CAMAGÜEY.- The Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (Uneac) celebrates this August 22th the 60 years of its foundation. Camagüey had a direct impact on the constitution due to key figures in the leadership of its processes, and to the attitude of the members because being from the organization means defending the Revolution.
The support was from the intention among poets to buy a useful plane for the new Cuban social project. They would agree on October 27-30, 1960 in this city. The invitation said: “We hope to see you with us in this First National Meeting of Poets and Artists, to demonstrate the unification of ideas of our class, with the Revolution and to lay the future foundations for the celebration of the First Congress of Poets and Artists of America . "
The poet and painter from Camagüey Rolando Escardó, lieutenant of the Rebel Army, died on the 16th of that month in a car accident in Jagüey Grande. He finalized details for the exchange that managed to develop and was closed by Nicolás Guillén.
THE FOUNDATIONAL CONGRESS
In a telephone dialogue with Adelante, the writer and combatant Benito Estrada Fernández - originally from Báguanos, Holguín, but living in the land of Ignacio Agramonte since 1970 - revealed other details of his investigation entitled La Unión de Escritores y Artistas Camagüeyanos. Brief historical tour on its sixtieth anniversary.
He says that Guillén himself appointed managers for the preparation of the constitutive Congress of Uneac. This task fell to Luis Suardíaz, then director of the Provincial Council of Culture, based in the building where the Julio Antonio Mella Provincial Library is located today. Those interested in participating in the event scheduled for August 18-22, 1961 at the Habana Libre hotel, could register in front of Agramonte Park, and only had to pay the ticket.
Manuel Villabella (right) and Raúl González de Cascorro (center), representatives of the Camagüey intellectual movement of the 1950s that promoted individual work and greater collective will since the founding of Uneac. Photo: Uneac Camagüey File
“There were 33 delegates for Camagüey, says Benito. Among them were the writers Raúl González de Cascorro, Manuel Villabella, José Oberto Caissé and Rómulo Loredo; for performing arts, Elvira Cruz, Joaquín Cobo and the Argentine Pablo Verbitsky; the musicians Jorge González Allué, Louis Aguirre and Guillermo de Jesús Cortina; the painters Jorge Santos Díaz and Héctor Molné. Also, artists from other provinces, for example, Fernando Alonso who was in the city, and Raúl Santos Serpa and other professors from the plastic arts academy ”.
Camagüey was recognized in Congress through its children. Roberto Fernández Retamar evoked Escardó. Guillén was at the head of the organization as president and Suardíaz as vice president. In addition, at the official birth of the organization Benito tracked the presence of Alberto Chapotín Pérez, Elio Cambra Cassalí and Sergio Ramos Ledesma, being in the giant choir of the School of Art Instructors invited to the closing of the event. He also gathered evidence to affirm that the first coordination of Uneac outside the capital arose in Camagüey, on September 29, 1961.
CHALLENGES IN THE UNION
"Neither Uneac nor the results of the creators can be separated from the institutions," says Sergio Morales Vera. Photo: Leandro Pérez Pérez / AdelanteIn the opinion of the poet and journalist Sergio Morales Vera, "from 1978, when it was reorganized, Uneac began to play a more relevant role in Camagüey." It happened with the guidance of the renowned writer Raúl González de Cascorro, and greater tranquility by having the headquarters. Several were the spaces through which he had traveled. It was founded in the Círculo de Profesionales —today, the part of the Colonial Cabaré, Hotel Santa María—, spent months in areas of the Council of Culture in front of Agramonte Park, and also settled in Avellaneda 218 and San Esteban 465. In the nineties, it moved to Cisneros 159.
Since 2008, Sergio presides over the Provincial Committee that relates 241 people, although some do not reside in the territory: “The sixty years of life of Uneac represent a flow of creation, an increase in the cultural heritage of the nation and an example in the defense of national identity without precedent because an organization like Uneac only exists in Cuba ”.
Armando Pérez Padrón gives young people three reasons for being a member of Uneac: “The first as an authentic space of commitment to its time; the second, to preserve national identity; and third, awareness of history because when one is young he believes that he does not make history, a fundamental tool in the defense of any cultural and social process. ”Photos: Leandro Pérez Pérez / Adelante
The first vice president, Armando Pérez Padrón, insists: “My first thought today is for Fidel. It is not called the Union for fun, but because Fidel was a strategist of ideology. Obviously, for a small country with a radical socialist revolution to defend its sovereignty, it needs the help of the intellectual and artistic world ”.
This researcher and professor of film history considers the recognition of the authorities and the people's follow-up to the Congresses a favorable indicator because Uneac denounces the bureaucracy, the inefficiency, the obstacles: “The young people of today cannot let Uneac lose. Tempered to the times that are lived, some matrices resemble the great battles of those times, but the contexts are totally different ”.
The organization also serves socio-cultural projects and sustainable community initiatives. Through the network of collaborators and together with the Center for Exchange and Reference on Community Initiatives (CIERIC), explains specialist Luisa María Ferrá Gómez, Uneac methodologically supports identity practices and revitalizes traditions of the nation.
BACK TO ESCARDÓ
Unfortunately, too little is known or said about the life and work of Rolando Escardó (1925-1960). He had green eyes and brown hair. He was himself a revelation of poetry, a riddle of the human. He bore the surname of his mother, Dolores Escardó de la Peña. He practiced caving. He walked with the wakefulness of a feat. He knew how to unite and found. He was barely 35 years old when death tore him from us.
A recent Facebook post by the Ignacio Agramonte Provincial Museum reveals identification documents, photographs, a notebook with his contacts and a revealing biography synthesis.
Since 1961 the gathering of tribute to Escardó has been maintained, started in Camagüey by Roberto Fernández Retamar. Photo: Adelante Digital File.
Escardó was an actor, dancer and singer with the Sociedad Santa Cecilia and the Teatro Principal. He published the first poems of him in the local press. He was in charge of the poetic section of Magazine de Cuba. He founded the groups Los Nuevos and Yarabey. He edited poems by José Martí in 1953. He prepared a selection of bards from Camagüey in 1957. He lived clandestinely in Havana. He opposed Batista's tyranny and he was persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, and exiled in Mexico.
With the triumph of 1959 he joined to fulfill tasks of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform, in the area of the Ciénaga de Zapata, where he organized coal cooperatives. Returning to it is a debt not only for Uneac, but for all those convinced that the alternative to a better world is built with activism and cultural resistance.
In the prologue to the Book of Rolando (1961), Virgilio Piñera tells an anecdote that is a lesson in spirituality for these times of revelry, consumerism, appearances and lack of intellectual honesty.
“(…) I remember meeting him on the eve of a trip to Mexico (January 1958) It was in the rehearsals of my piece La Boda. He was accompanied by Luis Marré, who approached me to say: 'Virgilio, lend me a peso, Rolando is starving, he has dizziness, he hasn't eaten for days.' Then I saw Escardó - a walking ghost - clutching some books under his arm. With that cordiality so much from him he offered me one. "It's the Camagüey's Poets Anthology," he told me. If I can cover the printing costs with the rest of the sale, I will edit my book of poems. Then, as if an overwhelming discouragement had reduced it to zero, he added: 'But what the hell am I going to edit if I'm eating, peso by peso, principal and interest! There was a painful silence in which we reviewed, he and I, our respective hungers. Then Escardó, putting a hand on his shoulder, said: 'What do you want, brother, it's like that, it will continue to be like that. It is our Karma. '
Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez