Cuban opera singer challenges "jealous" bureaucrats over closed theater

Cuban opera singer challenges "jealous" bureaucrats over closed theater
By Marc Frank
HAVANA | Wed Aug 1, 2012 6:28pm EDT

(Reuters) - The Cuban government has closed a privately run cultural
center, causing consternation among artists and intellectuals in what is
shaping up to be the latest test of President Raul Castro's loosening of
controls over everyday life.

A week ago government inspectors burst into the El Cabildo cultural
center to the shock of patrons, artists and staff attending musical
performed by its theater company, the "Opera in the Street."

The local authorities, citing a recent Reuters story on the center that
mentioned a cover charge for customers, took away El Cabildo's license
on the grounds of "illicit enrichment."

The vast majority of El Cabildo's clients were Cuban, paying a 50-peso
cover charge, the equivalent of $2, while foreigners paid more.

The inspectors searched El Cabildo for hours and interrogated its young
artists and restaurant staff, but found nothing more amiss than two
cooks working on a trial basis without proper papers, employees said.

A protest letter circulating among members of Cuba's National Union of
Artists and Writers, and written by owner Ulises Aquino, defends the
cultural center against the enrichment charges and instead turns the
tables on unnamed bureaucrats.

"The poet says: 'who questions the honorable, clearly signals that he is
not,' and a proverb says, 'The thief thinks that everyone is the same as
he,'" Aquino's letter said.

Officials at the Cuban government's press office did not immediately
respond to a request seeking an official explanation for El Cabildo's
closure.

STATE BUREAUCRATS UNDER ATTACK

For many within Cuba's cultural and intellectual circles, the cultural
center's fate has become a litmus test of efforts by Castro to grow the
state's small private sector while drastically reducing the state
bureaucracy.

Since taking over for his ailing older brother Fidel in 2008, Raul
Castro, 81, has liberalized regulations for small businesses and
farming, and begun leasing small state retail outlets to employees.

Aquino, a 50-year-old opera singer, founded the theater company Opera in
the Street in 2006, and taking advantage of loosened regulations on
small business and government encouragement of local development
projects, opened El Cabildo as a permanent venue for the youthful troupe.

A staunch advocate of socialism, Aquino charged in his letter that the
forces behind the closing of his center were "jealous" of its success.

"Those who fear that the worker, the intellectual and the artist might
find their own productive road are not revolutionaries, they are
conservatives," he wrote.

"They enjoy the benefits of power that gives them the ability, as in
this case, to decide the destiny of human works, not to help them
flourish, but to destroy them," Aquino charged.

The Reuters story characterized El Cabildo as "perhaps the largest
private business in Havana," with the Opera of the Street's 86 artists
and support staff, plus 43 other employees in its bar and restaurant.

After the article appeared, the Communist Party's Ideology Department
phoned Aquino to ask how El Cabildo worked.

Aquino told reporters that he provided a full explanation and believed
all was well, only to be raided by a "commando" of inspectors later in
the week.

BUILT FROM SCRATCH

Aquino, a stocky, barrel-chested man who has a powerful baritone voice
onstage but speaks softly when he is off, built from scratch the
eclectic theater company that mixes traditional opera with Cuban song
and dance and popular music from abroad.

He also built the cultural center, investing his savings earned abroad
as an opera singer, on the ruins of a collapsed building in Playa, one
of Havana's relatively well off districts.

Reuters also had reported that El Cabildo's proceeds were shared after
expenses, taxes, and investments, resulting in monthly wages four times
greater than the country's 450 pesos average, or around $19.

"The earnings of the Opera of the Street are divided among everyone ...
including me ... All the artists perform with a subsidy from the Culture
Ministry, but as our president has said, salaries do not correspond with
the cost of living," Aquino said in his letter.

A government insider said the Playa district's architect and perhaps
other officials were opposed to the El Cabildo for various reasons and
had apparently used the Reuters story as an excuse to shut it down.

A Cuban economist said El Cabildo's cover charge may have fallen into a
gray area in Cuban law. Though private establishments were not
prohibited from having cover charges, establishments associated with the
Culture Ministry, such as such as El Cabildo, might be more restricted
in what they can charge.

(Editing by David Adams)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/01/us-cuba-theater-reform-idUSBRE8701R120120801