P.M. affair

{{See also|Coletilla}}

After the success of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, there was a brief literary boom in Cuba. The magazine Lunes de Revolución was developed to be a weekly version of the magazine Revolución. The magazine was edited by Guillermo Cabrera Infante, and worked to promote Cuban culture to a worldwide audience. The Casa de las Américas also began to publish its own literary review.

Lunes de Revolución was loosely organized by Carlos Franqui, Virgilio Piñera, Pablo Armando Fernández, Jose Antonio Baragaño, Antón Arrufat, Oscar Hurtado, and Humberto Arenal. The magazine took no common political stance, and often published works about surrealism, or existentialism. By 1960, a general trend develop to publish works that were "revolutionary" in that they supported Cuba's political direction.{{cite book |last=Artaraz |first=Kepa |author-link= |date=2009 |title=Cuba and Western Intellectuals Since 1959 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OafFAAAAQBAJ&dq=P.M.+affair+cuba&pg=PA36 |location= |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |pages=34–38 |isbn=9780230618299}}

At the beginning of 1960, the Cuban press began to face greater censorship struggles. Newspapers were demanded to add "coletillas" (tag-lines), after articles that the print union disapproved. By the end of 1960, the conflict over coletillas would lead print unions to seize newspaper plants, and allow them to be nationalized.{{cite book |last= |first= |author-link= |date=2022 |title=The Bloomsbury Handbook to Cold War Literary Cultures |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DsVsEAAAQBAJ&dq=coletilla+cuba+1959&pg=PA341 |location= |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |pages=340–345 |isbn=9781350191723}}{{cite book |last=Iber |first=Patrick |author-link= |date=2015 |title=Neither Peace Nor Freedom The Cultural Cold War in Latin America |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZymoCgAAQBAJ&dq=coletilla+cuba+1959&pg=PA135 |location= |publisher=Harvard University Press |pages=134–138 |isbn=9780674915145}}

The film p.M. was shot in 1960 by Orlando Jiménez Leal and Alberto Cabrera Infante, and was an homage to the style of Free Cinema. The film portrayed the black and mulatto poor of Havana engaging in a night of partying.{{cite book |last=Cabrena Infante |first=Guillermo |author-link= |date=1995 |title=Mea Cuba |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=K1iAQB4bXTAC&dq=P.M.+affair+cuba&pg=PA53 |location= |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |page=52 |isbn=9780374524463}} p.M. stands for post meridiem.

Alfredo Guevara, who was head of the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos, refused to give a license to the film which approved it for public screening, even though it had been aired on television. This refusal for public screening was made, according to Guevara, because the film "obviously wasn't made out of any feeling of racial discrimination, but a number of people found it offensive". This stirred a controversy among the writers at Lunes de Revolución, and member Néstor Almendros published the controversy in Revista Bohemia. The Casa de las Américas responded to the controversy by having a private viewing of the film, which resulted in mixed reviews. The debates that followed caused the intervention of Fidel Castro, who met with the contesting writers and delivered his famed "Words to the Intellectuals" speech.{{cite book |last= |first= |author-link= |date=2001 |title=Censorship A World Encyclopedia |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gDqsCQAAQBAJ&dq=P.M.+affair+cuba&pg=PA401 |location= |publisher=Taylor and Francis |pages=400–401 |isbn=9781136798641}}

In his 1961, speech "Word to the Intellectuals", Castro stated:

{{Blockquote

|text=This means that within the Revolution, everything goes; against the Revolution, nothing. Nothing against the Revolution, because the Revolution has its rights also, and the first right of the Revolution is the right to exist, and no one can stand against the right of the Revolution to be and to exist, No one can rightfully claim a right against the Revolution. Since it takes in the interests of the people and Signifies the interests of the entire nation.{{cite web |url=http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1961/19610630.html |title=CASTRO'S SPEECH TO INTELLECTUALS ON 30 JUNE 61 |last=Castro |first=Fidel |date=1961 |website=lanic.utexas.edu |publisher= |access-date= |quote=}}}}

While Castro's proclamation was vague in defining to who was considered loyal to "the revolution", Castro also later defined in his speech, a need for the National Cultural Council to direct artistic affairs in Cuba, and for the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba to publish literary debate magazines.{{cite book |last=Story |first=Isabel |author-link= |date= 4 December 2019|title=Soviet Influence on Cuban Culture, 1961–1987 When the Soviets Came to Stay

|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XA7BDwAAQBAJ&dq=P.M.+affair+words+to+the+intellectuals&pg=PA69 |location= |publisher=Lexington Books |page=69 |isbn=9781498580120}}

{{See also|Padilla affair}}

Castro's speech "Words to the Intellectuals" was the first instance of any sort of boundaries established for artistic expression, after the Cuban Revolution. Much of the artistic oversight that developed after the P.M. affair, often policed artistic repressentations of black people, which were considered too ethnically specific, and without a general Cuban character.{{cite book |last=Morris |first=Andrea |author-link= |date=2012 |title=Afro-Cuban Identity in Postrevolutionary Novel and Film Inclusion, Loss, and Cultural Resistance|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=T7jqsm6BAaYC&dq=castro+Word+to+the+Intellectuals+1961&pg=PA12 |location= |publisher= Lexington Books|page=12-13 |isbn=9781611484229}}

Soon after Castro's proclamation, the government shut down Lunes de Revolución, and a few months later established the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba.

The precedent of censorship established by the P.M. affair, eventually culminated in the Padilla affair of 1971, a similar scandal of artistic censorship.{{cite book |last= |first= |author-link= |date=1984 |title=The Cambridge History of Latin America |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3NiCQFfSGIkC&dq=castro+Word+to+the+Intellectuals+1961&pg=PA188 |location= |publisher=Cambridge University Press |page=188 |isbn=9780521495943}}

[https://rialta.org/aiovg_videos/pm/ p.M. on Vimeo]

{{Reflist}}

Category:Aftermath of the Cuban Revolution

Category:1961 in Cuba

Category:Censorship in Cuba

Category:Fidel Castro