CubaManiac
09-25-2001, 09:16 AM
Reporter's Notebook: With the Cuban Latin Grammys Delegation
Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit
REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK:
With the Cuban Latin Grammys Delegation:
From the Awards That Weren't to the War That is to Come
by Jon Hillson
LOS ANGELES, Sept 18 (NY Transfer)--Members of the big Cuban
delegation to the cancelled Latin Grammy Awards squeeze into three
vans and a pickup truck, laden with instruments and luggage, headed
for the airport and the transcontinental flight home. The music that
brought them and hundreds of other recording artists here from all
-- salsa, merengue, son, boleros, Latin jazz, hip hop, nortenos -- is
being drowned out by patriotic hymns and martial tunes. The distance
between their departure point and their destination is greater in
politics than geography.
If the Cuban musicians, singers, accompanying recording industry
directors, and media representatives are nervous, they don't show it.
They are relaxed as they depart the hotel, amidst salutations,
handshake, and embraces. The airport inn has been their home away
from homeland during a week that has seemed much longer than the six
days and seven nights they've been here.
*
The Cuban Grammy nominees -- world-renowned recording artists,
including Chucho Valdés, Issac Delgado, their bands, Celina González,
Lázaro Ros and Olorun, along with young and up and coming musicians--
arrive to camera lights, microphones, cheers, applause, flowers, and
banners on September 8. Interviews and images fill coverage in the
U.S. and international Spanish-language media, from Los Angeles to
Miami to Latin America.
On Monday evening, September 10, at a hastily booked appearance at
the Sportsman's Lounge in Culver City, hundreds jam the club to hear
Issac Delgado and his Orchestra. "Unbelievable concert," says a lover
of his music.
"A very mixed crowd," says another, "Blacks, Latinos, whites, young
people, a real Los Angeles crowd."
Virtually everyone in attendance receives a leaflet for the public
welcome planned outside The Forum in Inglewood, site of the Latin
Grammy ceremony, in a city that is part of the immense sprawl of Los
Angeles county. The event will also call for an end to the U.S.
blockade of Cuba and normalized relations between Washington and
Havana. The broadly supported welcome is initiated by the Los Angeles
Coalition in Solidarity with Cuba, whose efforts have received
international media coverage.
Local right-wing Cuban-Americans plan a different kind of reception.
The Junta Patriotica Cubana, along with Alpha 66, say they will
protest the presence of the Cuban musicians. Their action has gotten
headlines as well.
*
Officials of the Inglewood Police Department are contacted by lawyers
from the Cuba coalition, and receive materials on the welcome. The
cops assign the welcome the west side of the Forum area on Prairie
Avenue, a block about 150 yards long. The police inform the
ultra-rightists that they will be on the other side of the Forum, 150
yards away. The coalition has requested this vast buffer zone.
On September 10, the police tell the welcome organizers that leaders
of "the protestors" are irritated with the site assignments. They
want the Prairie Avenue area. The police ask, will you move? The
coalition declines: word has already gone out on the time, date, and
lovation of the event. After some discussion, the officer in charge
tells a coalition leader he'll "be in touch."
That morning, leaders of the coalition and the Cuban-American
ultra-rightists are interviewed by phone, jointly but at different
locations, for a live broadcast on Radio Colombia Nacional
transmitted to stations across the country, as well in Miami.
More than 5,000 leaflets announcing the welcome are distributed at
Labor Day events, nightclubs, on campuses, at workplaces. Thousands
of of people read announcements on the Internet. The CBS radio
network airs an interview with a coalition spokesperson, and the
local ABC TV affiliate films a story at the site of the welcome.
This climaxes unusually intense media attention on the public
welcome, from CBS Evening News and CNN to the Los Angeles Times,
Associated Press, and Agence France Presse. Whatever happens the next
day will be big news -- inside The Forum, and outside.
The next day is September 11.
*
The Cuban recording artists, like everyone else, are stunned by the
scope, violence, and carnage from the horrific events in New York,
Washington, and Pennsylvania. Everything associated with the reason
the Cubans are in Los Angeles is cancelled.
I am helping out two Cuban reporters. Rolando Pérez Betancourt is a
veteran journalist who writes about culture for the Cuban daily
newspaper Granma, assigned to cover the Grammy awards. Manuel
Henríquez Lagarde is editor of "El Cayman Barbudo" [The BeardedCrocodile], a Cuban cultural magazine, and La Jiribilla [Cuban slang
for permanently agitated person], the popular new online weekly
cultural supplement to the daily "Juventud Rebelde" [Rebel Youth].
