The 15th edition of the Orígenes Literary Workshop kicked off the art-making machinery in Contramaestre on May 18 and 19.
The cell of the Hermanos Saíz Association, AHS, in this municipality, with the support of the Directorate of Culture in the territory and the provincial AHS made possible the reception of poets, writers, art critics and troubadours from Havana, Santa Clara, Las Tunas and Santiago de Cuba to exchange knowledge and experiences with the 10 associates of the AHS in Contramaestre and the participating public.
As every year the program of activities was conceived within the framework of the fall in combat in Dos Rios of the Apostle of Cuba, José Martí. For two days, literature, music and history were interwoven to honor the Master, the National Hero and art as a whole.
The first of the proposals carried the seal of the troubadour Liván Leyva in concert with “Sentido propio” in the house of the Young creator on the night of Friday 17.
Saturday’s workshop began with an open-air exchange at the América Libre sugar mill, where the institutional communicator and the production specialist made a tour of the mill’s machinery and the historical and industrial process, going back to 1913, to the figure of Fico Fernández and his nephew Rodríguez Feo who gave wings to the Orígenes Magazine and to a whole literary movement in this eastern region that would lay the foundations of what Orígenes Workshop defends and honors today.
He was accompanied by poetry and trova readings by Ana Margarita Arada, Iris Cruz, Marta Cardozo, Daniel Faxas, Claudio Cruz, Mailín Valdes, Livan Leyva, Elvira Eskourtis among other writers.
On Saturday afternoon at the Tobacco Conference Room, art critics Iris Cruz and Ana Margarita Arada gave two lectures: Street Portrait of Adonis Acosta and More than a Century of Marti’s Iconography, respectively.
The first day of Origins 2024 closed at 8:00 PM with a trova concert by Leodanis Castellón and Henry Fonseca at the House of the Young Creator.
May 19, the date of José Martí’s death in Dos Ríos was the inspiration for more than 15 artists from different areas of Cuba to honor the Maestro on the second day of activities of Orígenes. For logistical reasons, the full route of the funeral route of the Apostle was not carried out, but these young and not so young creators went to the Remanganaguas Cemetery where the mortal remains of Martí rest to venerate the legacy he left to the history of Cuba and the world.
A floral offering at the obelisk of the Apostle, then a cultural exchange with children from the community of Remanganaguas, a historical reminder and rounds of literature and trova closed the activities of the day.
The XV edition of Origins in Contramaestrian is the result of the initiatives of a group of young Contramaestrian intellectuals with artistic and literary concerns, including Eduar Encina and Arnoldo Fernandez. And it is also the result of many other young people who in the following years defended and still defend the workshop as a vital space within the Cuban cultural panorama.
Origins is identity, it is historical memory, it is heritage, it is art, it is Cubanness, it is patriotic love, it is talent and dedication.
