cuban regimes tired sham of open dialogue and exchange. Please remove us from your mailing list. Sincerely, Angela and Anibal Porta
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 12:24:17 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015