HOLD THAT CIGAR

It was easy to realize what kind of article “Give That Festival a Cigar” (Dec. 24) would be as soon as Kenneth Turan referred to our economic embargo of Cuba as a “blockade,” using the term preferred by Fidel Castro and his apologists, so common in the world of Hollywood.

Turan’s piece reads like an unconditional defense of Castro’s regime, a regime that has consistently and very efficiently controlled and oppressed the lives of the Cuban people, including its artists and filmmakers, for over 3 1/2 decades. Turan’s glowing profile of Alfredo Guevara, head of the Instituto Cubano de Arte y Industria Cinematograficos, conveniently forgets to describe the years during which all homosexuals and those who dared to have bad “ideological tendencies” were arrested and sent to the infamous forced labor camps where they were to be re-educated in the glory of communism. Guevera stood by while this happened, protected by his friendship with Cuba’s dictator, and never uttered a word of opposition.

ALEXIS I. TORRES

Burbank