Fernando Alonso: The Father of Cuban Ballet

16. Cuban Revolution Triumphs—and Invests in Ballet!

83 16 Cuban Revolut]on Tr]umphs— and Invests ]n Ballet! On January 1, 1959, bolstered by a well-organized student movement, Cuban workers and farmers decisively defeated the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship, which in its seven-year campaign to crush them and their organizations had suspended the most elementary of democratic, civil, and human rights. A revolutionary government came to power. It mobilized every available resource to rebuild Cuba into an independent, literate, self-acting nation. In short order it would expropriate the wealth Cubans produced for U.S.-owned sugar and tobacco interests and invest it in the social wage of the beleaguered working-class majority. This required a profound transformation, a massive, deep-going restructuring challenging every layer of society to shed old ways and invent a new habitat for what the Argentine-born Cuban revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara termed “the construction of Socialist Man.” Former members of the dissolved Cuban National Ballet were not inclined to stand idly by as volunteer literacy brigades took to the countryside to teach peasants how to read, and block by block, Cubans elected Committees in Defense of the Revolution, and proposed and voted for sugarcane quotas, with newly organized cane-cutting brigades drawing members from every strata of the population to maximize the harvest of the island’s cash crop. In a public declaration offered via the press, the dancers warmly welcomed the revolutionary forces and also reminded the newly formed government that the ballet company had been among those on the front lines fighting Batista’s tyranny. They paid tribute to Dr. Julio Martínez Páez, who had been a medical student during the Machado regime. On September 22, 1930, during a demonstration, Martínez Páez was detained. Later, he was ar- Part II. Después (After) 84 rested on the same night as the student activist Félix Alpízar was murdered. His medical studies were interrupted because the Machado regime had impressed him into service as an intern at the General Calixto García Hospital. After the fall of Machado, he resumed his studies and graduated. He met the young lawyer Fidel Castro and the revolutionary activist Camilo Cienfuegos . In 1957, Martínez Páez joined the July 26th Movement. After an exile in Mexico following several arrests, he was summoned by Castro to join the Sierra Maestra guerrilla forces to direct the rebel army’s medical detachment. There, he fought alongside the others and rose to the rank of commander in the battle of La Plata. • What brought Dr. Julio Martínez Páez into the orbit of ballet? After the victory, Martínez Páez specialized in orthopedic surgery. Later, in his eighties, he began the study of English and Marxist philosophy and pursued interests in nature, painting, music, and the ballet. By recognizing his contribution, the dancers wanted to show their confidence in the changes taking place. In a published statement, the company offered,“with all its enthusiasm and capacity, a platform from which to reach for that great destiny which would make it possible for art and culture to arrive in the furthest corners of our nation , embarking on a promissory era that would augur for the development of the national culture, concurring with our [national hero] José Martí that ‘the only way to be free is to be enlightened.’” How did you view the new government? The new government promised to satisfy the aspirations that for many years had fired the imaginations of those with forward-looking ideas. It was essential to embrace such a government. That’s how I viewed it, having been general director of the dissolved Ballet de Cuba, and I encouraged the oldest members of the company to support the revolutionary measures. On February 3, as a symbolic gesture, we mounted a gala at the Teatro Blanquita. Alicia danced with our special guest Igor Youskevitch to celebrate the reappearance of the Ballet de Cuba after a three-and-a-half-year forced recess. 85 Cuban Revolution Triumphs—and Invests in Ballet! We repeated the program on February 15, this time as a tribute to the rebel army and the new revolutionary government. Then something occurred that completely altered the future development of Cuban ballet. I was in our apartment on L Street, between Eleventh and Thirteenth, at about midnight. Alicia wasn’t in Cuba. I heard the doorbell ring, Laura answered it, and it was...