Luis Pavón

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Luis Pavón Tamayo (born March 31, 1930 in Holguín , † May 25, 2013 in Havana ) was a Cuban military officer , journalist and cultural functionary. He is considered to be one of the main actors in cultural censorship during the so-called gray fifth in Cuba's history at the beginning of the 1970s.

Life

Luis Pavón worked for newspapers and radio in the Holguín area from his youth. He later obtained a law degree and fought against the Batista dictatorship. After the successful revolution , he headed from 1959 the magazine Verde Olivo ("olive green") of the newly founded Revolutionary Armed Forces , within which he was in the rank of lieutenant . In 1963 he was a founding member of the state journalists' association UPEC , to whose management board he was elected. Later he worked for the state association of artists and writers UNEAC , worked as a lecturer in journalism at the University of the Armed Forces and became an influential cultural official.

From 1971 to 1976 he was chairman of the National Council of Culture, the forerunner of the Ministry of Culture founded in 1976. He was the most prominent executor of massive repression and censorship against artists who did not correspond to the official state line. In particular Fidel Castro's slogan, which has become a dogma , “Within the revolution: everything! against the revolution: nothing! ”he had internalized and tried to put it into practice. The numerous victims of his politics included great writers such as José Lezama Lima , Heberto Padilla and Virgilio Piñera . However, it was not just a supposedly politically divergent attitude that was the reason to marginalize an artist. Other “ideological weaknesses” such as homosexuality were also pursued accordingly. His two published novels and his poems played little role in his fame.

While Armando Hart, who served as Minister of Culture from 1976 onwards, gradually relaxed many of the cultural restrictions imposed by Pavón and had marginalized artists rehabilitated, Pavón, who was relieved of his management functions, continued to work at a lower level, including in the 1980s as Secretary for International Relations of UNEAC.

The Cuban state media did not report the death of Pavón on May 25, 2013. The exile writer Norberto Fuentes made it public. Luis Pavón died “officially forgotten”.

2007 “War of the E-Mails”

In January 2007, Pavón involuntarily triggered an unprecedented protest movement among Cuban cultural workers: after many years of absence from the public, Cuban television honored Pavón with a sensational program that presented him as an important cultural worker in the country. Shortly thereafter, similar broadcasts followed in honor of the two officials responsible for radio and theater in the 1970s, Jorge Serguera and Armando Quesada. Numerous Cuban intellectuals reacted with violent rejection, as they feared a return to the cultural repression that had been overcome after the censors were rehabilitated. The following so-called "war of e-mails" led to discussions within the state cultural institutions, which, however, took place behind closed doors. Shortly afterwards, the Cuban culture minister Abel Prieto stated in an interview with a Mexican daily newspaper that it had been a mistake on the part of state television to present the three officials. The lack of transparency in the debate about the gray five-year-old was, among other things, a trigger for the blogger career of the later world-famous Yoani Sánchez , who started her blog Generation Y in April 2007.

Works

  • Umbral , 1997
  • La dama del Capitolio , 1999
  • La belleza del físico mundo , 2000
  • Descubrimientos , 1967
  • Cartas a Pepilla , 1989
  • Aquiles y la pólvora , 1990

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Luis Pavón Tamayo ( Memento of the original of June 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / quienesquien.cip.cu archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Quién es Quién en la Prensa Cubana, accessed May 31, 2013
  2. ↑ Silvio Rodríguez : Pavón , in: Segunda Cita from May 28, 2013, accessed on June 17, 2014 (Spanish)
  3. ↑ Juan Marrero: Nacimiento de la Upec: I Asamblea (o Congreso) Nacional, ( Memento of the original from July 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.cubaperiodistas.cu archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in: Cuba Periodistas of May 21, 2014, accessed June 17, 2014 (Spanish)
  4. ↑ Mauricio Vicent: El recuerdo del 'quinquenio gris' moviliza a los intelectuales cubanos , El País of January 13, 2007, accessed on June 21, 2013
  5. ↑ Arturo Arango: Pasar por joven (con notas al pie) , in: Cuba: Contrapuntos de cultura, historia y sociedad, ed. v. Francisco A. Scarano et al. Margarita Zamora, San Juan 2007, p. 354 (Spanish)
  6. ↑ Norberto Fuentes: Luis Pavón , Libreta de apuntos of May 26, 2013, accessed June 21, 2013
  7. ↑ Alejandro Armengol: Pavón, el olvido oficial , Cuaderno de Cuba of May 27, 2013, accessed June 21, 2013
  8. ↑ a b Arturo García Hernández: Entrevista a Abel Prieto, ministro de Cultura , in: La Jornada of February 26, 2007, accessed on June 2, 2013 (Spanish)
  9. ^ Peter B. Schumann : Conversation with Leonardo Padura , in: Deutschlandfunk from January 1, 2009, accessed on June 1, 2013
  10. ^ Gary Marx: Cuban intellectuals fearing crackdown take cause to Web , in: Chicago Tribune of February 18, 2007, accessed on June 2, 2013 (English)
  11. ↑ Knut Henkel: The Lord of the Gray Years , Latinorama from May 27, 2013, accessed on June 1, 2013
personal data
SURNAME Pavon, Luis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pavon Tamayo, Luis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Cuban politician, journalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 31, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Holguín
DATE OF DEATH May 25, 2013
Place of death Havana