Jeremayakovka

Cuba Commentary (Passover Sermon)

* Updated *

Following is a comment that I just added to the mix at Matt's recent blogpost on Cuba. For a guy who doesn't speak Spanish well and who's never been to Cuba, I didn't know I could get so worked up on the subject. Must be my happy childhood memories of "Guantanamera"! Don't neglect to read Matt's original post and the other comments, too. (What follows is edited slightly from its original form.) 
.
Communist Cuba has been a pet cause of liberals and leftists for almost 50 years. It has hosted the Venceremos Brigade from the 1960s to the present day, harbors extremist fugitives from American justice (Black Panther Party honchos Huey Newton and Assata Shakur), and indulges mainstream fugitives from post-Soviet truth (Oliver Stone, Charlize Theron).

The New Left of the early 60s backed the revolution there from the get-go. Soft liberals -- as well as many Cuban Communists -- were taken in by Castro's pledge to institute democracy. Lee Oswald used the "Fair Play for Cuba Committee" as a cover to pose as a wacky leftist in order to assassinate John Kennedy. (In the opinion of many Republicans Kennedy was the last remotely honorable Democratic president -- to whom Richard Nixon and the Republican Party prudently ceded the 1960 presidential election despite having sufficient reason to contest and/or remain bitter about the results.) Personally, I was raised on career Communist Kulturkampfer Pete Seeger's recordings of the Cuban nationalist tune "Guantanamera" -- a non-Communist, patriotic song long exploited in the service of la lucha. In fact I attended the same summer camp in the 1980s which Pete Seeger had attended in the 1930s -- something of which I used to be proud.

Communist Cuba has been an enemy of freedom as we know it on at least three continents: at the first opportunity it installed (presumably) nuclear missiles aimed at North America, and it exported war to Bolivia in the 1960s and to Angola in the 1970s.

When la dictadura falls, there will be a vacuum of political leadership that will need to be filled. Hopefully that need is being addressed already. Yet the "culture war" as it relates to Cuba is already being waged. That is a good thing.

When I think of the prison that is Cuba I think of the description in Armando Valladares's Against All Hope of political prisoners being drowned in a shit-saturated sewage ditch under a baking sun on that Caribbean gulag aka Isla de Pinos. By comparison Camp X-Ray is a Travelodge (with room service) and The Shawshank Redemption a children's bedtime story.

It's up to the American and Cuban (and Cuban-American) Right to set the tone for this culture war, because if we allow types like Reinaldo Arenas and Wim Wenders to control the debate, we'll betray the Cuban people yet again.

- Un hombre sincero

.
Let's see, the subject of last year's Passover post was the Soviet Union. This year it's Cuba. Next year in Tehran!

.
ENDNOTES and AFTERTHOUGHTS:

* (Update 04/03) * My dear blogbuddy Fausta left a must-read comment about Reinaldo Arenas's work in the comments section. Please read it.

* Fausta, with whom I sometimes argue -- but always patiently, carefully, and constructively (and therefore, Gentle Reader, instructively) -- suggested in the comments that Arenas's life and work are a direct subversion of the Cuban regime. Indeed. When it comes to truth, Fausta and I are always on the same side of the debate. And we always root for each other, even when we're on opposing sides of the debate. It's just that here I'm keen to push the empirical and analytical envelopes in a certain way.

* My (first) pre-emptive statement to the PC Thought Police, whom I expect to pound on my door because I mentioned Reinaldo Arenas as neither a hero nor a victim, although in many ways he was both (and both at the same time): My phrasing is deliberate, and I own it. I don't suggest banning from the cultural debate the import of Sr. Arenas's life and work and death (by suicide), nor diminishing their potential contributions to it. As if I'm capable (or desirous) of suppressing truth! All and everything I'm saying is that his life and work and death should not set the tone of the debate.

* My (second) preemptive statement to the PC Thought Police: Lest you accuse me of being barren of compassion for anyone who suffers and dies -- so wastingly and so wastefully -- from AIDS, or for anyone who lives on after loved ones have died from AIDS, you need to surrender the calculating portion of your intellect (if only for a moment) to my sonnet "When Late We Lie."

* My (third) pre-emptive statement to the PC Thought Police: Now -- does "silence = death"? Or is silence golden? (Hint: that's a trick question.)

* My (fourth) pre-emptive statement to the PC Thought Police: I've always got one finger pointed in your general direction. You'll have to guess which one, though.

* My (fifth) pre-emptive statement to the PC Thought Police: I'm happy to debate any issue with anyone, it's just that -- by way of some kind of neoconservative "affirmative action" -- defectors from the PC Thought Police are encouraged to apply. (Need more encouragement? Go read Natan Sharansky's The Case for Democracy.)

* My (sixth) pre-emptive statement to the PC Thought Police: The blogosphere's on to your devilish masters!

* Found a suitable "Guantanamera" video!  After everything, este viejo's still got his moves. Just like the Cuban people. Take it away, papi!:

.

¿Por Qué Porno Para Ricardo?

