Art, emigration and tourism: works by Cuban artists in last spring's fifth Havana Biennial foreshadowed the country's current massive exodus of boat people - Report From Cuba

This year's Havana Biennial V (May 6-June 30) generated more attention in the U and Europe than any previous single Given Latin America's new high-powered commercial galleries, sophisticated contemporary art museums and big-budget art collectors, and given the continuing economic recession in the European and U art markets, Latin American artists have gained unprecedent international stature in the last scarcely any years. As a result, the Havana Biennial, a showcase of generally received Latin American art, the first gaze at a new generation of Cuban artists, and the greatest in quantity important gathering of artists of the Third World, has become an important fact for the First World art representation This latest Biennial was of special interest owed to the fear (or faith in certain quarters) that, with the seemingly imminent fall of Fidel Castro, this will be the last Biennial of Revolutionary Cuba.

More than 200 artists from above 40 countries in Africa, Europe and the Americas participated. (Asia was showed solely by three artists from Thailand, despite the fact that mainland China and North Korea are the solitary other Communist countries left.) Artists were clumped in five thematic exhibitions - "Art, Power, Marginality," "The Other Shore," "Appropriations and Intercrossings," "Environment and Circumstances" and "Individual Reflections, Collective Obsessions" - spread above more than a dozen venue quite through the city.

Cultural center and governmental offices had joined forces for sum of two units years of preparation and month of frenzied activity, all coordinated by the agency of the Wifredo Lam Center below the direction of Llilian Llanes. In addition, greatest in quantity of the participating Cuban artists donated work to help stock the exhibition. The fact that, at this time of economic hardship, Cuba managed to entertainer yet another ambitious Biennial, and that it was as well organized as any previous individual and had the most deluxe catalogue with equal reason far, was seen by many as a miracle. In the words of Armando Hart, minister of tillage it was an example of the "magical realism of the Cuban Revolution of the '90s" Unfortunately, like greatest in quantity magic tricks, the Biennial came with strings attached.

This Biennial was organized during the worst of Cuba's "special period during peacetime" - the economic crisis which began years ago as a rise of the Soviet pullout and a fall through in world sugar prices, aggravated by the agency of the ongoing U.S. embargo. above the last few years, Cuba's economy has been caught in a downward spiral. seneca oil shortages have lessened productivity and increased electric outages, poor sugar harvests have l to rising trade deficits, and the legalizing of dollars and the influx of them from foreign trade have contributed to inflation of the Cuban peso With no extremity in sight, this crisis has produc a sharp increase in black-market activities, of the like kind as the reselling of rationed profitables bought for pesos and sold for dollar.

The boundary "special period" also refers to the strategy with which the Cuban conduct is confronting this crisis. Around the time of the Biennial, Fidel outlined a of recent origin set of economic measures, including an immediate crackdown upon macetas, those people who stockpile houses, cars and appliances, or who accumulate large sum totals of money. All bank accounts above 10,000 pesos are to be appropriated if account possessors can't demonstrate that the cash is theirs legally. (This restriction might well affect Cuban artists, as many circumvent the official galleries and put up to sale their work directly to foreigners, which is illegal if the conduct doesn't get its share.1)

Perhaps the best example of the novel Cuban pragmatism is the tourist industry. For the last brace of years, tourist development has been seen by the agency of the government as a principal reliance for economic revitalization. (In 1993 tourism generated $700 million, several times the income derived from the sugar harvest.) Foreign capitalists are being tendered "free-market" incentives to invest in the island, including majority ownership of many of the inns and resorts that are being put togethered all over Havana and along the beaches, greatest in quantity of them aimed at the effeminacy trade. The new proprietors and management teams are not being held to any labor restrictions and can thus fire workers, a first in Cuban revolutionary history.

These investors draw near from Spain, Germany, Canada and other First World countries, and the 560000 tourists that deluge into Cuba each year to take advantage of cheap Caribbean vacations are from Canada (by far the largest source), Germany, Mexico and Spain. In the official newspaper Granma, the solitary ads are those for tourist house of entertainments and resorts, while in each issue there are at least individual or two articles on the novel joint ventures. Such recent exhibitions have generated a system of tourist apartheid in Cuba: privileged enclaves within an otherwise impoverished island, wherein greatest in quantity of the hotels, the resorts, several beaches and the majority of international restaurants are for tourists only

The Havana Biennial, far from being immune to these contradictions, in fact exacerbates them. single of the Biennial's functions is to attract tourism and tourist dollars. It accomplishes this in part by the agency of filling up the five- and four-star house of entertainments with artists and other denizens of the art world to of that kind an extent that the tavern lobbies, restaurants and bars become the unofficial center of interaction among participants. The catalogue for the display was funded in part by the agency of the government of the Canary Islands, a public-relations impel on the part of the Spanish, who exhibit the largest investors in the infrastructure of Cuban tourism. Peter Ludwig, the German industrialist and art collector, contributed the single largest gross amount of money to the Biennial. The fact that European cash bailed out Cuba's most prized art occurrence one designed to nurture the image of contemporary Cuba, is a faithful reflection of the larger economic realities.