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Cultural Policy and Cultural Politics in Revolutionary Cuba: Re‐reading the Palabras a los intelectuales (Words to the Intellectuals)
Author(s) -
KUMARASWAMI PAR
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
bulletin of latin american research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.24
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1470-9856
pISSN - 0261-3050
DOI - 10.1111/j.1470-9856.2009.00315.x
Subject(s) - politics , reading (process) , negotiation , context (archaeology) , relevance (law) , sociology , cultural revolution , media studies , humanities , political science , history , social science , art , law , archaeology
This article re‐reads Fidel Castro's speech to Cuban artists and intellectuals at the Biblioteca Nacional José Martí (National Library) in June 1961. Despite extensive discussion of its famous extract, the speech has rarely been examined in depth. This article thus analyses the entire speech, situating it within its co‐text and its context and examining its multiple functions, offering as it does an insight into the social and educational implications of cultural revolution in Cuba and the inevitable tensions inherent in these. The article evaluates the negotiations in the text in the light of their relevance to contemporary cultural debates in Cuba.