The celebration this Thursday in Havana of the National Council of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (Uneac) marked the beginning of the process towards the X Congress of the organization that will take place in June this year.

According to Luis Morlote Rivas, who stepped down as president of Uneac on Thursday, the main motivation of the Cuban artistic vanguard towards its great event is the maxim of the wise Fernando Ortiz when he said that «culture is the Homeland».

He considered that with the National Council held this Thursday, the ideas and proposals for Uneac’s work during the five-year term that is about to begin were outlined.

Morlote Rivas described the dialogues of the members of the five associations of the organization as profound, as they brought to light problems, solutions, challenges, aspirations, dreams and ways in which writers and artists can help the country to overcome the most challenging situations.

There is an urgent need to contribute more actively to the improvement of our cultural policy and of the institutions responsible for implementing it and for attending to and dialoguing with creators, as well as promoting the protagonist participation of the population, he said.

For this creator, it is essential to establish relations between material transformations and the promotion of spirituality and, consequently, to energize processes that give rise to a constant raising of the standard of living and life expectations of citizens in their communities.

He said it is urgent to combat more effectively the attempts to divide Cuba and the impact of the neoliberal globalizing wave in society, which is achieved by confronting the seduction of the hegemonic media that persist in the inoculation of cultural anti-values of foreign ideology and cultural industries.

The National Council that sets the starting point for the X Congress of Uneac is, in the words of Morlote Rivas, a way for the strengthening and growth of the spiritual fabric of the nation.

The call for the conclave is a very special motivation for the writers and artists who make up the organization throughout the country, who show their commitment to strengthen and renew the Union created by Nicolas Guillen, Commander in Chief Fidel Castro and a plethora of leading intellectuals in 1961, he said.

Finally, he highlighted the support of the highest leadership of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), the Government and the institutional system of culture in the solutions to the problems that emerged from the IX Congress in 2019 and some that still remain unanswered.

He expressed that the survival of the Cuban social project passes today by ratifying the decisive role of culture as in other crucial moments of the Revolution, in which Uneac and its members have demonstrated that it is a living, belligerent, active, committed and necessary organization.

Rogelio Polanco Fuentes, member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the PCC and head of the Ideological Department, said that the 10th Congress has to be a debate of all the people for their culture and in which the revolutionary institutionality will accompany the creators who make it possible for the spiritual fabric of the nation to be strengthened.

This important event will take place in Havana between June 28 and 30 to commemorate the 63rd anniversary of Fidel’s historic «Words to the Intellectuals», which were the foundations of Cuban cultural policy.