The poet Alpidio Alonso, new Minister of Culture of Cuba

July 21, 2018

Cuba's National Assembly announced this Saturday the name of the new Minister of Culture: Alpidio Bautista Alonso Grau.

Alonso was presented as a new member of the Council of Ministers, approved by the Assembly in the first ordinary session of its current legislature. He thus becomes one of the new faces of the Executive, in which the majority of ministers remain in their positions, although the heads of nine portfolios change, such as Public Health, Economy and Planning, Justice, and Communication.

Born in 1963 in Dalia, Venegas, municipality of Yaguajay, Alonso graduated in Electrical Engineering from the Central University "Marta Abreu" of Las Villas and began his working life in 1987 at the Torula Yeast factory of the CAI "Simón Bolívar", Yaguajay. Later he moved to the Mechanical Plant company in Villa Clara. Since then he has been, among other things, a member of the Provincial Committee of the Party in Placetas, editor and director of the Sed de Belleza publishing house, of the Hermanos Saiz Association (AHS), and president of the AHS itself from 2001 to 2006. He founded and directed the magazine Dédalo.

He has also worked as a scriptwriter for the program "La casa del fabulador", on the provincial station CMHW, in Villa Clara, and "Nunca es Tarde", music and poetry, on Radio Progreso. For a brief time he was vice president of the Cuban Book Institute (ICL).

Alonso is a member of the Association of Writers of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba and author of poetry books such as La casa como un árbol (Ediciones Sed de Belleza, 1995), Alucinaciones en el jardín de Ana (Prize of the Second Biennial of the Décima, Villa Clara, 1994, Ediciones Capiro, 1995), El árbol en los ojos (Reina del Mar editores, 1998), Ciudades del viento (Calendario Prize, 1999, Casa Editora Abril, 2001) and Tardos soles que miro (Casa Editora Abril, 2007).

He compiled El tiempo está a favor de los pequeños. Versos cubanos para Roque Dalton. He directs the poetry magazine Amnios, writes and hosts the radio program Verso a Verso, broadcast weekly on Radio Metropolitana, and coordinates the gathering "Amor de ciudad grande" at the Librería El Ateneo.

In 2014 he was appointed official of the Ideological Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, of which he is currently vice-chief. He is also a deputy for Placetas to the National Assembly of People's Power.

He takes the place of Abel Prieto Jiménez, who moves to the Office of the Martiano Program, directed by Armando Hart until his death in November 2017.