Like La Marsellesa, the national anthem of Bayamo sounded in full combat. Call for choral singing, it had extraordinary unifying power. For the first time, in a public space, the concept of homeland took serious sense. Is personified itself, because it "contemplates you proudly." The abstract notion pierced consciousness. It melted through all the fibers. It touched intelligence, knowledge of the characteristics of the oppressive system, dreams in the field of emotion and sensitivity. Because of that essential reason, associated with the most intimate of memory, the notes move in days of melancholy and triumph, in the urgency of a call to safeguard the nation. Singing it can never become routine action, its meaning dissolved in the grayness of everyday life, immersed in the rumors of the city, as sometimes happens when schoolchildren prepare to enter the classroom.
The history of Cuban culture is closely linked to the growth of the nation. From its most remote origin, that Espejo de paciencia recounted in verses the confrontation of the locals with the traders because of the kidnapping of a clerical figure. Without appealing to the authorities they had acted autonomously. The black Salvador Golomón appeared as hero of the feat. The natural environment was exalted in praise of the fruits of the earth. Very far from the context that would lead to making the contradictions between the Creoles and the colonial power insurmountable, the literary text initiated the representation of the particularities that defined the space of the island.
Very soon, concerns would be expressed in the field of ideas. It is striking that at an early stage such as the eighteenth century; Sr. Morell, Arrate and Urrutia undertook the task of narrating, with the resources available, the history of the Island. In doing so, they pointed out their particularities and pointed out some hints of social psychology. Father José Agustín Caballero opened a gap in the substance of a thought dominated by dogmatism and scholasticism. He proposed a method to access knowledge based on proximity to reality data.
Father Felix Varela would make a great leap forward. He would go to the policy world, formulate an emancipator preaching. Exiled for life, he had sown ideas in his disciples at the San Carlos and San Ambrosio seminary and always persisted in keeping alive contact with his homeland. The times, no doubt, had changed. The French Revolution projected its renewal ideology and the wars of independence in Latin America placed on the horizon the real possibility of breaking the colonial power that was becoming very heavy due to the attention of the country's possessions to meet the needs of the metropolis and the lack of access of the natives to the levels of decision regarding the prevailing policy.
Conflicts of interest were then expressed in the open debate between reformists, annexationists and independentists. With open eyes to the world, Cuban culture has always demonstrated the ability to appropriate the different ideologies and transform them into their own benefit. Thus, the need to offer a representation of reality that would contribute to populate the imaginary of the nation responded. Romanticism opened the channel for recognition and exaltation of the landscape. The encouraged, the description of types and customs that appeared in the literature and the so-called vernacular theater from where, typified, they remained in the twentieth century and rooted in the collective memory.
In spite of the strong control exercised in Havana by the colonial power and the violence imposed by the volunteers, shortly after the war of independence broke out, the painful events of the Villanueva Theater took place in the city. In a Huerto Dog function, a sandwich gave live to the land that produces the cane. The repressors shot at the unarmed public. There were women wearing ornaments with the colors of the flag.
Instrument of exploration of reality, culture becomes, at the same time, a path of self-recognition. Penetrates all the enclosures of the society or of the person. It cannot be considered unilaterally as postcards for tourists, in the manner of that maraquero who in the days of the neocolonial republic tried to attract customers to a souvenir shop full of artifacts made with crocodile skin. It manifests itself in the forms of speech and gestures, in the way of building the environment, of conducting and establishing relationships. It lies in the most intimate of individual and collective memory in living, group and intergenerational dialogue, between present and past, between sea breezes and the temperature of the earth. It is in the voice of the poets, in the street proclamation, in popular dance and in concert music. In order not to stagnate, it requires search and experimentation, rigorous research in constant renewal and critical counterpoint, because not everything is valid and only the calm analysis clarifies paths.
In the course of time, culture and nation have reciprocally fed back. For this reason, the culture day coincides with the anniversary of the beginning of our wars of independence. Immersed in complex circumstances, as happened on the occasion of the centenary, we are called to the celebration and the reflexive pause.
Taken from Juventud Rebelde for Radio Station Cadena Habana
By Graziella Pogolotti
Translated by Susel Esquivel
