Fátima Patterson And Her Tenacity In The Face Of Ever-Present Challenges

July 12, 2019

"Every year the Caribbean Festival faces new challenges. It always satisfies me because in Macubá, in the evenings, we have the Peña, which is our space of many years, where theater artists, singers, dance groups come, I tell stories, but we try to have a sieve to filter the best of what comes these days".

As every year, Fátima Patterson, National Theater Prize winner, along with her group Macubá opened its doors to artistic expressions of any kind, although they defend, as hosts in the Café, theater, Caribbean theater. Now with the staging again of La Casa. A remembrance of Lorca and his Bernarda, but this time brought to Cuba, to Santiago, to its neighborhood Los Hoyos. A House pretext to reflect in a human way about the internal spaces of each person.

"In these moments it is much more important. For a long time we have been doing it, and I believe that out of the 39 editions of the Caribbean Festival I have only missed one and because I was outside Cuba, but at all times the intention has been that, or we have been alone (Macubá) making a show from all the traditions of traditional popular culture, and at other times we have invited other artists to be with us in that space, which is a space of respect, of artistic confrontation, to offer the best of what we have to the Santiago public and to all the Caribbean that comes to this beautiful celebration".

Fátima Patterson feels more committed, having just returned from the IX Congress of UNEAC and the demands are greater, but she and her theater group have maintained the compass in the right direction.

"There is a phrase that the president said and it is very important, we must reclaim decency, we must end mediocrity, erase vulgarity which is a form of indecency, and I belabor the point, and I don't mind belaboring it because it is a way to emphasize this phenomenon, this drag that we have of ugly things".

Cuban culture, based on what was raised by the delegates and Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel at the Congress, involves challenges for artists, and Fátima, who has consistently defended the fight against the banal, is no exception.

"It doesn't surprise me nor does it make me change many things in the Café Teatro Macubá, the headquarters of our group, on the contrary, it reaffirms what we have been doing and what I have asked of artists for a long time. Our nation needs, deserves the best of art and culture, that makes us more independent, it strengthens us as leaders in the Caribbean. That is also my responsibility as an artist and as an intellectual".