Cubanow. - Omar Gonzalez is an affable looking man and talks unhurriedly. He thinks before answering questions, as if searching for the right words so the interviewer understands well the ideas he wants to convey. He never raises his voice, but when you listen, you feel the warmth that feeds the words: they are like the lava flowing from the core of a benevolent volcano or, if I may use another metaphor, like the carnations that bloomed from the guns of the Portuguese army before all hope was lost.

There is somewhat of a contradiction in this dichotomy of his image as a mature and peaceful family man and his radical youthful speech, but I think I have solved the enigma: Omar Gonzalez is a man with an entire parade of things marching inside him.

Omar Gonzalez President
The Cuban Film Institute

Here are the questions he answered exclusively for Rebelión Cubanow.

In times like these, of a general absence of ideology, what could or should be the relationship between art and social life, i.e. the public responsibility?

I take your question as a legitimate provocation. I definitely don't think these are times of a generalized absence of ideology, on the contrary. We owe such an extended apocalyptic vision to a certain type of postmodern thought, to its "mediatic" and academic liturgy in times of great disconcert; to the collapse of the so-called "real socialism," the Social Science policies of which, with few exceptions, were generally disappointing; and, above all to the boom of neo-liberalism, which is more than an economic or financial trend centered in the apotheosis of the market: it is the ideological expression of imperialism on the way to its higher, and probably last stage: fascism. But it is not a fascism in the style of Hitler and Mussolini, still primitive and highly experimental, though modeled for that imminent purpose, and we have to react against it forcefully and become a barricade the size of the world; it would be a more elaborate fascism, that includes elements of the former while overcoming it in ambition, in the destruction of the nature of peoples and their oppression, given its unlimited global character and its correspondence with the technological development of the times in which we live. It either is or could be a corporate fascism and an emphatically ideological one, born in a society said to be democratic, but that behaves even worse than the worst totalitarian society known; in a country which proclaims liberty as a measure of all things and at the same time lives sequestered by an elite which is insatiable for money and power; a multi-ethnic nation, though with too much space for racism and xenophobia; a territory as industrialized as it is unequal; that says it is open to the world and annuls or marginalizes its citizens' opportunities to interact with other cultures; a society with the greatest access to the media ever known, but at the same time misinformed, in which wide sectors of the population, in spite of having a modern educational and sanitary infrastructure, live in the most incredible ignorance and lack of sanitation; one of the countries of the G-7 with a Third World in its streets and a Fourth World in the Pine Ridge Reservation; a nation which is many other nations and whose successive governments have been and are arrogant, and at the same time so weak that they are only capable of exalting "patriotism" by means of panic and paranoia; a country which is rich, but at the same time economically parasitic; a working, noble and joyful people, but cheated in their most solitary intimacy, so Christianized as to be disconcerting and indifferent, whose identity, exploited for centuries, is eventually diffused and lost, a country with an avant-garde intelligentsia and a society trivialized by the mass media, which privileges stupidity; in short, an empire in which security is based on its own insecurity; a paradox-country, in which right now an illegitimate government built stone on stone by the extreme right is waging a crusade in the name of Good and against Evil, in which case, no one, absolutely no one, would be in a position to affirm that the former is not the worse of the two.

Terrorism, as was Communism earlier and Islam long before for Christian Europe, has been only a pretext to implement the greatest project of political, economic, military and cultural domination History has ever known: the United States against the rest of the world. We will never know -for if we go on as we have been until now, the danger of disappearing for the human species is real-, how much the cause was favored by those fanatics who crashed those four planes on September 11, 2001 into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the quiet soil of Pennsylvania. So has been their tribute to this rising and at the same time recoiling empire, that it wouldn't be crazy, although only as speculation, to acknowledge those who sustain the overwhelming hypothesis of a conspiracy from power to commit or "let commit" crimes that, in any case would be abominable. Meanwhile, there is Dick Cheney rubbing his hands, behind the scenes and involved in everything, with real power and command over men. And there are also the puppets. Poor Spain, Mother of God! with Aznar as its martyr.

You have described very well the social arena of the world in which we live, but you haven't said anything yet about the role of art, or of the artists in that social environment.