We walk down a corridor on the ninth floor of their hotel. There, on
the twin queen size beds, are 10 young Cuban singers and musicians,
transfixed by what they are watching on the television, as the
announcer, in Spanish, reports on the wreckage.
One of the Cubans, a young woman, looks up at us as we pass by, her
face ashen in sadness. She shakes her head slowly, then turns her
eyes back to the television.
*
The performers decide to stay in the hotel on Tuesday. The two
reporters, gathering material for stories, venture outside. We are
veru close to LAX, but the sky is empty. Century Boulevard, usually
jammed with traffic, is deserted, almost ghostly.
We talk, watch television, drive around. The next day, we go to
Hollywood. Having seen the Hollywood sights earlier in the week, many
in the delegation embark on a visit organized by community activists
to Black and Latino working-class neighborhoods in the city's South
Central area.
Betancourt writes regularly on film. We visit the Hollywood
Roosevelt, the refurbished grand dame of lodgings, with its small
museum of old movie stills, posters, and a chronology of cinema
milestones. "It reminds me of a miniature Hotel Nacional," I say,
referring to Havana's eminent, old hotel.
"Exactly," Betacourt says, "the same architecture, tiles, woodwork."
We take turns spotting who's who on Hollywood Boulevard's Walk of
Stars. "Look," Lagarde says, "there's Bogart! He's the best."
"He loves Bogart," Betancourt, 54, says of his companion, younger by
17 years. "A real romantic. He even smokes like Bogart."
Later, we drive up through the winding roads of the Hollywood Hills,
where lush vegetation, bougainvillea and jasmine, caress elegant two
and three-story homes built up on stilts, or snugly into the steep
knolls. Ranch homes and adobe houses are flanked by carefully cut
shrubs and stately cacti. Mercedes Benz cars, BMWs and Lexus SUV's
glide by us on the narrow streets.
As in other upscale Los Angeles neighborhoods, there's a familiar
metal sign in front of many homes: "armed patrol" or "armed
response." Betancourt jots this in his notebook. "Almost every
house," he says, "very impressive."
We listen to talk radio in Spanish. "Our country is under attack,"
the host says to his listeners.
"Here I am, a movie critic, here for the Grammy show, and now I'm a
war correspondent," Betancourt says.
He and Lagarde file daily dispatches to Havana.
Some families of the musicians have called, Lagarde says. "They are
very concerned about people here."
*
Over the course of the week the musicians, shuttled by local
activists, get a sense of the diverse social reality of Los Angeles
-- the city of celluloid and entertainment capitalism, as well as the
metropolis of working people, whose majority is Latino, Black, and
Asian.
They visit the famed Watts Towers in the city's Black and Latino
community. They eat at the Versaille, a popular Cuban restaurant,
chatting with its Central American and Mexican workers. Their vans
roll through Echo Park, another Latino neighborhood, and they stop to
take pictures at the monument to José Martí at the edge of the pond
in the park, dotted with paddle-boats. They are received at a house
party hosted by a Black community activist in Inglewood.
They watch a nature film on a giant IMAX screen near the University
of Southern California. They are visited by a small stream of
Cuban-American well-wishers from Los Angeles, including one who tells
an activist, "I've been praying for their safe journey home."
They shop for items that are scarce in Cuba at a KMart in the
bustling downtown Los Angeles bazaar in the heart of the one of
city's several garment districts, where 50,000 mostly immigrant
workers toil. They visit a guitar shop in Hollywood to stock up on
strings, picks and other accessories in short supply in Cuba.
Everywhere they go -- from their hotel to shops, social events and
restaurants -- they talk with the working people they meet there.
*
Meanwhile, Andrés Goméz is grounded, halfway between his Miami home
and Los Angeles. He was to have participated in the welcome outside
The Forum on September 11, and planned to speak the next day at a
citywide meeting about the case of five Cuban citizens framed and
convicted of espionage conspiracy last June in Miami. He was also
scheduled to address a special meeting for sponsored by MEChA
(Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Atzlán) at the California State
University at Northridge.
Instead Goméz, a founder and current national coordinator of the
Antonio Maceo Brigade, is watching movies in a Holiday Inn in
suburban Dallas -- like his fellow passengers, he is unable to go
anywhere.