*Updated and Expanded *

Here's an amped up sound squad that has a thing or two to teach the free world about how not to get fooled again! Cuba Underground interviews Gorki Aguila, the lead singer of the anti-Castro Cuban rock band, Porno Para Ricardo. (It's in Spanish, but I could make out this telling phrase, por ejemplo.):

We have a song dedicated to our commander-in-chief which mentions his name completely and says clearly that he's a son of a whore.

"Gorki" -- Is that a stage name? Heh.
.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.
.

Videos here.

(H/T Free Thoughts)

.
* * *

¿Por Qué Porno Para Ricardo?

.
Here are a few words about displaying a graphic that, to the extent that it's pornography, subverts generally accepted moral standard while also and primarily as art, subverts a ubiquitous communist icon.

By displaying merely two complementary sex organs the poster doesn't exactly emanate the plush prurience showcased in glossier porn. By not displaying many aspects of the sexual organs and by retaining the hammer and sickle form, the poster tones down the pornographic aspect in favor the message of political subversion. If anything it's more erotic than pornographic, albeit blatantly so.

Discovering this band gives me shot in the arm because it reminds me of some of the bands I came across in the post-punk alternative "scene" in and around Barrington Hall in Berkeley in the late 80s and early 90s. Divesting myself of shyness by literally jumping into the mosh pit, I knew, met, and/or heard a number of bands that passed through town, including The Mr. T Experience, Useless I.D., and Primus. They've all, after polishing up their alternative image (I.D.'s lead singer Guy chopped off his dreads, I see), have gone to enjoy notable and cash-influxed capitalist success. I indulged in some of the stranger sounds that were already faddish but still original, like Nick Cave, and tilted toward the more "progressive" side of the alternative music by loading up on Fugazi and (excuse the pun) sampling certain hip-hop like Boogie Down Productions.

So, what's the point? you might ask. That's a question I asked then, over and over and over. Frankly, I never quite found it in the music. I found glimpses or moments of it, yes -- including a few breakthrough moments of the power of art and sex and precious (oh, so precious!) hope for the human condition -- but the "scene" proved no utopia. At times it proved more obscene than a scene. It did not sustain, neither me nor even itself. And so while infamous Barrington was shut down as a public nuisance, I went off, cradling unclear ideas, to join, and join eventually the cadre, of the Marxist-Leninist New Alliance Party. Then again, in those first post-Pistols, post-Clash years on the University of California's flagship and most radical campus -- so cocky and confident but also free and privileged -- perhaps it never promised to be anything more than a place for kicks,a place for skateboards and motorcycles and LSATs and MCATs.

These days I try to retain the spirit of the earlier quest -- the acqusitive inquisitiveness, the olfactory hypersensitivity to anyone's bullshit (including my own), the general well-wishing to my fellow man -- but to retain that spirit by imbuing it in wholly different matter (or matters). Hence, my affirmation of Porno for Ricardo. A far cry from the nonsensical pseudo-rebellion of my college days, they are rebels already with a cause. I welcome the phenomenon of Porno For Ricardo and wish them and all musicians and artists in Cuba the speediest road to freedom, democracy, and prosperity.

(Besides, the best I ever came up with to subvert the hammer and sickle was to take some paint to it and stretch the hammer into the horizontal bar of an "A" and then complete a circle from the sickle to form an an anarchist sickle. These guys take the cake for taking it further.)

Here's a short, low-budget video of "Los Musicos de Bremen": definite pop punk, crossover potential. If Cuba enjoyed a free market, these guys would be cashing in instantly.

* * *

Previous: A long mention of the Israeli hardcore band, Retribution, in "Home Improvement - Zionist Style."

Also: The video clip (of an entirely different band, however) which Eminem's Revenge left in the comments is excellent.

Las Damas de Blanco - A Photo-Musical Tribute

(Updates 12/11:

* Turns out yesterday was "Human Rights Day." (Don't know exactly what that means, who instituted it, etc., but I happened to help bring this video to the world's attention on that day.

* The latest heroic Damas de Blanco photos are here at Free Thoughts, the best trilingual (English-Italian-Spanish) anti-Castro, pro-Western blog on the internet, and nominated -- for good reason -- by the Weblog Awards for Best European Blog of 2006.)

* More (12/12): Ahmed Rodríguez Albacia from Babalu Blog

.
Nope, no Castroite parades and no Hollywood directors slumming here. Just dozens of Cuban prisoners of conscience, held continuously since a 2003 government crackdown on free speech, and the faces of their families, organized through Las Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White) (info in Spanish; English).

Oppression ain't glamorous. Nor is the work, commitment, and sacrifice of abolishing it. But glamor has nothing to do with what's worth remembering. That is, glamor has nothing to do with glory. As with most popular movements, like invention itself, Las Damas de Blanco was born from necessity:

The wives had nowhere to turn, so they turned to each other. They gathered on Sundays at St. Rita church to discuss brief, sporadic jailhouse visits and the appalling conditions their  husbands faced. Soon those weekly meetings developed into regular peaceful protests on Fifth Avenue.