Revolution of Forms: Cuba’s Forgotten Art Schools examines the convergence of architecture, ideology, and culture in 1960s Cuba through the design of the Escuelas Nacionales de Arte (National Art Schools), conceived and initiated by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara soon after the Revolution’s victory. The utopian vision of architects Ricardo Porro, Roberto Gottardi, and Vittorio Garatti integrated issues of culture, ethnicity, and place, reinventing architecture just as the Revolution hoped to reinvent society.
As the utopian dream succumbed to dystopian reality, construction was halted and the architects fell out of political favor. The 2011 documentary Unfinished Spaces explores the current state of the schools and follows the exiled architects, who were invited back by Castro to finish their unrealized dream. Revolution of Forms author John Loomis will be joined by Unfinished Spaces co-directors Benjamin Murray and Alysa Nahmias for a conversation on the history of the schools and their rediscovery as visionary architectural masterpieces, now officially recognized by the Cuban government as national treasures.
September 5th for the Cuban 5, Rev. Joan Brown Campbell Joins the International Campaign and Sends a Message to Obama
September 12th will mark the 14th anniversary of the unfair imprisonment of the 5 Cuban Patriots. On the 5th of this month, joining thousands of people from all over the world, Rev. Joan Brown Campbell is sending a letter to President Obama asking him to release the Cuban 5.
Photo: Katrien Demuynck, taken during a meeting of religious leaders in April during the events “5 Days for the Cuban 5 in Washingto DC”.
Dr. Campbell was the first woman to be Associate Executive Director of the Greater Cleveland Council of Churches; the first woman to be Executive Director of the U.S. office of the World Council of Churches; the first ordained woman to be General Secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA; and today, she is the first woman Director of Religion at the historic Chautauqua Institution. Dr. Campbell is truly a “first woman.” In every job she has held, she was the first woman to carry that responsibility.
As General Secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ, Dr. Campbell played a crucial role in the fight for the return of 6 year old Elian Gonzalez to Cuba in 2000.
LETTER OF REV. JOAN BROWN CAMPBELL TO PRESIDENT OBAMA
September 5, 2012
Dear President Obama,
Today I joined with thousands of people from all over the world to ask you for a humanitarian gesture to allow 5 Cuban men, four of them in US prisons and one under supervised probation to return home to their loved ones.
In December of last year a delegation led by the Reverend Dr. Michael Kinnamon, Former General Secretary of the US National Council of Churches of Christ visited Cuba. They held a number of important meetings including one with the Council of Churches of Cuba. In these meetings they shared days of pray and reflection. They then issued a joint statement in which they committed to work towards the normalization of the relations between the US and Cuba. The relationship between the U.S. National Council of Churches and the Cuban Council is 70+ years old and predates the revolution.
The statement of the churches indicates that to obtain that desired and necessary objective, a number of humanitarian questions must be solved, “that are cause of the lack of unjustifiable understanding and an unnecessary human suffering”. The greatest obstacle mentioned in their declaration was the US blockade against Cuba. Voting on the lifting of the blockade has been brought up in 20 occasions at the General Assembly of United Nations.
Another obstacles mentioned in the joint statement is the imprisonment in the United States of “Five Cubans”, from a trial full of irregularities, whose sentences “have been declared unjust by numerous human right organizations, including Amnesty International and even the United Nations”.
Members of the delegation met with the mothers and spouses of the Cuban 5 as a show of support for the freedom of their children and spouses.
The Cuban 5, as they are internationally known, were no threat to US national security. Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González sacrificed their lives to monitor terrorist groups based in Miami. They came to this country to alert and protect Cuban and North American people from criminal actions that have cost the life of thousands of Cubans and foreign citizens like Fabio Di Celmo, a young Italian who died in 1997 product of a bombing in a Havana hotel.
The Cuban government asked the U.S. government to put an end to the impunity of violent organizations that seriously threaten both countries. In June 1998 a delegation of high-level FBI went to Havana due to the magnitude of the complaint. Cuban officials gave the FBI all the information they had on these criminal groups to cease their actions. Incredibly, three months later the FBI arrested the messengers of this critical information, the Cuban 5.
This month of September will mark the 14 anniversary of the arrest of these five men; and so far no terrorist has been convicted, while the Cuban 5 still remain imprisoned.
On October 7 of last year, Rene Gonzalez, one of the Cuban 5, served his sentence of 15 years and was released, but the U.S. government prevented him from returning to Cuba to be reunited with his loved ones. René is being forced to stay for three years of probation in South Florida where his life is in constant danger. As an additional punishment, the U.S. government refuses to grant a visa to his wife Olga Salanueva to visit him in the U.S.
President Obama, I have visited Cuba over 30 times, I have met the families of the Cuban 5 and I share their suffering. It is time to free the Cuban 5 as a sign of our humanity. This same concern is felt by the entire Cuban people, leaders of all religions, lawyers, intellectuals, artists, 10 Nobel Prize recipients, parliaments, governments, Christians and Catholics in Latin America and thousands around the world.
More than a decade ago, when I was the General Secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States, I had the opportunity to get involved in the return of Elian Gonzalez to Cuba. He was a young child, a victim of the contentious relations between the United States and Cuba. During that time I was able to meet his grandmothers and his father and I experienced the pain of a Cuban family.
I feel there is a similarity between both cases, although Elian was child separated from his family, the Cuban 5 have spent 14 years without watching their children grow, and be with their parents as they grow older. Some of them have lost family members during these long years of incarceration. Furthermore, as Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban 5 are at the center of U.S./Cuba relations.
