HAVANA, Cuba, Feb 10 (ACN ) The Palace of the Revolution reopened its doors Monday to more than twenty intellectuals and artists who every month meet with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez to follow up on the agreements of the IX Congress of UNEAC, held at the end of 2019.

In this meeting, also attended by Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz and the head of Culture, Alpidio Alonso Grau, a report was presented with everything done UNEAC’s associations to keep its latest Congress alive in the midst of a pandemic that has limited interaction, and there was a fruitful exchange on national culture and the attacks currently underway against the country’s institutions.

The Head of State said that culture is being attacked because it is the very essence of the Revolution, and the purpose of the colonizing platforms is to destroy our identity, with the aspiration of dominating us. But in the history of Cuba, with rare exceptions, intellectuals and artists have been with the most advanced causes, that is why the Revolution, he reiterated, “has been sung to and told by its artists”.

Díaz-Canel highlighted the unity of the Cuban intelligentsia and rejected attempts to show it as fragmented. He advocated the continuity and dissemination of the ongoing daily talks with and among our institutions.

Prestigious voices spoke of the defense of the cultural policy that, faulty as it may be, allowed an artistic explosion since the triumph of the Revolution until today, and of the always critical character of Cuban art, promoted precisely from the institutions thanks to that permanent dialogue.

For more than two hours, intellectuals and artists spoke with the President on various topics. In the first place, they addressed the media lynching of those who defend the Revolution in social networks and public spaces, and the courage of those who insist on doing so despite the costs; the need to strengthen our organizations, some of which are still stuck in old patterns, and the need to put the cultural heritage of the nation before the apocalyptic scenario that is intended to be created around it.

Once again, the Presidency of the Republic hosted the intelligentsia’s permanently revolutionary discourse in a customary meeting with the president, who, in December 2019, called on UNEAC to be more proactive at grassroots level and to fight “against windmills, as old as they are harmful”.