If we were going to deal with such a serious topic, enough to write a book, I would rather analyze it within its context. I will get closer now: a lot has been written and said with regards to the relationship between art (and between artists and intellectuals in general) and social life, so I don't think I would venture to say more. Today we live in different times. From the left -not having a better definition and in spite of its disrepute, I appeal to the dichotomy that places it before the right-, I recall, just to mention a few, the formula of the "eternal compromise," so recurrent during the 60s, and of which Sartre and others (with the slogan of not being committed is a way of being committed), were the pallbearers, and also Gramcsi's postulates regarding the "organic intellectual," assumed as a coherent and rational alternative in the face of the non-critical and obviously dogmatic condition of the assumptions of socialist realism. However, a lot has happened since then, and the collapses have been structural, devastating and even silent, which are those that usually have the deepest impact in the area of ideas.

The present intellectual production illustrates the resultant confusion. The right, for over a hundred and fifty years unable to recover theoretically from the release of the Communist Manifesto, as in this long period nothing has shattered the world so much as the multiplied wisdom of Marx and Engels in that document, has taken advantage of the wave of deception and uncertainty (and also of regrouping) in which its antipode has been living for the last fifteen years, and it has done so in a way that, as its position has become more radical, it has been able to change not few of the  pretenders and the gullible. And as it dominates the media and manages people's fears, buys and corrupts consciousnesses, and, standing in front of this broken mirror, we end up not knowing who's who. And this other left, the one which was or could have been, the solicitous one, the light one, and the one installed with a tithe, which changes hats and looses face until apostasy. And we get new dogmas, and as is expected, it is done in the name of democracy, liberty and human rights. And they all coincide so much with each other that Bush marries Blair and Felipe marries Aznar.

Overestimating the role of intellectuals and of art in their relationship with social life -which, on the other hand, is not a corpus foreign to their development, but the place for their possible belongings and identifications-, could lead us to new and old mistakes. I am not in favor of fanatic and unconditional veneration to certain celebrities, though they might seem indispensable when plotting the cartography of contemporary thought. Particularly in these times, when everything is permissible for the sake of the market, this includes even iconoclastic intellectuals. An intellectual is not an infallible prophet. The more intense ones have always renounced that condition. The people are the ones who will determine the course of history, the orientation to which thinkers can contribute, the philosophers who are not only willing to risk the luck of their treaties and reflections, but also that of the suffering masses. At this point, and to get closer to the definition you are asking me for, I reach for Tolstoy: "Each person gets to the truth through his own way; but one thing I should say: what I write is not only words, for I live accordingly, in it lies my happiness and with that I will die."

We should also respect the example and distinction of the classics and that doesn't mean we should be scholastic. Believing in the practical usefulness of common sense has its advantages, like when, in opposition to the rigid rigor of the nostalgic, it suggests it is necessary to absorb from all sources to structure our own thought and vision. A political fanatic is as pernicious as a philosophical or ideological fanatic. We have to recover the principle of doubt and the right to conscious selection, among other reasons, because nothing is ever the same as it was before. And to think and reason, knowledge is needed. And to have knowledge, education is among all, the first and best of doors.

What then shall be the dialogue among those who make a trade of art and of the reality surrounding them?

Between art and reality there should permanently be a critical dialogue, otherwise, thought and culture become paralyzed, or at least divorced, something harmful for the application of ideas. If culture is life, I don't see the point in distrusting debate, because it makes it more dynamic. The strength of any ideology, whatever it may be, is verified in the systematic confrontation with the rest. That's why one should be suspicious both of those who adulate intellectuals with silly purposes and of those others that exclude them because an anti-cultural thought. In this sense, capitalism has a long history, like the so-called bureaucratic socialism had. But the former has an advantage over the latter in terms of resources and dirty tricks. Its spiritual orphanage has been historically undoubted, and its insistence regarding the value of money to obtain its purposes is intrinsic and always vilifies it. Few, very few, creators of real value have assumed this system as the center of their thought and their work. It would generate disdain, and in the best of cases astonishment, finding a poem or a song praising neo-liberalism, the US blockade against Cuba, State terrorism, terrorism in general or the bombing of Iraq and Afghanistan. In short, maybe one or two articles have been dedicated by "mediatic" (and mediatized) intellectuals, who justify and applaud whatever is convenient for the United States and its royal allies, mostly in the so-called great North American pre-savage capitalism (I still think there is no other capitalism).

