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P.M. affair

The P.M. affair was a political scandal that occurred in Cuba in 1961. After a brief period of artistic optimism beginning in 1959, where exiled artists returned to Cuba, the banning of the film P.M. triggered a slow wave of emigration of Cuban filmmakers, who grew more frustrated with growing censorship in Cuba. The banning of the film P.M. was not a lone act of censorship which caused pessimism among filmmakers, instead, the censorship of P.M. was viewed to exemplify a growing atmosphere of artistic overwatch.[1][2][3][4]

Background

See also: Coletilla

After the success of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, there was a brief literary boom in Cuba. The magazine Lunes de Revolución was developed to be a weekly version of the magazine Revolución. The magazine was edited by Guillermo Cabrera Infante, and worked to promote Cuban culture to a worldwide audience. The Casa de las Américas also began to publish its own literary review.

Lunes de Revolución was loosely organized by Carlos Franqui, Virgilio Piñera, Pablo Armando Fernández, Jose Antonio Baragaño, Antón Arrufat, Oscar Hurtado, and Humberto Arenal. The magazine took no common political stance, and often published works about surrealism, or existentialism. By 1960, a general trend develop to publish works that were "revolutionary" in that they supported Cuba's political direction.[5]

At the beginning of 1960, the Cuban press began to face greater censorship struggles. Newspapers were demanded to add "coletillas" (tag-lines), after articles that the print union disapproved. By the end of 1960, the conflict over coletillas would lead print unions to seize newspaper plants, and allow them to be nationalized.[6][7]

The film P.M. was shot in 1960 by Orlando Jiménez Leal, and was an homage to the style of Free Cinema. The film portrayed the black and mulatto poor of Havana engaging in a night of partying.[8]

Controversy

Alfredo Guevara, who was head of the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos, refused to give a license to the film which approved it for public screening, even though it had been aired on television. This refusal for public screening was made, according to Guevara, because the film "obviously wasn't made out of any feeling of racial discrimination, but a number of people found it offensive". This stirred a controversy among the writers at Lunes de Revolución, and member Néstor Almendros published the controversy in Revista Bohemia. The Casa de las Américas responded to the controversy by having a private viewing of the film, which resulted in mixed reviews. The debates that followed caused the intervention of Fidel Castro, who met with the contesting writers and delivered his famed "Words to the Intellectuals" speech.[9]

In his 1961, speech "Word to the Intellectuals", Castro stated:

This means that within the Revolution, everything goes; against the Revolution, nothing. Nothing against the Revolution, because the Revolution has its rights also, and the first right of the Revolution is the right to exist, and no one can stand against the right of the Revolution to be and to exist, No one can rightfully claim a right against the Revolution. Since it takes in the interests of the people and Signifies the interests of the entire nation.[10]

While Castro's proclamation was vague in defining to who was considered loyal to "the revolution", Castro also later defined in his speech, a need for the National Cultural Council to direct artistic affairs in Cuba, and for the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba to publish literary debate magazines.[11]

Aftermath

See also: Padilla affair

Castro's speech "Words to the Intellectuals" was the first instance of any sort of boundaries established for artistic expression, after the Cuban Revolution. Much of the artistic oversight that developed after the P.M. affair, often policed artistic repressentations of black people, which were considered too ethnically specific, and without a general Cuban character.[12]

Soon after Castro's proclamation, the government shut down Lunes de Revolución, and a few months later established the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba.[4]

The precedent of censorship established by the P.M. affair, eventually culminated in the Padilla affair of 1971, a similar scandal of artistic censorship.[13]

References

  1. ^ Women Screenwriters An International Guide. Palgrave Macmillan. 2015. p. "Cuba" section. ISBN 9781137312372.
  2. ^ Diddon, Joan (2017). Miami. Open Road. p. Section 12. ISBN 9781504045681.
  3. ^ Jorge Berenschot, Denis (2005). Performing Cuba (Re)writing Gender Identity and Exile Across Genres. P. Lang. p. 111. ISBN 9780820474403.
  4. ^ a b Revolutionary Change in Cuba. University of Pittsburgh Press. 1972. p. 458. ISBN 9780822974130.
  5. ^ Artaraz, Kepa (2009). Cuba and Western Intellectuals Since 1959. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 34–38. ISBN 9780230618299.
  6. ^ The Bloomsbury Handbook to Cold War Literary Cultures. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2022. pp. 340–345. ISBN 9781350191723.
  7. ^ Iber, Patrick (2015). Neither Peace Nor Freedom The Cultural Cold War in Latin America. Harvard University Press. pp. 134–138. ISBN 9780674915145.
  8. ^ Cabrena Infante, Guillermo (1995). Mea Cuba. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 52. ISBN 9780374524463.
  9. ^ Censorship A World Encyclopedia. Taylor and Francis. 2001. pp. 400–401. ISBN 9781136798641.
  10. ^ Castro, Fidel (1961). "CASTRO'S SPEECH TO INTELLECTUALS ON 30 JUNE 61". lanic.utexas.edu.
  11. ^ Story, Isabel (4 December 2019). Soviet Influence on Cuban Culture, 1961–1987 When the Soviets Came to Stay. Lexington Books. p. 69. ISBN 9781498580120.
  12. ^ Morris, Andrea (2012). Afro-Cuban Identity in Postrevolutionary Novel and Film Inclusion, Loss, and Cultural Resistance. Lexington Books. p. 12-13. ISBN 9781611484229.
  13. ^ The Cambridge History of Latin America. Cambridge University Press. 1984. p. 188. ISBN 9780521495943.
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