Choco among his own

July 11, 2018

Eduardo Roca Salazar, Choco, who last year deserved the national award for Plastic Arts, has rediscovered his roots during the celebration of the 38th edition of the Caribbean Festival.

The artist went to the Nuevo Vista Alegre neighborhood, which in the days of his childhood was a marginal enclave, until the Revolution in 1960 built homes and dignified its residents. Choco's family was one of those benefited by the social transformation and he does not forget it, just as he does not forget the friends who played baseball –pelota manigüera– nor the initial inclination toward drawing.

Having been among the first to train as an art instructor and then after passing through the National School of Art of Cubanacán gaining renown as one of the representatives of the Cuban artistic avant-garde, does not separate the creator from the popular essence that nourishes his vital and aesthetic experience.

That is why Choco greatly enjoyed himself when in Nuevo Vista Alegre the president of the Municipal Assembly of People's Power, Raúl Fornés, delivered the Keys to the City outside of any protocol, or when Ifá dignitaries paid him tribute, or when his friend and colleague Alberto Lescay and the poet Nancy Morejón extolled the artist's contributions to island visuality.

Choco's exhibition is added to others on the agenda of the Fiesta del Fuego, among which stand out Eros, by Lescay; El cañaveral and Mitologías marinas, by Rosy Auguste (Guadalupe); Synthetic Realism, by Jairo Hernández (Colombia); Faces of Santiago, by Jacques Bourleau (France); The Siesta, by Dante Loyola and Hilda Bustamante (Mexico), and Caribbean Inspiration, by Juan Pulache (Peru).