A press, by the way, that exalts and destroys, depending from where the wind blows -remember Watergate-; a press that is at the same time the support and the slave of hegemonic interests. Nazism, to give one example, did whatever necessary to obtain the sympathy and the services of the artists and thinkers, and, though it in fact got some results, the truth is nobody remembers their names, or if they are mentioned it is always to abuse or repudiate them. Innovative filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, known as "Hitler's eye," never managed to get rid of the stigma of her pro-Nazi past. Until her death, on September 9th, 2003, she tried to minimize her acts saying it was not her who had called upon the Führer to offer him her services, but the other way around. It makes no difference; History disregards that kind of subtlety. That's why it is so important for the artist to establish his mission from the point of view of ethics and with absolute social responsibility. The right, eager to deny all possible merit to socialism, has set itself on equating the behavior of some communist intellectuals with those attitudes, but has failed. On the part of the legitimate left, the one that cannot be bribed, mistakes are made, but it never forgives the crimes or communes with lies.

 From your words, one can infer that the right has not succeeded in any way in the area of ideas. Wouldn't it be that you are mistaking your wishes with reality?

No, there are successes, but an open public rightist stand reduces sales. What imperialism has surely succeeded in some way is in the traffic of consciousness, with the consequent silence and complicity of some voices. Money in torrents, scholarships, symbolic and for life posts (in Cuba what we used to call "botellas"), trips, public spaces for acknowledgement and, why not say it, also for apparent dissension, are some of the most common formulas. It is the seductive coercion of the market, its dictatorship, which seems to rule everything, but we know that it also mutilates and corrupts everything. Let's just mention the examples of Mexico -now and in the times of the PRI- and Venezuela -when Adecos and Copeyanos shared power-, which could illustrate the methods used in Latin America by the ruling class to silence the rebelliousness of a certain type of intellectual dependent and unsure of himself, and to turn him into a rare species, a sort of amoeba in its limbo.

And let's not mention Europe, sufficiently down the route and payroll of some last minute statements and manifestos only understandable due to unbearable pressure, that of money and fame (evident ostracism). We otherwise could not understand the attitude of some intellectuals who, just a couple of hours earlier, had identified themselves as left-wingers. It's sad to see them taking sides along with hysterics and renegades, with those poor souls who win awards, but do not know how to use a gerund properly. And what could be said of the ghosts with a guilty past? It seems as if they are shouting "don't mistrust me, I was wrong, forgive me for my disloyalties." And they don't know what to be, and in the end they are fewer and fewer.

But even more tragic than the traffic of consciousnesses, which is in general pathetic, has been and remains the most merciless repression against genuine left wing intellectuals. Latin America could also show a long list of crimes in this sense. Who should be blamed for so many deaths, for so many tortures if not imperialism and the world capitalist system, including the governments in Europe, Asia and North America that helped them and prolonged their rule? Who's going to pay for Víctor Jara's brutal murder, if Kissinger has been awarded the Nobel Prize and Pinochet still naps imperturbably and -on top of all that- they want us to believe the silly story that "the poor old man is crazy?" And like Víctor, there are thousands. And, not only in America. Who killed David Kelly? What is happening to that "left" that lost its memory? To that left which is another one, to that left-right that now lives without a name?

In the countries of so-called "real socialism," of course, there were also feeble formulas used to gain the favor or the isolation of certain intellectuals. In the times of Stalin, the methods used were paralyzing and unforgivable in a political system that, though subject to the worst of harassments, was never thought or designed to be used against the people or to spy on culture, but just the opposite, to promote it. The breach between the artistic vanguard and the political vanguard, the confluence of which gave such splendor to the revolution in 1917, became a schism from which the Soviet state could never recover. Those wounds, even though stricken from the official story, never healed. No carpet, not even the endless carpets in the Kremlin, could hide them. They were ghosts in the body and soul and the memory of many communists, and not only Soviet communists, but from all over the world. Hypocrisy slowly killed the society, heroic as none other in its titanic effort to build socialism and defeat fascist aggression. And, at the same time, imperialism was crouching in wait behind the door, drilling at the threshold, pushing in and pushing out. It must have been extremely difficult to live with that and think about the future.

