Criticized by many for his aggressive suppression of artistic freedoms, Vice Minister of Culture Fernando Rojas has been removed from his long-held position by the Cuban Ministry of Culture (MINCULT) alongside fellow Vice Minister Kenelma Carvajal Pérez. The government agency announced the decision via social media on Monday, January 8.
Rojas and MINCULT’s leadership have long been decried by Cuban creative workers and activists over the government’s overreaching legislation promoting censorship in the cultural sector as well as its reliance on state-sanctioned violence to curb vocal dissenters. In 2018, a law known as Decree 349 required artists and performers to obtain government permission for both public and private exhibitions, projects, and artwork sales. The suffocating decree and the Cuban regime’s ongoing policies of oppression have yielded a multitude of protests and other opposition efforts from groups like the San Isidro Movement and the subsequent 27N Movement — amounting to multiple instances of state-sanctioned harassment, arrests, and detainments in the last five years.
In 2020, after the detainment and sentencing of a San Isidro Movement member, Cuban rapper Denis Solís, Rojas met with artist and political activist Tania Bruguera as well as dozens of others to discuss protections for artists on the island and reconsider Solís’s charges but failed to act on either. In early 2021, over 1,200 Cuban arts and culture workers signed off on a legal motion to remove MINCULT’s current Minister Alpidio Alonso Grau, following a physical altercation between him and an independent journalist onsite at a peaceful protest at the Ministry headquarters. During that same protest, Rojas reportedly told demonstrators that they could access the headquarters’ courtyard, which they pointed out was surrounded by armed guards; the incident was interpreted as yet another example of Rojas’s contradictory statements to artists.
Rojas also attacked San Isidro Movement founder and artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who was relentlessly harassed, persecuted, and eventually sentenced for his dissidence, saying that the extensive support for his release was under “manipulation.” Otero Alcántara remains behind bars in a high-security prison along with hundreds of others wrongly detained for their participation in historic human rights protests on the island in 2021.
Late last year, several MINCULT officials vilified the Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt (INSTAR) Film Festival, an independent audiovisual event founded by Bruguera. Rojas commented that the event was “an attack on the revolution” due to the inclusion of Luis Alejandro Yero’s Calls From Moscow (2023), a film that follows four LGBTQ+ Cuban migrants living in Moscow days before Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
Rojas and his former colleague, Carvajal Pérez, will be succeeded by current President of the National Council of the Performing Arts Lillitsy Hérnandez Oliva and General Director of Cultural Policies Lizette Martínez Luzardo, both of whom have also been criticized for their track record of artistic suppression.
Cuban creative workers have continued their calls for boycotting the nation’s state-sponsored arts and culture events and displays in response to the government’s continued suppression and violence against dissident artists and activists. They specifically highlighted the upcoming 15th Havana Biennial, slated to begin in mid-November this year with a central theme of “Shared Horizons,” as an example of the nation’s government “artwashing” its public image while deliberately harming its creative community.
MINCULT did not provide an extensive statement explaining Carvajal Pérez and Rojas’s removal, citing simply “the country’s policy of gradual renewal of management at all levels” and “the Revolution’s confidence in young people.” Rojas will remain as an advisor to the Minister of Culture, while Carvajal Pérez will be given separate duties in a different sector.
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