When he finally arrives on September 13, Goméz relays a story from a
passenger on another flight to Los Angeles, which landed in Garden
City, Kansas, a town of 30,000. "The airport was so small, there was
no terminal," he says, "they had no jetway. The passengers had to
exit on the ladder of a fire truck."
The woman who told him the story is Black, he explains, "and she said
the town was virtually all white. There was no hotel space. So all
the passengers stayed with local residents in their homes. The family
she stayed with baked for her every day. She said they couldn't have
been nicer."
*
By September 13, the Cuba coalition activists, working with several
other organizations, have pulled together a reception for the Cubans
that would have been promoted at the welcome, but now is announced by
e-mail and word of mouth. Nearly 30 Cubans show up at the house of a
lawyer, whose hospitality is boundless.
They are received by almost a hundred people who fill the kitchen,
living room and a backyard turned into a dining area. The gathering
includes activists from trade unions, area universities, different
political currents, figures from the music industry, radio music
programmers, musicians, lawyers, writers.
They eat barbecued steak, turkey and fish, huge salads, lasagna and
fruit prepared by volunteers. There is much conversation. For
everyone, it is a respite, a relief from the pressures of the last
two days.
Several U.S. activists, including representatives from the July
Cuba-U.S. Youth Exchange, and the August Nikkei [Japanese-American]
for Civil Rights and Redress delegations to Cuba, welcome the Cuban
recording artists.
Rachel Bruhnke, from the National Network on Cuba, tells the crowd,
"We know this situation will be difficult, but we will keep
organizing to defend Cuba."
Julio Ballester Guzmán, who heads the Cuban delegation and the Cuban
music industry enterprise EGREM, speaks for the group. He begins by
offering condolences for the victims of the September 11 attacks. He
salutes those who defend freedom of expression and cultural exchange.
The Cuban recording artists "bring you the music of Cuba, the soul of
Cuba," he says. Ballester concludes by explaining, "We very well
understand the differences between the people of the United States
and the government."
Andres Gómez addresses the gathering, having arrived just
in time for the brief presentations. He reports on recent activities
in Miami -- a September 7th news conference of Cuban-American and
anti-blockade groups defending freedom of expression; a September 8th
17-mile car caravan through Miami-Dade county to downtown Miami --
its vehicles bearing Cuban flags and placards protesting threats and
intimidation of freedom of speech; the caravan is covered by the
city's main English-language television stations; and on September
9th, a cultural festival attended by more than a hundred people who
listen to the noted Cuban poet Pablo Armándo Fernández.
"There is a fight for freedom of expression in Miami that you do not
hear about," he says, "but it is growing and has increasing support,
including from many Cuban-Americans." Members of MEChA at Cal State
Northridge videotape an interview with Gómez, and ask him to return
to speak on their campus.
The event is filmed by Tomás Oliveros, who seems to have been born
with the big camera he shoulders. The coverage will have aired on
Cuban television before the artists reach José Martí International
Airport.
This atmosphere, anchored in solidarity, is tempered by discussions
about the coming war. "We know something horrible is going to happen
next," one Cuban says. "We have known the effects of state-sponsored
terrorism for 42 years. We know there is going to be a war, and much
blood, on all sides. But we must have faith in humanity."
The hosts of the event distribute a leaflet that reprints the Cuban
government's condemnation of the terrorist attacks and remarks by
Fidel Castro and Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque. The
declarations reject state-sponsored terrorism, and alert the people
of the world to be vigilant about a bellicose response from
Washington.
This is journalist Manuel Lagarde's first visit to the United States,
but he's absorbed much by paying close attention to media coverage of
events here -- not only the bi-partisan clamor for military assaults,
but the big push to restrict civil liberties. "Everything's going to
change," he says, matter-of-factly. "Everything."
*
Friday is the last full day the delegation is here. They pile into
vans and drive across the city to Children's Hospital Los Angeles, a
nationally recognized center for infant and adolescent care. Through
efforts facilitated by Operation USA, they are going to donate blood
in response to the September 11 attacks.
"I believe this is a magnificent action in solidarity on the part of
Cuban artists," says Dr. Richard MacKenzie, the head of adolescent
medicine, who receives the Cubans.
"This is a gesture of solidarity with the North American people,"
says Orlando Vázquez, a trumpet player with Issac Delgado's
Orchestra. "It has nothing to do with Cuba-U.S. relations. I believe
in this moment of pain it is the least we can do, to offer our
support and our blood to the people of the United States."
