When Alejo Carpentier, the greatest novelist and maybe the Cuban contemporary writer more widely known around the world, was asked about the origin of the inhabitants of our homeland, he replied: “we all came from ships.”

In the ships, crossing the oceans, came the conquerors from Spain and in little time they decimated the original native Indians -victims of the fire of their shotguns, the merciless illnesses and rude work on the river banks in search of gold that was never found- to the brink of extermination.  Uprooted by sheer force from the African costs of the Gulf of Guinea, from Old Calabar and from Mayombe jungle in order to replace the indigenous manpower, Africans arrived by the thousands, tied up in the cellars of vessels used to carry slaves and, under the crack of the whip, contributed decisively to the development of a sugar economy of plantation. By mid XIX century, Chinese culies arrived in Cuba, and shortly before, French colonists, fleeing from Toussaint L'Ouverture's revolutionary Haiti, had settled in the eastern part of the Island, after crossing the Pass of the Winds that separates Cuba from La Española island.

And then, shiploads of peasants from the Canary Islands came down, willing to grow the aromatic tobacco and the tropical fruits. Arabs and Jews developed trade in the urban areas.  Hustling Spaniards blended with the local population through marriage or cohabitation with native girls, with the ensuing racial mixture. Indians from the Mexican peninsula of Yucatan, teachers and soldiers from the just-liberated US lands; even Japanese, North American and Swedish, added to the encompassing mixture and settled in small farming communities.

Out of so much diversity, however, unity arose: a concept of nation and nationality gradually outlined itself as time went by and melted definitively in the hearth of the wars for freedom from the colonial yoke. Blended breeds and common aspirations created an unique silt, a peculiar sensibility, summing up, a culture of our own. One of the most eminent Cuban scholars, Don Fernando Ortiz, studied that process and named it him transculturization.

Should anyone define the essence of Cuban culture, two primary elements would have to be taken into account: their integrative orientation and their universal vocation. One doesn't exist without the other one and vice versa.

Right at  the outset of the foundation of Cuban nationality, that is to say, in the first decades of the XIX century, the most accomplished poet of the times, José María Heredia, took on to glorify the palm trees, a defining element of our landscape,  but he also praised the stateliness of the Teocalli of Cholula, monument of the Aztec Architecture before Colombus, as well as the impetuous Niagara waterfalls, in North America.

The most universal of all Cubans was poet José Martí, with his remarkable personal and social sensibility. He dealt in his texts with every topic, with all the human curiosity, under an uncompromising ethics, committed to the betterment of humankind and to advocate tenderness. He bequeathed lessons of universality and Cuban identity, he taught us to identify and to exalt the autochthonous and the alien, assimilating the best essences from both riverbanks.

It is fortunate that Cuban culture has assumed with genuineness this mixture. Because of that, it has trespassed, in its cheerful creations, the barrier of the sophisticated and the popular thing, of the so-called arts and the folkloric community expression.

When we speak of son –that musical gender that blends Hispanic and African inheritances and is the original rhythm of Cuba, better known in one of its variants as salsa - we refer to the famous traditional septetos (bands with seven musicians) -Habanero, Ignacio Piñeiro’s, or to the Old Trova Santiaguera-,  as much as to orchestras that set a landmark in their time, like those deans of  chachachá:  Aragon, Enrique Jorrin’s, or Arcaño and his Marvels, or to bands like Casino, la Sonora Matancera, Arsenio Rodríguez’s, equalled by those that at the moment liven up the Cuban nights in the tourist facilities of the Island.  We also refer to the poetry of Nicolás Guillén,  who conjugated the  street jargon with the most rigorous Hispanic metric, and also to the symphonic pieces and chamber music composed by Alejandro García Caturla,  Amadeo Roldán and Ernesto Lecuona, vanguard musicians like Igor Stravinsky or Edgar Varese.

The same applies to the plastic arts: from Wifredo Lam, attracted by surrealism, friend of Picasso, who mingled the European, the African and the Asian in his paradigmatic painting “The Jungle”,  still displayed in the Museum of Modern Art of New York, to Raúl Martínez, a painter that made pop his own to reflect the main characters of today's Cuba. This journey wanders across Víctor Manuel's sensuality; through Rene Portocarrero’s collection of Havana city, floras and carnival, through Mariano Rodríguez's roosters, Amelia Peláez's decorative leaded glasses, Carlos Enríquez's horsemen, to Fidelio Ponce's realities and the Havana girls and militiamen depicted by Servando Cabrera Moreno.

