PROJECT HAITIAN CENTENNIAL IN CUBA
(OR, THE HAITIAN MEMORY IN CUBA)
I.- INTRODUCTION
The presence of the Haitian and his culture in Cuba goes back back to several centuries.
Of the pre-Columbian stage the own Spanish colonizadores were in charge to devastate the resident population and that it came from the well-known region until then like Haiti, reason why it could not affirm of a cultural prevalence of those natives.
The contribution of the Haitian to the integral Cuban cultural formation pronounces with greater force from the arrival and insertion in the life of the Spanish colony of century XVIII of the fugitive franc-Haitians with its dowries of slaves, in the stage of the Revolution of Haiti.
In the first decades of century XX it was extended with the emigration towards the Greater one of the Antilles as cheap manual labor for the sugar industry.
Through the years they have been settled in the Cuban reality the elements and values of all originating nature of the Haitians, becoming partly inseparable of the integral development of all the society.
With the happened changes of articles of incorporation in Cuba as of 1959, the resident Haitians and their descendants were benefitted here by the revolutionary conquests. Simultaneously, like the rest of the population, they have shown to be faithful reliable of the commitments and duties that the revolutionary process generates to them.
The cultural dimension of the Haitian element within the development of the Cuban nationality is about to still to characterize in its right reach and all its aspects.
Understood like way of being and making and not only the accumulation and manifestation of aesthetic and artistic knowledge, the Haitian culture has had a roll in the transculturación process that of diverse nature has been originated in Cuba.
” cultural and training of the Cuban town is integral part of that great “ ajiaco.
The Haitian, center of that interchange in as much object and subject of the mutual process of cultural influence, it has had in diverse stages behaviors of defense of its habits, customs, beliefs, etc., before the aggression, sojuzgamiento and systematic discrimination that it was put under during years by the other members of the society until the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.
Even though the native Haitians maintained a tendency towards a form to live abroquelada, defensive, autoformadora, locked up in itself with respect to the rest of the society, they were not they, nor on all its descendants, totally other people's to the creative assimilation of the surrounding reality, of the economy advances, science, the technology, the culture, in short, of the development of the Cuban society.
Thus it has passed the preservation and affirmation of its cultural identity, of its social habits and individual attitudes, that they nowadays conform the work and life style, the manifestations of its active participation in the cultural life of the country.
The preservation of the cultural diversity is obtained, as she is political in Cuba, by means of the respect to the cultural identities. In its answer to the Office of the High Commissioner of the UN on Resolution 2004/20, the country emphasized its principles for the sake of the promotion of the cultural identities of all and the respect by the diverse cultural identities.
The culture is considered here like means of access to an intellectual existence, affective, spiritual but elevated moral and.
The Haitian in Cuba has driven to rescue and to maintain his customs and traditions alive, the folclor and its ethnic identity in the present and future generations of its descendants.
The spreading on the history of Haiti, its beliefs, its rites, its songs, their dances and other wealth of their culture have been next to the transmission of their familiar education and the respect to greater like one daily necessity in the community of Haitians and its descendants in the island.
To contribute to the preservation, dissemination and continuity of the cultural values of this Caribbean population and its descendants in the Cuban context become then a practice to maintain of a consequent way.
Mainly it unfolds at the moment diverse investigations and interchanges of experiences to reach an integral characterization of the expressions of the Haitian in the cultural dimension of the Cuban town.
II.- CHARACTER OF the PROJECT HAITIAN CENTENNIAL IN CUBA
Since it has been demonstrated fehacientemente, in order to exist each person it needs to give testimony of its daily life, to express its creative capacity and to preserve the outlines of its history. This is only obtained through cultural patrimony.
Its importance is in being bridge of people with its history, of its cultural identity.
The approach to the individual and its systems of knowledge, philosophical as as much spiritual, that is to say, the call immaterial patrimony, it transfers throughout its existence traditions and other cultural values transmitted orally or by means of gestures of one to another generation, and that is modified with the course of the time through process of individual recreation and collective by that it journeys.
The present deficiency and dispersion of a systematic rescue and diffusion on the history and the manifestations of the cultural heap of the Haitian impose the conservation of the alive memory of which they have length years of life and which little by little they are concluding.
According to a sounding made 20 resident Haitians know themselves in Cuba who are one hundred years old and more of life:
City of Havana 2
Havana 1
Ciego de Avila 4
Camaguey 7
the Tunas 1
Santiago of Cuba 1
Guantánamo 6
The previous thing does not include all the possible universe of resident Haitians in the country with these characteristics. But in the course of hardly two years (2003-2005) have passed away other seven HAITIAN centennial
Haitians CENTENARY IN CUBA is a Cultural Project that is arranged to help to the filmic preservation of the oral memory and all present nature in the resident Haitians in Cuba and that has or exceeds the one hundred years of age.