All of the delegation troops out of the hospital wearing the little
stickers that say they donated blood, save one compańero. "I told
them I had been in Angola," he says, "and they said they were sorry,
but no."
*
That evening in Beverly Hills, 300 people pay $1,000 each to attend a
benefit at the posh Beverly Hilton Hotel. It is raising funds for New
York City firefighters, up to 300 of whom may have died in rescue
efforts when the devastated twin towers of the World Trade Center
collapsed. Among those participating are Paul Simon, Kevin Spacey,
and Colombian singer Juanes, the most-nominated artist in the Latin
Grammy competition.
"Cuba's visiting artists," Augutin Gurza wrote in the Los Angeles
Times, "also shared the stage and the evening's spirit of compassion.
Following his dazzling solo at the piano, Havana's Chucho Valdés
stood alone on the sidelines, swaying gently to 'The Star Spangled
Banner,' his long arms held respectfully at his sides. 'It's
important to participate in some fashion, to show unity and help
however we can,' said Valdés."
"The show closed with a rousing encore by Cuban singer Issac Delgado,
featuring a guest vocal by Panama's [Rueben] Blades. The two stars
were surrounded by reporters and well-wishers as they left the
ballroom together," the Times reported.
The event, says Jimmy Maslon, president of Ahi-Nama Music, Issac
Delgado's U.S. recording label, "helped everything and everybody."
Maslon was one of nine speakers at a widely covered September 6 press
conference at the Conga Room, the leading Los Angeles Latin music
club, announcing the public welcome for the Cuban Grammy nominees and
calling for an end to U.S. hostilities toward Cuba.
Enrique Fernández, vice-president of the Latin Recording Academy, the
sponsor of the Latin Grammy Awards, states they hope to reschedule
the ceremony for November 30. "The logistics and the expenditures are
overwhelming," Fernández tells the Los Angeles Times. "Nevertheless,
we really, really want to do it."
The night before, at the reception, one U.S. activist told the Cuban
delegation, "If they reschedule the awards and you come back, we will
build an even bigger welcome to demand the end of the U.S. blockade."
"And if the event is rescheduled," Cuba's Julio Ballester responded,
"we will be back to greet you."
*
Now, under a cloudless sky, the musicians, singers, managers, camera
crews and reporters are all getting their bags together outside the
hotel.
"What a week -- incredible, so many things," says Lupe Pérez Ramírez, a
member of the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores [General Societyof Authors and Editors], enumerating the few gigs they managed to
play, the social events, the small personal encounters, their tour of
the two cities of Los Angeles.
"But it has been sad for us, and it is especially sad for the people
of North America," she says. Yet, despite the "pain of the moment,
what extraordinary hospitality we have received from everybody! We
will never forget the people. We will always be grateful."
I chat for a moment with Alfredo Hechavarría, a 27-year-old trumpet
player with the Isaac Delgado Orchestra. We are talking about what is
coming -- a war of unthinkable dimensions, with consequences that
can't be imagined and an outcome that will be decided in struggle.
"The people of this country," I say, "are going to learn this,"
We shake hands, Alfredo picks up his gear, ready to go home. He
replies softly, but firmly: "The whole world is going to learn this."
-30-
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Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit
REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK:
With the Cuban Latin Grammys Delegation:
From the Awards That Weren't to the War That is to Come
by Jon Hillson
LOS ANGELES, Sept 18 (NY Transfer)--Members of the big Cuban
delegation to the cancelled Latin Grammy Awards squeeze into three
vans and a pickup truck, laden with instruments and luggage, headed
for the airport and the transcontinental flight home. The music that
brought them and hundreds of other recording artists here from all
-- salsa, merengue, son, boleros, Latin jazz, hip hop, nortenos -- is
being drowned out by patriotic hymns and martial tunes. The distance
between their departure point and their destination is greater in
politics than geography.
If the Cuban musicians, singers, accompanying recording industry
directors, and media representatives are nervous, they don't show it.
They are relaxed as they depart the hotel, amidst salutations,
handshake, and embraces. The airport inn has been their home away
from homeland during a week that has seemed much longer than the six
days and seven nights they've been here.
*
The Cuban Grammy nominees -- world-renowned recording artists,
including Chucho Valdés, Issac Delgado, their bands, Celina González,
Lázaro Ros and Olorun, along with young and up and coming musicians--
arrive to camera lights, microphones, cheers, applause, flowers, and
banners on September 8. Interviews and images fill coverage in the
U.S. and international Spanish-language media, from Los Angeles to
Miami to Latin America.
