Power to the Artists

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Puente del Tren de la Palma, Rio Cristal by Armando Menocal ca. 1930

“I’m going down to Cuba to see my friends
Down where the rhythm never ends
And no problem is too difficult to solve
Yeah, times are tough down there it’s true
But you know they’re going to make it through
They make such continuous use of the verb ‘to resolve’.”
- Jackson Browne, “Going Down to Cuba”

Art is alive and doing well in Cuba. Cuban artists are among the most successful and affluent citizens of the country. Laws enacted in the early 1990s have given Cuban artists the rare freedom to travel in and out of the country and to be self-employed entrepreneurs, keeping the money they make from their creations. (See “Cuba’s ‘1-percenters’ by Michell Caruso-Cabrera CNBC.)

The politically repressive regime of the early 1960s caused many of the country’s most prominent artists to flee. In the 1980s, the government, responding to increasing pressure from Cuban artists, loose…