Havana commemorates 30th Anniversary Of Unesco's Program on Slavery
TeleSUR collaborator Belén de los Santos brings us details on the international conference to commemorate 30 years of a program between the Cuban Ministry of Culture and Unesco to break the silence on slavery and its traces that. teleSUR
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00:00And now changing topics, the Cuban Ministry of Culture and UNESCO has an international
00:06conference in Havana to commemorate 30 years of program destined to break the silence on
00:12slavery and its trends that continue to the present.
00:16Collaborator in Havana Belen de los Santos brings us the details.
00:20New narratives, memory, resistance and vindication.
00:25That is the title under which Cuba is hosting an international conference in celebration
00:29of the 30 years of UNESCO's program The Route of the Enslaved People, dedicated to the building
00:36of a common memory of resistance that breaks the silence over one of humanity's largest
00:42tragedies that continues to shape today's world.
00:46We are commemorating these 30 years of creative and educational work to educate people against
00:53all traces of racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia.
01:00Slavery also hit us, it's part of our history and it is present in literature, it's present
01:06in art and in Cuban writers, in essayists, in narrators, in poets.
01:14And visual artists have also had it as a reference.
01:19It is a scourge that is still latent.
01:23The Vice President of the Scientific Committee of UNESCO's program, Dudu Dien, highlights
01:28the importance of this collective memory as the spirit of slavery persists in the modern
01:34world.
01:35In this context, the creative resistance of Afro-descendants continues to offer possible
01:41answers to present challenges.
01:44The ideological pillar of slavery is still there.
01:50It is being now expressed by the neoliberalism system, which puts the market at the centre
01:55of life.
01:57And what is interesting for me, the lesson I am drawing, is that Afro-descendants, and
02:03this conference is showing it, by their history, by their very intelligent, creative intelligence
02:12of resistance, have represented one of the forces of the modern world who can neutralise
02:24the dehumanisation of the neoliberal system.
02:29Among the program's objectives is the need to deconstruct previous discourses that continue
02:35to support a system of racial oppression.
02:38According to Nigerian Nobel Prize-winning author Wole Soyinka, art plays a significant
02:44role in this battle.
02:46Art is a sanctuary, not just individual alone, but collective.
02:52As you can see when you visit galleries, when you go to theatre, when you go to a music
02:58hall, a concert hall, you see that it's both individual and collective.
03:04That's why I think that despite all the pains, all the frustrations, sometimes even failures,
03:13to be engaged in that occupation for me is one of the greatest gifts to mankind.
03:20In this context, the program, organised by Cuban Ministry of Culture, UNESCO and the
03:25Fernando Ortiz Foundation, included a visit to an exhibition of Cuban artist Manuel Mendibe.
03:32According to Cuban Museum of Fine Arts director Jorge Hernández, Mendibe's work is an example
03:38of the possibility of resignifying the past that shaped the Cuban and Caribbean culture
03:43and transforming it into new forms of resistance.
03:47Mendibe's work is not a work that incites hatred, that incites rancour.
03:55As his exhibit's name says, Bread with Guava, a Happy Life, which by the way is also a snack,
04:01a typical meal for any Cuban, in a time of emergency, you prepare a piece of bread with
04:06guava and you kill your hunger and you say, well, I'm over hunger now, which is a feeling
04:11as agonising as thirst.
04:14But that hunger and thirst, in Mendibe, is made into happiness.
04:19He has always been for unity, for national unity, for cultural unity, for unity of colours,
04:25for racial unity.
04:28This is very important, because we all have to get together and love each other, so that
04:33we can continue to love one another and make our neighbours also love as much as we love
04:38ourselves.
04:39Just as Manuel Mendibe's work speaks of unity, Cuba continues to be an example in the world
04:48of the people's capacity for solidarity and resilience.
04:53That is why, in the words of Waldo Soyinka, Cuba is to this day a part of Africa.
04:59Cuba is something for us, even on the African continent, to point out as possibilities,
05:07despite all the difficulties, despite the inhuman privations, and I'm talking about
05:13sanctions, despite all of that, Cubans have kept their dignity.
05:20So it's one of the reasons why we cannot let Cuba go from Africa, because it represents
05:26certain values which are important to us also as human beings.