On Monday evening, September 10, at a hastily booked appearance at
the Sportsman's Lounge in Culver City, hundreds jam the club to hear
Issac Delgado and his Orchestra. "Unbelievable concert," says a lover
of his music.
"A very mixed crowd," says another, "Blacks, Latinos, whites, young
people, a real Los Angeles crowd."
Virtually everyone in attendance receives a leaflet for the public
welcome planned outside The Forum in Inglewood, site of the Latin
Grammy ceremony, in a city that is part of the immense sprawl of Los
Angeles county. The event will also call for an end to the U.S.
blockade of Cuba and normalized relations between Washington and
Havana. The broadly supported welcome is initiated by the Los Angeles
Coalition in Solidarity with Cuba, whose efforts have received
international media coverage.
Local right-wing Cuban-Americans plan a different kind of reception.
The Junta Patriotica Cubana, along with Alpha 66, say they will
protest the presence of the Cuban musicians. Their action has gotten
headlines as well.
*
Officials of the Inglewood Police Department are contacted by lawyers
from the Cuba coalition, and receive materials on the welcome. The
cops assign the welcome the west side of the Forum area on Prairie
Avenue, a block about 150 yards long. The police inform the
ultra-rightists that they will be on the other side of the Forum, 150
yards away. The coalition has requested this vast buffer zone.
On September 10, the police tell the welcome organizers that leaders
of "the protestors" are irritated with the site assignments. They
want the Prairie Avenue area. The police ask, will you move? The
coalition declines: word has already gone out on the time, date, and
lovation of the event. After some discussion, the officer in charge
tells a coalition leader he'll "be in touch."
That morning, leaders of the coalition and the Cuban-American
ultra-rightists are interviewed by phone, jointly but at different
locations, for a live broadcast on Radio Colombia Nacional
transmitted to stations across the country, as well in Miami.
More than 5,000 leaflets announcing the welcome are distributed at
Labor Day events, nightclubs, on campuses, at workplaces. Thousands
of of people read announcements on the Internet. The CBS radio
network airs an interview with a coalition spokesperson, and the
local ABC TV affiliate films a story at the site of the welcome.
This climaxes unusually intense media attention on the public
welcome, from CBS Evening News and CNN to the Los Angeles Times,
Associated Press, and Agence France Presse. Whatever happens the next
day will be big news -- inside The Forum, and outside.
The next day is September 11.
*
The Cuban recording artists, like everyone else, are stunned by the
scope, violence, and carnage from the horrific events in New York,
Washington, and Pennsylvania. Everything associated with the reason
the Cubans are in Los Angeles is cancelled.
I am helping out two Cuban reporters. Rolando Pérez Betancourt is a
veteran journalist who writes about culture for the Cuban daily
newspaper Granma, assigned to cover the Grammy awards. Manuel
Henríquez Lagarde is editor of "El Cayman Barbudo" [The BeardedCrocodile], a Cuban cultural magazine, and La Jiribilla [Cuban slang
for permanently agitated person], the popular new online weekly
cultural supplement to the daily "Juventud Rebelde" [Rebel Youth].
We walk down a corridor on the ninth floor of their hotel. There, on
the twin queen size beds, are 10 young Cuban singers and musicians,
transfixed by what they are watching on the television, as the
announcer, in Spanish, reports on the wreckage.
One of the Cubans, a young woman, looks up at us as we pass by, her
face ashen in sadness. She shakes her head slowly, then turns her
eyes back to the television.
*
The performers decide to stay in the hotel on Tuesday. The two
reporters, gathering material for stories, venture outside. We are
veru close to LAX, but the sky is empty. Century Boulevard, usually
jammed with traffic, is deserted, almost ghostly.
We talk, watch television, drive around. The next day, we go to
Hollywood. Having seen the Hollywood sights earlier in the week, many
in the delegation embark on a visit organized by community activists
to Black and Latino working-class neighborhoods in the city's South
Central area.
Betancourt writes regularly on film. We visit the Hollywood
Roosevelt, the refurbished grand dame of lodgings, with its small
museum of old movie stills, posters, and a chronology of cinema
milestones. "It reminds me of a miniature Hotel Nacional," I say,
referring to Havana's eminent, old hotel.
