Maravi

Bernal advises nations to fight alien colonial models

Bernal advises nations to fight alien colonial models
By Larry Moonze in Havana, Cuba
Friday June 15, 2007 [04:00]

CUBA’S culture deputy minister Rafael Bernal has urged nations to fight against the imposition of dazzling and alienating colonial cultures in the name of globalisation. Addressing the fifth International Congress on Culture and Development attended by hundreds of scholars, cultural authorities and personalities across the globe, Bernal called for cultural diversity that was vigilant against colonial models.

“The empire is looking to impose a blinding and alienating colonising model disguised as global culture that seeks to convert us into a docile and uncritical planetary flock,” he said.

“Participants must reflect profoundly on our role in passing on culture to future generations which should not be based on the messages filled with triviality and mediocrity that are broadcast by the world’s major television networks.”

Bernal said nations must never allow themselves to lose their cultural heritage because neo-colonial cultural models were not sustainable. Bernal said cultural diversity played a leading role on today’s world where patrimony and historical values of independent nations were menaced by imperialist actions.

UNESCO representative Catherine Stenou said culture played a part in global harmony. “In a world that is growingly interconnected and where cultural codes are interwoven and confront each other daily, respect for cultural diversity is a significant path to achieve global harmony,” said Stenou. “UNESCO struggles for recognition of the importance of cultural diversity and the ties that bind it to humanity in the effort to achieve world peace.”

And scholars and experts on Tuesday warned of the serious crimes being committed against Iraqi culture by the US. They said the crimes were taking place in full of view of the astonished and immobile eyes of a large portion of humanity. The participants said there was also need to strengthen regional identities as a counterweight to the onslaught against cultural industries under neo-liberalism.

Cuban author and researcher Eliades Acosta told the forum that the US invasion of Iraq had destroyed more than a million volumes of the National Library of Iraq and that more than 700 archeological sites have been plundered.

“Now the barbarism is complemented with the systematic killing of hundreds of intellectuals, journalists, scientists, writers and philosophers by death squads that have engulfed what was one of the most advanced countries of the region,” said Acosta. “We are witnessing unprecedented events in the cultural trajectory of humanity. There is an overwhelming coercion demanding and proclaiming that all human beings have to consume and think in the same way.”

Argentine Adolfo Colombres said the colonial system trivialises and subjugates by way of consumption norms even to the point of destroying the language of peoples.
“It is not just a process of cultural colonisation but can become a true anthropological mutation,” said Colombres.

Labels: NEOCOLONIALISM, RAFAEL BERNAL

posted by MrK @ 4:55 AM