"IV. Pioneros" depicts the numbing sadness that
a Cuban mother confronts each day as she sends her child off to the regime's schools. There is no alternative, she must send him to a
school where hatred is compulsory and propaganda is not an elective. In the painting, Cortada has taken a school house
setting and transformed it into a horrific landscape of swirling imagery: sadistic
teachers, defeated students, and co-opted symbols.
Expressive brush strokes and savage knife work torture the
surface of Cortada's canvas. Boxes creating
claustrophobia-inducing spaces slice across the composition with harrowing imagery: silhouette images of children marching in
goose-step away from their parents and towards their soulless destinations. The "ABCs" on the wall are no longer
for nursery rhymes, they've become the fodder for propaganda ("1, 2, y 3, seremos como el Ché")
which entrap the youth into becoming the protégés of the Cuban revolution.
Teaching their children at home to disavow what they learn
at the government school can be counter-productive. In their zeal for ideological purity,
Cuba is happy to trample over the sacredness of family, the rights of the individual, and
the innocence of children. The Castro
regime intentionally distances children from their families, sowing distrust and duplicity
while encouraging pioneros to rat on parents so they can be "cured" of
their ideological contamination. Like
Mary watching her son carry his cross in the fourth station, there is nothing this Cuban
mother can do but suffer in agony as she witnesses the willful destruction of her child
and her family.
The first painting of the series that was completed was "XII. Paredon." It was exhibited at No Tengan Miedo,
a solo show at the Latin American Art Museum in January 2001. Inspired by the12th Station of the Cross, "XII.
Paredon" conveys the horrors of the summary execution of political prisoners
sentenced in Kangaroo courts and mob-rule trials during the early days of the Revolution.
For more information about the artist, please visit his website,
www.cortada.com