"Exactly," Betacourt says, "the same architecture, tiles, woodwork."
We take turns spotting who's who on Hollywood Boulevard's Walk of
Stars. "Look," Lagarde says, "there's Bogart! He's the best."
"He loves Bogart," Betancourt, 54, says of his companion, younger by
17 years. "A real romantic. He even smokes like Bogart."
Later, we drive up through the winding roads of the Hollywood Hills,
where lush vegetation, bougainvillea and jasmine, caress elegant two
and three-story homes built up on stilts, or snugly into the steep
knolls. Ranch homes and adobe houses are flanked by carefully cut
shrubs and stately cacti. Mercedes Benz cars, BMWs and Lexus SUV's
glide by us on the narrow streets.
As in other upscale Los Angeles neighborhoods, there's a familiar
metal sign in front of many homes: "armed patrol" or "armed
response." Betancourt jots this in his notebook. "Almost every
house," he says, "very impressive."
We listen to talk radio in Spanish. "Our country is under attack,"
the host says to his listeners.
"Here I am, a movie critic, here for the Grammy show, and now I'm a
war correspondent," Betancourt says.
He and Lagarde file daily dispatches to Havana.
Some families of the musicians have called, Lagarde says. "They are
very concerned about people here."
*
Over the course of the week the musicians, shuttled by local
activists, get a sense of the diverse social reality of Los Angeles
-- the city of celluloid and entertainment capitalism, as well as the
metropolis of working people, whose majority is Latino, Black, and
Asian.
They visit the famed Watts Towers in the city's Black and Latino
community. They eat at the Versaille, a popular Cuban restaurant,
chatting with its Central American and Mexican workers. Their vans
roll through Echo Park, another Latino neighborhood, and they stop to
take pictures at the monument to José Martí at the edge of the pond
in the park, dotted with paddle-boats. They are received at a house
party hosted by a Black community activist in Inglewood.
They watch a nature film on a giant IMAX screen near the University
of Southern California. They are visited by a small stream of
Cuban-American well-wishers from Los Angeles, including one who tells
an activist, "I've been praying for their safe journey home."
They shop for items that are scarce in Cuba at a KMart in the
bustling downtown Los Angeles bazaar in the heart of the one of
city's several garment districts, where 50,000 mostly immigrant
workers toil. They visit a guitar shop in Hollywood to stock up on
strings, picks and other accessories in short supply in Cuba.
Everywhere they go -- from their hotel to shops, social events and
restaurants -- they talk with the working people they meet there.
*
Meanwhile, Andrés Goméz is grounded, halfway between his Miami home
and Los Angeles. He was to have participated in the welcome outside
The Forum on September 11, and planned to speak the next day at a
citywide meeting about the case of five Cuban citizens framed and
convicted of espionage conspiracy last June in Miami. He was also
scheduled to address a special meeting for sponsored by MEChA
(Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Atzlán) at the California State
University at Northridge.
Instead Goméz, a founder and current national coordinator of the
Antonio Maceo Brigade, is watching movies in a Holiday Inn in
suburban Dallas -- like his fellow passengers, he is unable to go
anywhere.
When he finally arrives on September 13, Goméz relays a story from a
passenger on another flight to Los Angeles, which landed in Garden
City, Kansas, a town of 30,000. "The airport was so small, there was
no terminal," he says, "they had no jetway. The passengers had to
exit on the ladder of a fire truck."
The woman who told him the story is Black, he explains, "and she said
the town was virtually all white. There was no hotel space. So all
the passengers stayed with local residents in their homes. The family
she stayed with baked for her every day. She said they couldn't have
been nicer."
*
By September 13, the Cuba coalition activists, working with several
other organizations, have pulled together a reception for the Cubans
that would have been promoted at the welcome, but now is announced by
e-mail and word of mouth. Nearly 30 Cubans show up at the house of a
lawyer, whose hospitality is boundless.
They are received by almost a hundred people who fill the kitchen,
living room and a backyard turned into a dining area. The gathering
includes activists from trade unions, area universities, different
political currents, figures from the music industry, radio music
programmers, musicians, lawyers, writers.
They eat barbecued steak, turkey and fish, huge salads, lasagna and
fruit prepared by volunteers. There is much conversation. For
everyone, it is a respite, a relief from the pressures of the last
two days.
