In 1961, the Cuban Revolution was barely a creature that was beginning to form itself. The world’s eyes were watching over it to look closely every action of those “insolent” bearded men in power.

A few months from the triumph over Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship, the government had to go through many problems like illiteracy, poverty, deep control of U.S. capital in the main economic branches of the nation, and so on.

The sector of culture also went through many ups and downs, and it was necessary to expand the process of artistic creation to every corner of the country and open the doors of formerly private institutions to the people.

The situation was very difficult among strong internal and foreign pressures, with disputes among the different groups that contributed somehow to the definite victory of January 1, 1959.

In that context, with a radicalization of the social process underway in the island, there was an event that would mark definitely the cultural policy of the nation, an event that had no time schedule or program to organize the speakers’ presentations and the topics to discuss because there was only one: creation during the Revolution.

The event took place on June 16, 23 and 30, 1961 in the Jose Marti National Library, in Havana. Many important intellectuals of that epoch met there and discussed the range of opportunities the revolutionary process had to offer for artists and creators.

There has been a lot of talking and writing on these meetings, but mostly on the anthological speech by Commander in Chief Fidel Castro, which put an end to those speculations: “Within the revolution, everything, against the Revolution, no rights”.

The Cuban cultural policy, sometimes based on respect of creation and some others based on censorship of anything harmful to the process of onstruction of socialism, was established from this statement and its subsequent misguided or accurate interpretations.

The Cuban minister of culture at the time, Armando Hart, said 30 years later that that statement by the leader of the Cuban Revolution summed up an epoch and the political root that fostered the Cuban cultural work from that moment on.

Hart pointed out that during these five decades, the ideas of that speech opened the Revolution unsuspected paths in culture and favored the creation of an immeasurable work.

Intellectual Graziella Pogolotti affirmed that this event brought about the creation of the National Union of Artists and Writers of Cuba (UNEAC), the construction of more cultural spaces, and the establishment of the foundations in the training of new creators.

The rising Revolution knew right from the start how to unite intellectuals to create a participating entity in the creation of the new society.

Half century after that speech, it has been the guiding platform of a revolutionary process that, as said by Fidel “means more culture and more art”, regardless of its posterior misguided interpretations and its dogmatic implementation sometimes.