President Obama, the people of the United States and Cuba wish to live in peace, harmony and brotherhood. There is no reason for our country to continue such an inhumane policy towards the island nation. Releasing the Cuban 5 undoubtedly will help in the restoration of relations between both countries.
Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell
REMEMBER: THE 5TH OF SEPTEMBER FOR THE CUBAN 5
NEXT WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 5TH, CALL THE WHITE HOUSE AND JOIN THE WORLDWIDE DEMAND FOR THE FREEDOM OF THE FIVE.
DIFFERENT WAYS TO REACH THE WHITE HOUSE
By phone: 202-456-1111 (If nobody answers the phone leave a message)
If calling from outside the United States, dial first the International Area Code
+ 1 (US country code) followed by 202-456-1111
By Fax: 202-456-2461
If fax is sent from outside the United States, dial first the International Area
Code + 1 (US country code) followed by 202-456-2461
To send an e-mail: president@whitehouse.gov
To send a letter
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20500
United States
Message from MINH in XVI Conference of Heads of State and Government of the NAM
Written by Olga Sanabria / MINH
XVI Conference of Heads of State and Government of the Non-Aligned Movement, 2012, Tehran
Ladies and Gentlemen, Heads of State and Government,
Ministers,
Ambassadors and Ambassadors,
Delegates all
First of all we thank the Islamic Republic of Iran for the welcome you have given us in this beautiful, dynamic and hospitable city of Tehran. The friendship of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the cause of Puerto Rico has become manifest in the Decolonization Committee of the United Nations, and also why we express our gratitude, as we express it to Cuba, other countries Committee and all the friendly countries of Puerto Rico. Again, the Non-Aligned Movement reaffirmed the inalienable right of the people of Puerto Rico to self-determination and independence in accordance with General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV) of the United Nations General Assembly and calls for the immediate implementation of the resolutions of UN Puerto Rico. On August 18 marked 40 years since the first resolution on Puerto Rico’s decolonization committee in 1972, and now are 31 resolutions of the Committee thereon.
Again we stand before you as a force which advocates independence for Puerto Rico because Puerto Rico’s colonial status has only real and fair solution under international law and within the framework of the International Community. The power relationship between colonizers and colonialism sufferers has not been and can not be part of the solution to a problem contrary to international law and human rights. So Puerto Rico is subject to the international agenda and the Latin American and Caribbean region where the newly formed Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) to include in its agenda the case of Puerto Rico and the total eradication of colonialism in our region, as including the case of the Falkland Islands.
In Puerto Rico, since his election in 2008 the current government and colonial annexation has abused its majority in the legislature to undermine colonial institutions and civil, cultural, social and civic Puerto Ricans (as). Abuse was the recent referendum, in which using a campaign of fear and manipulation was intended to reduce the people choose their own rights and also shrink the legislature. But in that referendum the people said Enough! Voted NO and dealt a stunning defeat to the colonial government. In a referendum held in November colonial policies that could have consequences for the interior, but not directed towards a process of decolonization, as will any plebiscite or mechanism that takes place outside the application of international law to our case.
Despite all the abuses of power in Puerto Rico has forged a consensus anticolonial and exchange a claim which is added to maintain our distinctive achievement of Latin American and Caribbean cultural identity, widely recognized by the international community. And adds to many other historical achievements of the Puerto Rican people in their struggle. At present, our agenda remains intense struggle, including the struggle for freedom of Oscar López Rivera, who has over 31 years imprisoned for his actions in favor of the independence of Puerto Rico. Thirty-one years is a cruel and inhumane and we strongly urge the demand for the release of Oscar López Rivera, and other Puerto Rican political prisoners.
It is being reciprocated the support expressed in the nineteenth century Puerto Ricans (as) to the struggle for independence in our region, in particular in favor of the independence of Cuba. Today we reaffirm our support for the struggles that are taking place in the world for the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity, non-interference in the internal affairs of States and directed the war from the outside, as in the case of Syria, the right to development and energy sovereignty, as in the case of Iran, and the essential struggle for peace. As we express support for the struggles of the Palestinian and Sahrawi.
To conclude international support for self-determination and independence of the people of Puerto Rico have to keep growing. The achievements of the people of Puerto Rico will continue to grow and achieve our independence.
Thank you very much.
Free the Cuban Five!
Freedom for Oscar López Rivera!
Viva Puerto Rico Libre!
Message Olga I. Davila Sanabria, Member of the National – National Hostos Independence Movement of Puerto Rico (MINH) – Executive Secretary of the Committee of Puerto Rico to the United Nations
***
Note: In the Final Declaration of NAM, in the paragraph on Puerto Rico (under section The right to self-determination and independence), NAM reaffirmed the right of the people of Puerto Rico to self-determination and independence on the basis of the resolution 1514 (XV) of the General Assembly [United Nations], and expressed its unwavering support for the resolutions on Puerto Rico adopted by the Committee of UN Decolonization Committee calling for their immediate implementation.
As the utopian dream succumbed to dystopian reality, construction was halted and the architects fell out of political favor. The 2011 documentary Unfinished Spaces explores the current state of the schools and follows the exiled architects, who were invited back by Castro to finish their unrealized dream. Revolution of Forms author John Loomis will be joined by Unfinished Spaces co-directors Benjamin Murray and Alysa Nahmias for a conversation on the history of the schools and their rediscovery as visionary architectural masterpieces, now officially recognized by the Cuban government as national treasures.
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