Cuban culture experienced an intense 2023. The return of festivals, concerts, exhibitions and other in-person shows, which began the previous year after the pandemic, was confirmed in the last twelve months.
However, it was not easy. The Cuban economic crisis put a damper on the country’s artistic and literary scene, both in the organization of activities and events and in the support of a public spurred by other more pressing needs and by the transportation difficulty.
Even so, theaters, galleries, movie theaters and other cultural spaces that have managed to continue functioning despite the shortage, opened their doors. Meanwhile, Cuban artists — no matter where they lived, whether in Havana or Madrid, in Miami or Guantánamo — continued to perform and achieve successes beyond the seas.
Bellow, OnCuba proposes a look at what happened in the artistic and literary field in 2023. We do it more intending to revisit facts and figures that we believe are relevant, than trying to fully encompass that universe in constant ebullience that is Cuban culture and art.
Events and visitors
A quick look at the 2023 cultural program in Cuba reveals the holding of several of the most important and usual events. The International Book Fair, dedicated to Colombia and the writers Araceli García Carranza and Julio Travieso, toured the island after its Havana chapter; while the Casa de las Américas Literary Award moved to April and once again awarded authors from the continent.
Havana was once again the cultural epicenter of the country and throughout the year it hosted events such as the 27th International Festival of Dance in Urban Landscapes, the 20th Havana International Theater Festival, the 25th International Crafts Fair (FIART) — dedicated to la guayabera — and the 44th International New Latin American Film Festival, with some 200 films on its official billboard.
“Totem” y “Los delincuentes”empatan en Corales en el Festival de La Habana
In the musical field it is necessary to mention the Havana World Music Festival, with an important call; the Salsa Festival, with the best of the genre on the island and international guests; the fifth edition of Habana Clásica, with more than 60 artists from 17 countries; and, more recently, the Eyeife festivals, of electronic music, and Havana RPM, the first dedicated to vinyl in Cuba, which brought together foreign DJs and musicians with local artists.
Outside the capital, there was no lack of activity. Examples were the 60th edition of the legendary Pepe Sánchez Trova Festival, in Santiago de Cuba; the 42nd Caribbean Festival, also in Santiago, dedicated to Mexican celebrations of life and death; and the 30th Romerías de Mayo and the 29th Ibero-American Culture Festival, both of which cannot be missed in Holguín.
From May 31 to June 5, Isla Verde was celebrated on the Isle of Youth. It was the first International Film and Environmental Festival of the Caribbean, chaired by Jorge Perugorría. The event, in conjunction with the Antonio Núñez Jiménez Foundation and the Isla Patrimonial project, was non-competitive and included a series of films that, as environmental education workshops, generated talks with young people and adolescents, led by scientists and biologists, among other experts.
Other events of relevance beyond the capital were once again the persevering Gibara Film Festival; the Cubanía Festival, in Bayamo; the traditional Cucalambeana Day, in Las Tunas; the Varadero Josone Festival — which this time extended its activities to Matanzas; the Chocolate con Café Festival, in Guantánamo; and the debut of the Canchánchara Festival, in the hospitable and tourist town of Trinidad.
As for visitors, numerous foreign artists landed on the island again this year. Although perhaps the brilliant celebrities of previous periods did not arrive this time, creators of solid work and international prestige did.
Among those who arrived on the island in 2023 were, along with many others, the jazz musicians Aaron Goldberg and Ted Nash, from the United States; the Spanish singer Pilar Boyero, the German flutist Michael Faust and the Venezuelan poet Gustavo Pereira.
In addition, the U.S. singers Tonya Boyd-Cannon and Big Freedia — the latter known as “the New Orleans queen of bounce” —, the French director Christophe Barratier, the Brazilian actor José de Abreu — of regular presence in his country’s soap operas — and the actor Sergi López, from Spain also visited Cuba.
Full showcases
Although awards are not necessarily the best indicator of the cultural health of a country, they are an endorsement and recognition of its artists. And 2023 was a year full of awards for Cuban creators, both on and off the island.
Relevant figures from different manifestations, such as the actor Aramís Delgado, the actress Natacha Díaz, the dancer and choreographer José Antonio Chávez, the writer María Elena Llana, and the anthropologist Jesús Guanche, received the national awards for Theater, Television, Dance, Literature and Social Sciences, respectively.
Also recognized were the writers Miguel Barnet (Cultural Heritage) and Enrique Pérez Díaz (Editing), the political scientist and professor Rafael Hernández (Cultural Research), the makeup specialist Magaly Pompa (Cinema), and Yanet Oviedo (Curatorship).
Music had among its winners the greats Omara Portuondo, Chucho Valdés, and Paquito D’Rivera, winners in different categories of the Latin Grammy, as well as the recently deceased Camilo Valencia, the composer Yadam González and the arranger Rafael Valencia. The notable trumpeter Arturo Sandoval received, for his part, the Latin Grammy for Musical Excellence at a gala held in the city of Seville.