Did you know in person, first hand, the Eastern European countries and their supposedly real socialism? I would like to know your opinion about the treatment given in the former Soviet Union to the different cultures that made up the country.

For different reasons, I traveled several times to the countries of Eastern Europe -as I did to Spain, Italy and Mexico-, and I was even lucky enough to visit several Central Asian republics and talk with their intellectuals, especially one of the most important ones, Kirguizian writer Chinguiz Aitmatov, with whom I spent a night talking in the steppes of Kazajastan, about his incurable phobia to airplanes, about poetry and film in Central Asia and his faint or imaginary memories of Havana. The circumstances in which they lived in those territories were completely different from Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Vilnius, Riga or Tbilisi, in spite of the fact that the news we receive today makes those times look like days of glory. The degree of development and the density of historic time were different; differences and inequalities were gaining and deepening as one went further into the confines of Nature and the mysteries of its wisdom. This happened, above all, in the centuries-old ways of nomadic culture, with which socialist realism had very little to do. If it was strange in Lithuania, you could imagine what might have happened when commissars dictated their catechism or doctrine to a village of shepherds. The old problem of nationality was never solved in the USSR, even when Stalin decreed it to be solved in his writings and all those passing leaders that came after Stalin said it had been solved. Proof that the problem still existed is the speed with which the Soviet Union disintegrated after the perestroika. It has been a warning process that has not ended, and to verify it one just has to look at the problem in Chechnya and others less publicized by the western press. The perestroika was a failure, but it uncovered, with the joy of a circus, a whole pot of vicissitudes resulting from the implementation of a policy that excluded respect for diversity as the essential element of culture. Neither more, nor less of the same will happen (in fact it is already happening) to neo-liberal globalization in its attempt to standardize human spirituality. Its calamitous failure will be/is as boisterous as the dimensions of its usurping project have been vast.

In those countries and territories, a public discrepancy, however minimal it might be, was never made public but you knew that the masses were not satisfied and that the leaders and political analysts did not always take their opinion into account. And we knew more, we knew that unrest was also manipulated and encouraged from abroad. But the distance between those principally responsible and the ranks of the society was huge, and it was aggravated in the countries where socialism was not the result of a historic or revolutionary process.

In the same vein, I remember I had to make a visit to Poland on the eve of the elections in which Solidarity came to power for the first time. At a ballet performance I had to sit next to one of the top leaders of the Polish Unified Worker's Party and a government minister. As I knew things were not going well for either one, I asked them separately, in between acts of Swan Lake, how they envisioned the future of their country. The party official responded laconically, as if I was bothering him with such nonsense: "We should win the next elections with a vast majority," and the minister, who was an outstanding intellectual, said: "I am running for Senator. Next time you come to Poland, I will receive you in the Senate and I shall have more time to write and talk about literature." Neither of the two was right. They both lived so totally estranged from reality that they ended up believing their own fantasies and those of their acolytes. Both presumed to be intellectuals, and they certainly were, but lacked the slightest practical sense. For them, and for many others that also succumbed and are now prosperous entrepreneurs or career politicians, the masses were an inanimate abstraction, a silent herd and by no means a force capable of endangering their position. And, on top of that, the USSR and the Warsaw Pact were there as guarantees of their security. I don't mean all politicians and administrators in Eastern Europe were like that, but many of them were, at least among those I met. It couldn't go on like that; it had to collapse due to its own wear and tear. A Revolution would have been necessary, but the perestroika wasn't even an aspirin. Even more, there are people who affirm it was an expression of its agony, and that Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, with whom Gorbachov shared secrets and bacchanalia, pulled the strings. By the way, the latter is doing well: he makes stories about his own legend and gives opinions about everything; he is already a millionaire.

But that past is history; that's why we can analyze it in detail. I wonder what would have been the outcome if it had evolved differently. It is not that you have to think that setbacks inevitably exclude victory or vice-versa. In any case, I prefer to conclude this idea using a phrase by controversial Ernst Bloch, an idea that George Labica calls a provocation: "The worst of communisms is worth more than the best of capitalisms."

What is your opinion of organic intellectuals?