III. OBJECTIVE
1.- To reflect, by means of audio-visual means, facets of Haitian immigration in Cuba and its imbricación in the context of the economic reality, policy, social and environmental of the country, its establishments, maintenance of an own language, creole, preservation of his more dissimilar cultural expressions, its religion, rites, customs and myths, and other spheres of the national life, among other aspects, that it indicates the imperecedero of the Haitian culture contained in stories of men and centennial women of this ethnic group.
2.- To contribute to the knowledge of life habits, nourishing and of work, espiritualidad, philosophy and psychology of individuals that, in spite of undergoing shortages and high rigors in its life, they have managed to arrive at one hundred or more years of age.
3.- To emphasize the image of simple women and men, long ago operated workers, on whose shoulders part of the Cuban economy when dedicating itself per years rested to the cane cut for the sugar drip jar or to seedtime and collection of coffee.
IV.- COMPOSITION OF the PROJECT
The elaboration of a documentary general on the existence of centennial Haitians in Cuba, and so many other documentary ones as in the individual thing ameriten histories, anecdotario and level of comunicabilidad and narrative beauty of the CENTENNIAL HAITIAN protagonists constitute as a whole the PROJECT IN CUBA (Or, THE HAITIAN MEMORY IN CUBA)
The documentary general would contain the testimonies of Benito Martinez Plead (Airplane), the greater one of all with 125 years, and so many other centennial Haitians as their narrations make it feasible.
It would be filmed in the own leases on where these people (particular houses or Home of Old) and with retrospective live to the places to that they make reference that were based or worked in Cuba and Haiti.
Several of their anecdotes would artistic recreate with professional actors or fans.
The inclusion of declarations of outstanding personalities of the Ministry of Public Health of Cuba, as well as of the Club of the 120 years about the longevity in the world, in this country and the centennial Haitians complete the surroundings the subjects boarded by the protagonists.
The organizativas necessities, techniques and materials for the documentary one are watched thus:
a.- The determination to count on Angel Ma Argundin, Director of the program of the Cuban Television Prism and documentalista outstanding on Chinese immigration in Cuba.
b.- The designation of a Producer (of the producing houses: Cuban institute of the Art and the Cinematographic Industry – ICAIC-, or of Radio and Commercial Television Commercial – RTV or of Trimagen).
c.- Management of the required Permission of Shooting.
d.- Hiring of the technical personnel (Director of Photography, camarógrafo, luminotécnico, carrier, actors).
e.- Elaboration of the Script.
f.- Previous Investigation of field.(for which it is required to have equipment of shooting in video, recorder and insumos for these means)
g.- Lease.
h.- Rent of the filmic equipment (professional Cameras, lenses, etc.)
i.- Work party (camarógrafo, sound engineer,technician, utilero)
j.- Shooting of the documentary one.
k.- Lodging, feeding and other expenses of the process
The budget of the documentary one would be made by the personnel experienced in it. However, obtaining an initial financing that allows to make the first passages of the Project would cause to shorten the dangers that the lost one of the testimonies by the high age of the protagonists represents.
The feasibility studies would complement the autosostenible of this Project, from the internal and external market that would be had by the artistic and professional quality of doc.
V.- BENEFICIARIES OF the PROJECT
The set of resident Haitians and its descendants in Cuba constitute the main public to who east Project is directed, for being contributor and beneficiaries of a very active and dynamic form of all and each one of its actions.
The establishments of Haitians and their descendants in the country, existing in greater proportion in the Eastern provinces, including Camaguey and Ciego de Avila, they are the amplest base of the Project, inclusive also of the families or groups nonbecome related who reside in smaller number in other territories.
The Cuban population, in general, and inhabitants in Haiti, other nations of the Caribbean, the Haitian diáspora in the United States, Canada and France, they complete the great public to whom goes east Project, by means of the different programs and actions that conform it.
Lic: RAIMUNDO GOMEZ NAVIA
CALLE 15 NUMERO 208 APARTAMENTO 12-A,
ENTRE J y K, VEDADO, 10400,
PLAZA DE LA REVOLUCION, CIUDAD DE LA HABANA
CUBA TELF-FAX (537) 832-6901
Labels: CUBA, cultural, franc-Haitians, HAITIAN CENTENNIAL, PROJECT
