I know I'm dog-paddling in water way over my head, but apparently there is a Latin rock musician, a native of Colombia, known as "Juanes." Juanes, who now lives on Key Biscayne, is scheduled to perform a free concert today in Havana. The New York Times reported yesterday on the divisive impact this concert is having on the Cuban-American population in Florida.
The concert has been approved by the State Department and by the Cuban government. According to Juanes:
Through culture, there is a door, there is a window. Let's go through that door.
The reaction among the Miami Cuban population reveals the expected generational split. But this year is the 50th anniversary of the Castro revolution in Cuba. The United States has had no diplomatic relations with a country just 90 miles off Florida for the last 47 of those 50 years. We have done everything possible to keep Cuba impoverished, so that no claim could be made elsewhere in Latin America that Communism "works."
The Cuban exiles in Florida remind me of the loyalists who fled to Canada after the American Revolution. If fifty years later, in 1826, those loyalists had been still denouncing the American government -- and John Quincy Adams, its president -- as traitors to the Crown, and demanding that British North America have no economic or cultural contact with the rebellious "colonies," their demands would have seemed somewhat peculiar to the rest of the world.
And so has appeared our treatment of Cuba. It's a relief to see that the ice is finally melting, and that our government is supporting today's concert by Juanes.
1 comment:
What, so playing a concert somewhere is an endorsement of the government there? If so, I guess most American musicians (being liberal) should stick to blue states.
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