In reference to the organic intellectuals, many stopped being so, and their relationship with the parties became routine, formal, without any margin for their participation, not even in the debate. Inconsequence reached such a peak that, even in spite of the magnitude of the debacle in the late 80's, there wasn't a single action of resistance worthy of historical recognition, except for the ridiculous skirmish that catapulted Yeltsin to the Kremlin and which lacked any merit at all, for it was more the result of the accumulated whims of Gorbachov than of the ideological inconsistency of his successor. The consternation produced by such events was so overwhelming that George Bush senior, at that time experienced in matters of the other intelligence, admitted in his memoirs several years later that he never imagined the changes foreseen (and promoted by imperialism) would happen so passively and harmonically.

Such a path is not precisely the one to be proposed by those truly aspiring to transform the present reality. It should also be said that it was not the path chosen by those who have been honest all their lives, not only here, in the "aseptic" West, and I'm still in line with Bloch's statement, but also there, in Eastern Europe; therefore it would be unfair to draw a line and blame old communist intellectuals for all possible errors when on this side of the world each day is no different from anywhere else and offenses are cultivated while shame is being brought on by treason. If learning lessons is the point, I think the answer would be much closer to the attitude of Mayakovsky, Alberti, Nicolás Guillén and Pablo Neruda rather than Evgueni Evtuchenko's, because, in the end, it is better to die with a clean consciousness and the humble merit of having fulfilled ones duty than to be an eternal buffoon not even capable of finding his own court.

Your comment regarding the change of a formerly praised and today buffoonish intellectual like Evgueni Evtuchenko leads me to ask you about your vision of intellectuals at present.

In short, and with no other intention than facilitating this analysis, we would be speaking about four types of intellectuals (three of them taken from the description made by Ignacio Ramonet in his dialogues with George Halperín) and of their relationship with social reality: the organic type, that some disqualify as part of the historic experience; the mediatic type, who, in spite of their encumbrance, do not count towards the effects of the changes, for they are favorite children of the hegemonic system; the indifferent type, who don't count either and are fewer all the time, and those we could call makers of  critical thought, distinguished by their heterogeneity and their open and militant opposition to neo-liberal globalization.

But, I don't see why it isn't possible to be an organic intellectual, say in the case of Cuba, and at the same time be against savage capitalism and permanently participate in a critical reflection from the essence of the Revolution itself, which to us also means the Party. In any case, we should be less concerned now by the etymologic distinctions of genealogy, for I think that anything dividing and distracting us from what is essential (unity, which cannot be postponed) will favor the Empire (which behaves as if almighty), without this leading us to internally avoid debate and useful differences.

What would this debate and these useful differences consist of in reference to present day Cuba?

In Cuba we debate about everything every hour, all the time, even about debate itself. We are not only analytical, but particularly extroverted, and not because of influence from the tropics, which is what foreigners say when they don't understand us, but rather because we incarnate a mixture of different cultures, like the ones that gave origin to pre-modern Spain and Africa, that founder of peoples and civilizations, and because we have a historic consciousness and are part of a society that wouldn't exist if it didn't propitiate the permanent flow of intelligence and joy. We Cubans are an ever expanding parliament; that's why it is very difficult to find in this Island a citizen loyal to the motherland that hasn't had a chance to participate, in one way or another, in the historic process of the Revolution. Were it not for this, there would be no explanation for the collective heroism against aggressions, which has been something permanent in varied forms, or for the unselfishness with which we assume the development of a social project that has as its raison d'etre in the improvement of human beings.

Here, intellectuals do not watch the fight from the sidelines, they are participants in social work, and -in their everyday action- they are committed and they exert their right to say and to decide, something that, mostly with regards to this last issue, is impossible in other latitudes, where, by the way, thinking is increasingly a privilege of those who have power or who amplify power as spokespersons. Since the very beginning of the Revolution, a practice was installed among us, which has never ceased: dialogue and discussion at all levels and with all sectors of society. We must recall the significance of Fidel's encounter with the intellectuals in June of 1961 at the National Library. The experience didn't end there, but rather became programmatic and, since then, countless congresses and meetings have extended it in time. The point is Fidel himself is the antithesis of those Heads of State, so common in the anemic liberal democracies, who are happy just reading four metaphors provided by some clerk, cutting a ribbon, and smiling and smiling and smiling, while thinking of how to escape in time so no one throws the truth in their face. Fidel is himself thought and action, and I have never seen him avoid a topic in his meetings with intellectuals or with representatives of any other sector of society for that matter.

