Guantanamo.- The 35th Guantánamo-Baracoa Theater Crusade was received with a well-deserved tribute and the embrace of its people, which since January 28 has brought theater, dance and music to more than 170 mountain communities in six municipalities of the easternmost province of Cuba.
The initiative, recognized as a “cultural bridge,” reached more than 60 thousand spectators in 297 performances, even in hard-to-reach areas where the performance of art is difficult.
Local authorities, headed by Mailén Milán, a government official, gathered in José Martí Park, accompanied by Yoelbis Labañino, Provincial Director of Culture, and Virgen Speck Rodríguez, President of the Council of Performing Arts, together with representatives of political and mass organizations and the people, who celebrated the return of the artists.
Emilio Vizcaíno, director of the Crusade, representing the project, received the Gonzalo Escalante Heritage Award, and other awards, for three and a half decades of community work.
Vizcaíno said that they arrived victorious, as always, and affirmed that it was a crusade of the youth, in which art students filled each performance with the future.
“The public never abandoned us and in places like Maisí, due to the lack of electricity, we turned on the electric generator and created light to continue; we also regret the sudden death of the beloved troubadour Eduardo Sosa, to whom we will dedicate the next edition, to recall his memory,” he stressed.
The Wooden Quixote —the emblem of the Crusade— was given to institutions such as the School of Art Instructors, the Cuban Television Information System (represented by journalist Naileth Vecino), the historian and researcher José Julián Baliño, as well as the Mario Muñoz Cedeño Puppet Academy (Bayamo), La Proa Theater Group, along with the driver Ainolis Rivera Cobas, described as “pilot of magic in the mountains.”
To the rhythm of the vibrant performances of the troubadour Claudio Casal and the Alfredo Carcacés Professional Dance School, groups such as La Colmenita Guantánamo, the theater groups Andante Guiñol Guantánamo, La Barca and La Cuadra, as well as the Babul Folkloric Ballet, the Santiago and Carpandilla Circus Company and Javier Barbier, Ramón Paniagua along with Denis Molina were awarded.
The newspaper Venceremos was also recognized for its support, follow-up and coverage during the journey, this time with the journalist Ángel Ernesto Goliat in the field.
Ury Rodríguez Urgellés, president of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba in the territory, stressed to the Cuban News Agency the social value of the project, since the communities expect it as a spiritual nourishment.
He meant that this year students from the puppet schools of Granma and Havana joined in artistic practices, as seeds of the relief, and enriched the repertoire with innovative proposals.
Creative dissatisfaction always remains, we are challenged by themes such as rural childhood and ancestral knowledge, investigating them will allow us to design deeper proposals for the 36th edition, Urgellés reflected.
Founded in the 1990s, the Guantánamo-Baracoa Theatre Crusade has established itself as a sociocultural benchmark in Latin America, praised for its model of community integration and resistance to the adversities of the mountains and with 35 uninterrupted editions, it continues to demonstrate that art, when sown in fertile soil, grows against all odds.
