IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 6 ENGLISH | Page 8

of the historically emblematic areas of the
capital, reaffirms that the truth cannot be
hidden. The article “Cuba: Reasons for a
Non-Identity,” by Verónica Vega, delves
precisely into this panorama and its
consequences for feelings of national
identification. She points out how difficult it
is, particularly for young people, “to transmit
a pride that has nothing to do with the
imposed patriotism against which generations
of Cubans have reacted and react with rage,
demystification, or apathy.” This is about a
context that overwhelms citizens, due to the
excess of arbitrary measures to which they are
subjects, and the disdain there is for their
rights. All this ends up choking any sense of
belonging to the nation. Yet, it is encouraging
that what one sees upon first glance has not
yet definitively shaped the deepest part of the
pride there is in being Cuban. There are
people who engage in the alternative arts, who
use all their talents to nurture what David
D’Omni calls in his article the “Trinity of
Art,” which is “grandiose, total, and
powerful, when it is born of an honest cry of
the soul, and does not fake, does not fear, and
overwhelms with its rare majesty; it is a banal
void and sterile when it does fake, fear, and
does not overwhelm.”Among the creators of
this sort of art is Amaury Pacheco, who talks
to us about his trajectory as an artist in the
interview with him Yania Suárez did for this
issue. He talks about his recently created
philosophy of art, “Necessary Art,” and its
perspectives and possibilities for satisfying
needs: “An art in which the poetic operates
without any pre-established aesthetic norms,
which makes the artistic endeavor a satisfier
of needs or converts the satisfier into an
artistic endeavor.” That position is alien to the
Cuban State’s rigid aesthetic ideology, and
José Clemente Gascón examines it in his
article “The Influence of Religious Systems
and Afro-Cuban Cultural Practices on

Contemporary Cuban Art.” When measures
are used against intellectuals and artists, for
political, ideological, or moral reasons, the
consequences are terrible, as Gascón shows
through the creators who chose for his article.
Since what is born of the people can take root
in any environment or spaces, as long as the
seed and new growth have the devoted
attention of its growers, “The Secret ,” by
Enrique del Risco, submerges us into a very
Cuban musical, poetic, and dance tradition
being cultivated in New York neighborhoods,
both on a personal level, in an artistic and
popular context created by Cubans and Puerto
Ricans. The same can be said of Arístedes
Falcón’s documentary, “ clave blen blen
blen,” which captures this environment, and
reveals to us “the complex process of taking
root in a large city [and explores] its musical
dimensions but also reviews the historical,
social, ethnic, national, racial, and religious”
aspects, to offer us a vivid testimony. In the
section Tributes, Leonardo Calvo talks to us
in “Bicentennial of Mariana Grajales”
about the significance and transcendence of
Mariana Grajales, a paradigm of an Afrodescendant woman of humble origins who
contributed mightily to the creation of the
Cuban nation. The tribute is in the context of
the Mariana Grajales Bicentennial and
highlights the lack of ignorance and omission
with which Afro-descendants are often treated
in order to hide their place and participation in
the formation and development of Cuba. This
issue of invisibilizing, invisibility, and
ignorance is also dealt with deeply, as is racial
violence in other latitudes, in the articles by
Omer Freixa, Norberto Pablo Cirio, Bonita
Lee Penn, Angie Edell and Jorge Rafael
Ramírez. In “Rethinking Negritude in
Argentina,” Freixa begins by discussing
different national anniversaries to show how
Afro-descendants have been eliminated from
the register of historical memory. From this

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