For over thirty years I have been attending meetings in which issues of the utmost importance for the present and future of my country -and even of the world- have been discussed, because we Cubans are aware of our time and our place in history. And in that continuous seeing and doing, I have met writers and artists who are preoccupied (and occupied, which is more important) by the destiny of the new generations; national identity; the impact of the phenomena accompanying globalization and the need to face them as a society as a whole; the dangers of corruption; the contagious frivolity of the mass media, including film; health; the world problem of AIDS; the best use of our intellectual resources; the universalization of knowledge (in a country like ours, which is one huge classroom); the economic differences and inequalities; the inefficiency of this or that institution. And also, of course, since we are talking about culture, I have seen them abound in the specificity of art; in the heritage value of a building; in questioning an architectural project that denies or impoverishes our identity and in which case knowledge had nothing to do with the decision to build it. And those opinions, generally promoted by a receptivity that propitiates it, have always been expressed with absolute liberty, for they are not there to eagerly discredit, but rather to perfect a work that we love because we know it is ours. What is this if not an indubitable sign of maturity and democracy, and a concrete expression of the relationship that should exist between art, its makers and social life?

Lastly, let me refer to the irreconcilable and truly strategic contradiction imposed on us by imperialism with its uncivilized policies of harassment and state terrorism. I am, of course, referring to the "to be or not to be" issue of Cubans, not only in the present circumstances, but also as part of a dilemma with historical roots: in Cuba, to be in favor of imperialism is equivalent to being against the Revolution. It is something that admits no concessions, not even "a tiny bit like this," as Ché Guevara pointed out with his proverbial eloquence. There is no other way of looking at a matter like this, in which the permanence of the Revolution implies the existence and continuity of the Cuban nation. If you assume this premise as a starting point and agree with what is essential and decisive, I would say that everything else is secondary, no matter how transcendental it might seem to us.

And what then would be the mission of intellectuals in this hour? And that of art?

The great mission of the intellectuals and of art in our times, is their relationship with social life, that of becoming an inseparable part of the alternatives to the prevailing social and economic model. And those alternatives should converge more and more in a coherent and firm option to face the imperialist attack. We are going to stop the neo-fascist boom, ignorance, insalubrities, poverty, lack of liberties, war and generalized looting with mere occasional patches. This struggle must be taken as a life or death matter, because that is what it is. And even if it is true that intellectuals themselves are not going to change the world, there is a lot they can do to give the masses the clarity and the capacity necessary to achieve the unavoidable imperative that is victory. "Not to degrade," said José Martí, "but to transcend to those who create and found." And one would have to be willing to sacrifice everything in a battle that is primarily ideological but that does not exclude neither lead nor fire, according to the region in which one is fighting and the reasons supporting it. "Anger has to be given concepts," Noam Chomsky has told us, and the mission of contemporary intellectuals should always be to face this challenge to their intelligence and perseverance.

We live in an old world that pretends to be new. We are part of a great paradox. And to explain this world, it is a pre-requisite to live it intensely, as the great Cuban novelist and thinker Alejo Carpentier, whose example of loyalty to the culture of the peoples of the Americas is still awaiting deeper studies, once told us. If we know that art is not propaganda, then that means that such specificity cannot be avoided or carried out from power or from politics. The best contribution of an artist to his people is, precisely the inestimable contribution of his work.

Do you reject, then the notion of art for the sake of art?

The absurd idea of living without contamination inside an ivory tower, which has always been a decaying and reactionary position, has been overcome by practice and by the universal history of culture. The purists have little to do when it is known that the same day of the despicable attack against the World Trade Center in New York, in which over three thousand defenseless people were killed, in the South of the world ten times more children were dying of hunger and preventable diseases. Of these, almost nobody speaks, while about those, innocent too, we know almost everything. Decidedly, Manuel, we are living times of so much, but so much ideology that even oblivion is guilty. And those of us, who, among our other duties, have turned intellectual work into a profession, must not lose our memory.

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