Cuba-haters focus their diatribes on musicians, demanding that they join attacks on our country, or forget about performing in Miami
Author: Michel E. Torres Corona | informacion@granmai.cu
february 7, 2022 11:02:56
Photo: Internet
On December 31, 2019, a "mega New Year's Eve concert" was to be held at Bayfront Park in Miami, organized by Armando Christian Pérez (aka Pitbull... the rapper who was once all over in music videos… Remember?) Invited to the concert were "outstanding" figures from the Miami scene, including Willy Chirino (who gave us: "Ya viene llegando"... I'm sure you don't remember), plus a reggaeton duo that had their day: Gente de Zona... (of "La gozadera" fame, with Marc Anthony and "Bailando" with Descemer Bueno... Uh? it's been a while...)
The duo, Alexander Delgado and Randy Malcolm, had long resisted pressure from the Miami right wing; commercial success gave them some protection. But in December of 2019, the scales would begin to tip in favor of the haters. Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo announced that they were out of the big gig. "Let it be very clear that this event is not for these people," he said at the time, later adding, "The first thing they need to do, if they have a little dignity, is to return the key that a former mayor of Miami ... [mistakenly] gave them... they were asked to return it, and to this day they have not."
The charges against the two were very serious. They had refused to criticize human rights violations in Cuba, offering a free concert in Havana along with Laura Pausini and, especially, calling for the crowd to applaud Miguel Díaz-Canel, who was in the audience, adding, "Our President is on hand…Thank you for being here." A deadly sin.
The campaign was savage. Silence was no longer enough. The regular comment, "I don't talk about politics, my thing is art," wouldn’t do. Pitbull himself felt the pressure of the hate machine when, in defense of Gente de Zona, he coined a phrase of deep philosophical depth: "Music is music and politics is politics." He was obliged to retract that lame remark later, and apologize.
José Ramón Cabañas, at that time Cuba's ambassador in Washington, posted a tweet in which he suggested that campaign could be described as "cultural terrorism." Other Cuban authorities went so far as to speak of "media torture."
Whatever we call it, the pressure worked. For Gente de Zona, 2020 was not only the first year of the covid-19 pandemic, but also the year of their debut as "activists against the cruel dictatorship." Along with other artists, they released a propagandistic song of very poor quality, but given its counterrevolutionary content, went on to win a Grammy... In the end, Pitbull was wrong: the distinctions between music and politics are rarely significant.
To the example of Gente de Zona others can be cited. Yulien Oviedo, for example, who first said he didn’t know if Cuba was a dictatorship; then, when they began canceling his concerts in Miami, he said, ok, yes, it is a dictatorship, adding that he had looked it up in the dictionary. When that was still not enough, he ended up saying he was not going to talk about politics anymore. "Politics is politics..." he seemed to say, quoting the philosopher Pitbull, but it didn´t work. The machinery wanted more. It was no longer enough to break the recalcitrant, now they were expected to become another cog in the wheel.
The recent attempts to boycott a Buena Fe concert in Madrid reflect the logic of "cultural terrorism." But in Europe, the Cuban counterrevolution has less muscle. The campaign produced only four unhappy individuals shouting expletives and waving banners outside the venue where other, less bitter Cubans were singing along with Israel Rojas and Yoel Martinez. A resounding failure.
But the reactionaries are not relenting. Yes, they are bad losers, but we have to give them credit, they are persistent. Seeing that nobody is talking about the "converted artists" anymore, seeing that Buena Fe was in no way affected by their hateful diatribes, the "cultural terrorists" decided to set their sights on singers like Álex Ubago and the duo Andy y Lucas, guests at the San Remo Music Awards in Cuba. Sadly, they cracked, too.