Meanwhile, the Cubadisco 2023 Grand Prize went to X Alfonso for Ancestros Sinfónico, an ensemble production with Síntesis and Eme Alfonso, whose presentation at the National Theater was, without a doubt, one of the musical events of the year in Cuba.
Also in 2023, Cuban-American composer Tania León became the first woman to win the Tomás Luis de Victoria SGAE Ibero-American Music Award. The Cuban artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons, who resides in the United States, received the MacArthur scholarship awarded to people with exceptional achievements.
In the field of dance, among other awards, highlights include the awarding to the dancer and choreographer Carlos Acosta of the Lifetime Achievement Award, the Prix de Lausanne, in Switzerland; and the 2023 United Kingdom National Dance Award to the dancer Zeleidy Crespo, member of the Acosta Danza group. In addition, teacher Lizt Alfonso received the UNEAC National Choreography Award for her show Habana Fénix.
In literature, the Pepe Carvalho International Black Novel Award received by Leonardo Padura, without a doubt the most international of Cuban writers today, deserves highlighting. Also, the Loewe Foundation Poetry Prize, won by the young Reiniel Pérez; the Archiletras de la Lengua, given to the writer, researcher and repentista Alexis Díaz-Pimienta; and the Nicolás del Hierro International Poetry Prize, won by the already established poet Sergio García Zamora.
In Cuba, for his part, the narrator from Mayarí Emerio Medina won the Julio Cortázar Ibero-American Short Story Prize for the second time; while another consecrated person, the poet and narrator from Las Tunas, Carlos Esquivel Guerra, won the Italo Calvino Prize for novels.
In terms of cinema, the film La mujer salvaje, by new director Alan González, won awards at events such as the Havana Festival — among them, the Special Jury Coral Prize — and the Ceará Film Festival, in Brazil. Other films awarded at different festivals were La Espera, by Daniel Ross; El Matadero, by Fernando Fraguela; El final del camino, by Ariagna Fajardo; Jíbaro, by Osmanys Sánchez; and El caso Padilla, by Pavel Giroud, best documentary at the Platinum Ibero-American Cinema Awards.
Likewise, the Havana Festival gave its Honorary Coral Prize to the great actress Eslinda Núñez, and the Gibara Festival recognized the costume designer Violetta Cooper and the renowned actors Jorge Perugorría and Luis Alberto García with the Honorary Lucía Prize. The latter was also awarded at the PRODU Awards of Latin Television for his portrayal of the dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo in the series El grito de las mariposas.
Anniversaries and departures
In 2023, important names in Cuban culture were remembered. Several of the main tributes of the year were dedicated to figures who were born just a century ago and whose work and legacy continue to elevate them, even though they are no longer physically present.
Among the centenaries celebrated this year are those of Rosita Fornés, the great star of Cuba, and the declaimer Luis Carbonell, the “Watercolorist of Cuban Poetry.” Also, those of the notable painter Servando Cabrera, the refined chronicler and humorist Enrique Núñez Jiménez, the scientist and writer Antonio Núñez Jiménez, and the poet and essayist Fina García-Marruz, an essential name in Cuban literature.
Furthermore, 95 years have passed since the birth of Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Titón, one of the pillars of the seventh art on the island and whose famous film Fresa y chocolate — directed together with the also deceased Juan Carlos Tabío — was released three decades ago. And the 30 years of the National Film Criticism Workshop, a must-see event for film scholars hosted by the city of Camagüey, was also commemorated.
For its part, Cuban culture commemorated — both inside and outside the island — the 80th birthday of Pablo Milanés, whose posthumous album Amor y Salsa, with the participation of numerous Cuban and international artists, was presented in 2023. Eight decades ago too Reinaldo Arenas was born, the cursed writer of “Celestino ante del alba” and “El mundo hallucinante,” in whose honor a literary contest is held in Holguín.
The National Ballet of Cuba, the emblematic group founded by Alicia Alonso, celebrated 75 years, with a day of premieres, presentations and international tours.
Meanwhile, in the musical field, it was 60 years since the founding of the Original de Manzanillo and the death of Benny Moré, the immortal King of Rhythm, as well as 45 years since the birth of Son 14 in Santiago de Cuba, and 20 years since the death of Máximo Francisco Repilado, Compay Segundo, a legend of traditional Cuban music.
In terms of losses, 2023 was a hard year for the island’s art and literature. A significant number of Cuban creators died in the last twelve months, some of them in the country and others outside Cuba. But regardless of the place where they lived or where they built their work, their departure is equally painful.
Among those who left this year are the musicians Lázaro Valdés, Gina León, Teté Caturla and Ireno García; the writers Eduardo Heras León, Antón Arrufat and F. Mond; the ethnologist Natalia Bolívar, the journalist Rolando Pérez Betancourt, the actors Rubén Breñas and Carlos Treto, and the cartoonist Jorge Oliver, father of Capitán Plin.