Alicia Alonso, absolute prima ballerina, brought to the dance the legacy of the best in world ballet, to integrate it with our emotional universe and gestuality, in what the world knows today like Cuban School of Ballet.  There have also been achievements and originalities in the field of modern and folkloric dance, where numerous outstanding performers have excelled.

There is also a live Cuban theater.  José Lezama Lima - worldwide acclaimed by Paradiso -, added the mystery from Góngora to the secrets of a Havana of discreet interiors to get away from the tropical heat of the streets. Distinguished men of letters and literary critics, as Juan Marinello and José Antonio Portuondo,  cannot miss being part of any recollection of Cuban intellectuality.

Nicolás Guillén's poetry stands out, surrendered in its lyrical teaching to the folkloric and the social struggle, and more often than not his verses dwell in epics. Other Cubans write poetry about hope, love and work, like Manuel Navarro Luna, Dulce María Loynaz, Roberto Fernández Retamar, Pablo Armando Fernández, Miguel Barnet, Francisco of Oraa and masters Eliseo Diego,  Cintio Vitier and Fina García Marruz.

When they sing, they can grieve in the pain of a loss, like in those anthological boleros, but they often unfold images of beauty and happiness. To prove it, there is the incomparable voice of Benny Moré. If they play jazz, it, ends up revealing the quintessence of enthusiasm, and that is what has made Irakere and Chucho Valdés one of the epicentres of the so-called Latin jazz. If they grab a guitar, like professor Leo Brouwer did –followed today by a number of young talents - they range from Bach to the guaracha and the Beatles. If they are troubadours , they combine, as Silvio Rodríguez and Pablo Milanés, duty and heart.  If they organize a party,–nobody should miss the opportunity to swing to the tune of Los Van  Van, Isaac Delgado, Adalberto Álvarez, NG la Banda, the Charangón of Reve, Paulo F.G. and his Elite, Original of Manzanillo and so many others - It is a chance to overflow the party spirit in swift cadences.

The identity of Cuban culture always shows a smiling face and it compels the Island and its keys, with its people, to navigate the world.

PHILOSOPHIC STONE

The most important cultural fact that happened in Cuba is the Revolution itself. The victory of the freedom quest, the first of January of 1959, paved the way to every opportunity to Cuban culture and creators could fully exercise their vocation like never before.

The country lives a boom of artistic-literary creativity and, at the same time, there is great deal of interest on the part of the public to receive that creativity.

There is a will to promote culture massively. Writers' meetings and artists laid down the bases for an articulation of the creators' approaches and the popular and community dimension of culture in order to offer people the best and more authentic in the Cuban and universal creation and to transform it into an active receiver, participant and creator.

To achieve that, the creation of a general integrated culture to which the whole population can accede, is required. And school –understood as a basic cultural institution - plays an instrumental role.

Today there are almost 250 museums, 55 theatres, 354 libraries, 123 art galleries, 350 bookstores and 315 culture houses all over the island. One can neither comment, not understand the cultural phenomenon of the country if those figures are ignored.

SOUL OF THE NATION

It is said that culture is the soul of the nation. Culture is alive in Cuba and Cuba lives in its culture. The Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC) is increasingly improving its role as speaker of the creators before the institutions, and with its prestige and social vocation, it outlines the problems that need to be resolved to guarantee more and more learned and humanist spaces, in the framework of society

CRAFTMANSHIP

Handicrafts is a decisive element of our culture. With a great artistic sense, Cuban craftmanship reflects the origins of our culture and the characteristics of their sincretism.

Figures carved in precious wood, marble and pottery come thus to life, as well as metal, leather and other decorative objects. Pieces made of coconut fibers, snails, seeds and yarey (leaf of the gray-headed palm) are also typical of the country.

It is possible to find these pieces in every hotel of the country, but on Saturdays in the afternoon, the surroundings of the Cathedral Square become the kingdom of craft in Cuba; where one can find pieces ranging from a serigraphy by a famous painter, to an exotic plant.

CREOLE  COOKING

It is rich, varied and very complex. It often goes beyond those plates that are called strictly Cuban. The ajiaco criollo, of which many versions exist, is the national meal.  It is, in essence, an assembly of vegetables and orchard fruits stewed alongside several kinds of meat.  Milestones of Cuban cooking are the congrí (white rice with red beans cooked together) and the arroz moro, also called moros y cristianos  (Moorish and Christian),  that is the stew of black beans with rice. The picadillo a la Habanera (mincemeat in the Havana way) is an institution in its own right.