IN ARTES PLASTICAS, one of the government cultural magazines spawned by the Castro revolution, Manuel Diaz Martinez writes that “the artist must learn to help purify the revolutionary conscience of our Latin American brothers without ceasing to be an artist, without submerging his art in politics.” These words — surely contradictory — bare the dilemma of culture in Cuba today. Like all other revolutions, the Cuban upheaval of social and political institutions has stimulated a companion effort to uproot cultural institutions and nourish new and vital theatre, music, art, movies and writing. But this new culture can also wither under the upheaval’s propaganda demands. In Castro’s Cuba, no one doubts that cultural life today is busy, almost frenzied, but no one can be sure it is vital.

Havana offers abundant evidence of activity: commercial and government playhouses show a varied theatrical fare. Foreign ballet and musical troupes, some of the world’s best, visit the city often; seats are available for the government admission price of 25c. Alicia Alonso has organized a Ballet de Cuba. A new symphony orchestra is under way. Young artists and sculptors receive exhibitions in the old museums. A government movie institute turns out lavish documentaries. Government presses print classics, contemporary Cuban fiction and a host of cultural magazines.

Do Cubans take advantage of these opportunities? The evidence is contradictory. On a recent Sunday afternoon, I attended performances of Los Santos (The Saints) by Pedro Salinas and Los Fusiles (The Rifles) by Bertolt Brecht in the auditorium of the Palace of Fine Arts. The Ministry of Education had presented the one-act plays as part of a government commemoration of the Spanish Civil War. The auditorium seats 400, but no more than sixty persons showed up by curtain time. Later I caught a new play, El Filantrop (The Philantropist) by Vergilio Piñera, in the National Theater on the Civic Plaza. The Theater, also under the direction of the Ministry of Education, had commissioned the play, a satire attacking the rich for giving alms to the poor and then enslaving them. A thousand people can be accommodated in the house, but only seventy-five attended the performance.

This lack of attendance could mean Cuban discrimination rather than Cuban neglect, for both performances struck me as amateurish. The seating picture changed drastically one night when the government offered a proven product— Bhaskar, India’s Hindu ballet. I could not attend, but Paul Ash, a New York businessman, made an attempt and then jotted down these notes:

“At 8:30 P.M. there was a crowd of about one hundred at the National Theater’s ticket desk. All the seats had been filled. People kept coming, learning the situation and leaving, but at 9:30 the crowd outside must have been 150. Every time someone who had bought tickets in advance entered the theatre, loud jeers and complaints ensued. Three police cars arrived, and the police kept the crowd from forcing its way in. A man in a T-shirt and two others, newspapers in hand, kept pointing out to the ticket sellers that the ad said admission was 25c and that’s all. They demanded to pay the 25c and get in. The great noise outside apparently held up the start of the program. At 9:45 a very young-looking, blond policeman jumped on the ticket table and announced all would be able to enter and stand. There was a mad scramble. By 10:15 most were inside, and I left. I had already been standing since 8:30.”

I discussed cultural activities one day with Dra. Vicentina Antuña, the director of culture in the Ministry of Education; Sra. Marta Jiménez, a member of the Foreign Ministry’s cultural department; and Fausto Masó of Casa de las Americas (House of the Americas), a new organization trying to spread Cuban culture throughout the hemisphere. Dra. Antuña, coming from an older generation than many of the revolutionary leaders, stressed that much of the current cultural activity involves revitalization of dormant and corrupt projects rather than simple innovation. The government, for example, recently awarded scholarships to sixteen young painters and writers; similar awards were made under the Batista regime, Dra. Antuña said, but they usually fell to friends of the dictator who pocketed the money without bothering to study. On the other hand, Sra. Jiménez and Masó, both in their twenties, stressed that the revolution is giving young artists and young ideas their first chance. A government play competition, for example, has been started to stimulate young, native playwrights. But results have not been extraordinary. “It is very hard,” Masó said.

Dra. Antuña, Sra. Jiménez and Masó seemed most proud of three accomplishments: work in the provinces, the National Press, and the Cuban Institute of Motion Picture Art and Industry. In the past, a Cuban might find culture in Havana but nowhere else. Under Castro, the Peking Opera, the Georgian Dancers, the Ballet de Cuba, the Khachaturian Orchestra, Bhaskar — all have toured the provinces after their runs in Havana. The National Press operates in the plant of La Marina, a newspaper shut down under Castro, and turns out thousands of paper-bound books that sell on street corners for 25c each; the first run of titles includes Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, Marco Polo, a biography of Simon Bolivar, and a history of the French Revolution.

The Cuban Institute has brought the island its first movie industry, issuing more than two dozen documentaries. These documentaries probably represent the most effective cultural achievement of the Castro regime. By their very nature however, they focus on propaganda, not art. Using young Cuban technicians and veteran hands from Mexico and Italy, the Institute has produced documentaries that extol the revolution, describe Cuban life, and discuss agricultural techniques. The foreign help is impressive. Italy’s Cesare Zavattini, who wrote The Bicycle Thief, Umberto D and Miracle in Milan, has written a pair of scripts. Mexico’s Luis Buñuel, director of Los Olvidados (The Forgotten) and Nazarin, arrives soon to direct a movie. So far the Institute’s work has comprised only short documentaries, but two full-length features, Cuba Baila (Cuba Dances) and Cuentos de la Revolucion (Stories of: the Revolution) are now in production.

I SOUGHT an Institute documentary one afternoon and found it at La Rampa movie house. The experience was frightening. As the film opened, a forceful, strident, almost pleading voice cried out from the screen. The audience burst into thunderous applause. The words, the voice belonged to Fidel Castro. Cheers and foot-stamping followed, and I suddenly felt alone, caught in the eye of a storm. Throughout the movie, the clapping, the cheering, the stamping thundered around me at every glimpse or sound of Castro. Martial music intensified the excitement.

The movie, Patria O Muerte (Fatherland or Death), told its story effectively. The quotations that opened the movie came from Castro’s speech last May 1 to a crowd of at least a half million Cubans in Havana’s Civic Plaza. The rally with all its brilliant color and excitement then filled the screen. The movie followed a pattern: between shots of marching Cubans at the rally, it fitted sequences showing accomplishments of the government in education and culture, the year’s work in agrarian reform, and the progress in industry and labor. Then, after another return to the rally, the movie suddenly showed dramatic scenes of incendiary bombs burning fields, destroying Cuban progress. The narrator accused Yankee planes of dropping the bombs.

A few days after my visit to La Rampa, Jaime Soriano, reviewing Patria O Muerte for Revolucion, wrote that the sequences “have been lined up in a way that is a bit conventional and trite—in the manner of those documentaries where the inevitable voice of the announcer fills your head with explanations.” Soriano concluded that Patria O Muerte was no innovation in the art of the documentary. Comments like that in a semi-official newspaper offer a hope that government-directed culture in Cuba is concerned more with art than with clapping, cheering and stamping. In the reality of the revolution’s propaganda demands, however, such a hope must be slight.

STANLEY MEISLER is a wire service newsman now stationed in Washington.