Outside the island, figures such as the writers Edmundo Desnoes (United States), Chely Lima (United States) and Manuel Díaz Martínez (Spain) ceased to exist; the painters Umberto Peña (Spain) and Miguel Ordoqui (United States); the playwright Raúl Alfonso (Spain); and the musicians Juan Carlos Formell (United States), Martín Rojas (United States) and José María Abreu, the last of Los Papines (Spain).
Events and controversies
Cuban culture was the scene of many events throughout 2023. The main awards and events of the year were, without a doubt, among them; But we would like to now address other events not yet reviewed in this summary.
Some of these events were also accompanied by controversy, as happened with UNESCO’s declaration of the bolero and its spaces and social uses in Cuba and Mexico, as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The decision did justice to a genre that is pride and tradition for Cubans but caused controversy among some academics, musicians, and the public due to the shared nature of the candidacy and recognition with the Mexican nation.
Also this year, although without background noise, UNESCO distinguished the capitular minutes of the Havana City Council (1550-1898) and the collection of Cuban film posters as Documentary Heritage of Humanity. It did so by including both sets in the international registry of the Memory of the World program. The posters, moreover, have their own center in the Cuban capital, inaugurated during the 44th International Festival of New Latin American Cinema.
In the plastic arts, successes resulted in the opening of important exhibitions outside the island, such as “Arquitectura de un sistema,” by Michel Mirabal, exhibited during the Venice Architecture Biennale; and “Un nuevo mundo,” by Alexis Leyva Machado, Kcho, in the Vatican. Also, the inauguration of exhibitions in Cuba such as “Paisaje interior”, awarded by the Alberto Lescay National Plastic Arts Prize, in Fine Arts.
On stage, it is necessary to mention the premiere by Argos Teatro of Los vecinos de arriba, a comedy by the Spanish Cesc Gay starring Laura de la Uz, Jacqueline Arenal, Osvaldo Doimeadiós, Carlos Luis González, Eduardo Martínez and Caleb Casas — also its director —, which lasted for several weeks with a full house.
Likewise, productions such as Frijoles colorados, a high-quality histrionic exercise by the experienced Verónica Lynn and Jorge Luis de Cabo, achieved prominence; Kilómetro Cero, which approaches the topic of male prostitution and recently won one of the Villanueva Awards; and La Zapatera Prodigiosa, by the El Público theater company, which remained on the billboard for almost the entire year and closed a long season ― which began at the end of 2022 ― of more than a hundred performances.
Cuban literature had among its stellar moments the talk shared by Leonardo Padura with the Peruvian Nobel Prize for Literature Mario Vargas Llosa, during the second Escribidores Literary Festival of America and Europe, in Malaga. And also the recognition of Nancy Morejón by the Cervantes Institute, in whose “Caja de las letras” several personal items of the Cuban poet were kept this year, among them a seashell that accompanied her “all her life,” some books and magazines, a notebook, and a watercolor drawn by her.
Music, for its part, experienced events such as the performances of Síntesis, X and Eme Alfonso with their Ancestros Sinfónico in the National Theater, the concert with sui generis versions of music such as that of the film trilogy The Lord of the Rings, as part of the British Culture Week in Cuba, and the return to the Cuban stage, after six years of absence, of the great singer-songwriter Pedro Luis Ferrer.
The creator of memorable songs such as “Mariposa,” “Inseminación artificial” and “Cómo me gusta hablar español,” starred in a double function at the Bellas Artes theater, after the controversy unleashed by the invitations distributed by the cultural authorities ― to the detriment of ticket sales — for the initially announced one-off concert.
In the cinematographic field, we cannot forget the screening of the film Landrián, by Ernesto Daranas and dedicated to the notable — and censored for years — Cuban documentary filmmaker Nicolás Guillén Landrián, during the Venice International Film Festival, one of the great events of world cinema; and the Havana Film Festival.
On the other hand, a controversy reactivated the Assembly of Cuban Filmmakers. The censorship of the documentary La Habana de Fito, by Juan Pin Vilar — along with other independent works — and its subsequent broadcast on Cuban television in a non-final version and without the authorization of the filmmakers, were the triggers for the call launched by the group, made up of Cuban filmmakers from inside and outside the island; among them, heavyweights such as directors Fernando Pérez, Ernesto Daranas and Rebeca Chávez, screenwriter Senel Paz, critic Gustavo Arcos and actor Luis Alberto García.
The group, which defends transnational, free and diverse cinema, as well as the right of artists “to interpret and question their environment,” has publicly shown its opposition to censorship and other practices of cultural institutions. Furthermore, it has advocated for dialogue and has addressed the authorities with considerations and proposals, while at the same time expressing itself without restrictions on events such as the exclusion of Cuban documentaries from the Havana Festival.
Meanwhile, the government created a temporary group for cinema, which has not responded to the demands of the Assembly, and has met with filmmakers, including members of the independent group. In addition, it appointed journalist and promoter Alexis Triana as the new director of ICAIC, whose election was questioned by the Assembly, more for the “method” of his election and “what it represents and projects” than about his person.
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OnCuba Staff
