Letter from UNEAC to U.S. Creators: "Secretary of State Misleads the American People" About Cuba

The Cuban Union of Writers and Artists (UNEAC) released an open letter this Saturday, on the United States' Independence Day, addressed to American artists, writers, and scholars. The letter accuses Secretary of State Marco Rubio of deceiving his own citizens regarding Cuba and labels Washington's policy towards the island as "systematic genocide."

The message, endorsed by UNEAC's National Council, claims that "the secretary of state misleads the American public about our reality and stokes interventionist flames with increasingly criminal actions," urging U.S. creators to denounce the Trump administration's sanctions.

The irony of this gesture is hard to overlook: the same institution that passionately condemns the "global gag" Rubio seeks to impose has, for decades, efficiently silenced Cuban artists who dare to oppose the regime.

The letter dismisses Washington's reasons for pressuring Cuba as "ridiculous" and originating from "delusional and malicious minds," describing Trump's policy as "hijacked by a Cuban-American minority that benefits economically and politically" from it. It's an exercise in critical bravery that, curiously, UNEAC has never directed towards Havana.

In October 2022, the same organization signed a letter denying the regime's repression following massive protests in Havana. The document was so hastily assembled that it included signatures of deceased individuals, like poet José Rolando Rivero, who had died weeks earlier, prompting Ciego de Ávila's Directorate of Culture to issue a public apology.

That incident led to notable breakups: musician Pedro Luis Ferrer severed ties with UNEAC, and historian Ivette García González formally resigned days later. Artists like Roberto Carcassés and Juan Antonio García Borrero even denied signing the document.

The institution's history is long and consistent in its servility. After July 11, 2021, filmmakers and writers such as Carlos Lechuga, Yunior García Aguilera, and Javier L. Mora exited the organization, denouncing, as reported by Diario de Cuba, that they could not remain in "a chorus singing praises to those who ordered repression." Playwright Irán Capote was removed from his teaching position in Pinar del Río following a "purge" over "ideological issues," and poet Delfín Prats saw his book destroyed in 1968 by the institution itself, which ostracized him for decades.

The letter invokes historical figures—José Martí, Langston Hughes, Nicolás Guillén—to craft a narrative of cultural brotherhood between the two peoples. It quotes Hughes' verses as a call for "the sanity of a government that does not represent its people": "Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed. / Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme / That any man be crushed by one above." Verses that, read from Havana, take on a meaning UNEAC clearly did not intend.

The letter is released as Cuba endures an unprecedented energy crisis, with blackouts lasting 20 to 40 hours consecutively and a generation deficit exceeding 2,000 MW—a situation with structural roots preceding any sanctions, inherent to the regime's economic model, though UNEAC chooses not to mention it.

The organization concludes its letter with a declaration that, given its source, deserves framing: "Enough of the inflicted suffering, the conscious genocide, the war waged against us for the mere 'sin' of defending national independence!" Words that imprisoned, exiled, or silenced Cuban artists might endorse without changing a comma, though directed at a very different target.