Several U.S. activists, including representatives from the July
Cuba-U.S. Youth Exchange, and the August Nikkei [Japanese-American]
for Civil Rights and Redress delegations to Cuba, welcome the Cuban
recording artists.
Rachel Bruhnke, from the National Network on Cuba, tells the crowd,
"We know this situation will be difficult, but we will keep
organizing to defend Cuba."
Julio Ballester Guzmán, who heads the Cuban delegation and the Cuban
music industry enterprise EGREM, speaks for the group. He begins by
offering condolences for the victims of the September 11 attacks. He
salutes those who defend freedom of expression and cultural exchange.
The Cuban recording artists "bring you the music of Cuba, the soul of
Cuba," he says. Ballester concludes by explaining, "We very well
understand the differences between the people of the United States
and the government."
Andres Gómez addresses the gathering, having arrived just
in time for the brief presentations. He reports on recent activities
in Miami -- a September 7th news conference of Cuban-American and
anti-blockade groups defending freedom of expression; a September 8th
17-mile car caravan through Miami-Dade county to downtown Miami --
its vehicles bearing Cuban flags and placards protesting threats and
intimidation of freedom of speech; the caravan is covered by the
city's main English-language television stations; and on September
9th, a cultural festival attended by more than a hundred people who
listen to the noted Cuban poet Pablo Armándo Fernández.
"There is a fight for freedom of expression in Miami that you do not
hear about," he says, "but it is growing and has increasing support,
including from many Cuban-Americans." Members of MEChA at Cal State
Northridge videotape an interview with Gómez, and ask him to return
to speak on their campus.
The event is filmed by Tomás Oliveros, who seems to have been born
with the big camera he shoulders. The coverage will have aired on
Cuban television before the artists reach José Martí International
Airport.
This atmosphere, anchored in solidarity, is tempered by discussions
about the coming war. "We know something horrible is going to happen
next," one Cuban says. "We have known the effects of state-sponsored
terrorism for 42 years. We know there is going to be a war, and much
blood, on all sides. But we must have faith in humanity."
The hosts of the event distribute a leaflet that reprints the Cuban
government's condemnation of the terrorist attacks and remarks by
Fidel Castro and Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque. The
declarations reject state-sponsored terrorism, and alert the people
of the world to be vigilant about a bellicose response from
Washington.
This is journalist Manuel Lagarde's first visit to the United States,
but he's absorbed much by paying close attention to media coverage of
events here -- not only the bi-partisan clamor for military assaults,
but the big push to restrict civil liberties. "Everything's going to
change," he says, matter-of-factly. "Everything."
*
Friday is the last full day the delegation is here. They pile into
vans and drive across the city to Children's Hospital Los Angeles, a
nationally recognized center for infant and adolescent care. Through
efforts facilitated by Operation USA, they are going to donate blood
in response to the September 11 attacks.
"I believe this is a magnificent action in solidarity on the part of
Cuban artists," says Dr. Richard MacKenzie, the head of adolescent
medicine, who receives the Cubans.
"This is a gesture of solidarity with the North American people,"
says Orlando Vázquez, a trumpet player with Issac Delgado's
Orchestra. "It has nothing to do with Cuba-U.S. relations. I believe
in this moment of pain it is the least we can do, to offer our
support and our blood to the people of the United States."
All of the delegation troops out of the hospital wearing the little
stickers that say they donated blood, save one compańero. "I told
them I had been in Angola," he says, "and they said they were sorry,
but no."
*
That evening in Beverly Hills, 300 people pay $1,000 each to attend a
benefit at the posh Beverly Hilton Hotel. It is raising funds for New
York City firefighters, up to 300 of whom may have died in rescue
efforts when the devastated twin towers of the World Trade Center
collapsed. Among those participating are Paul Simon, Kevin Spacey,
and Colombian singer Juanes, the most-nominated artist in the Latin
Grammy competition.
"Cuba's visiting artists," Augutin Gurza wrote in the Los Angeles
Times, "also shared the stage and the evening's spirit of compassion.
Following his dazzling solo at the piano, Havana's Chucho Valdés
stood alone on the sidelines, swaying gently to 'The Star Spangled
Banner,' his long arms held respectfully at his sides. 'It's
important to participate in some fashion, to show unity and help
however we can,' said Valdés."
"The show closed with a rousing encore by Cuban singer Issac Delgado,
featuring a guest vocal by Panama's [Rueben] Blades. The two stars
were surrounded by reporters and well-wishers as they left the
ballroom together," the Times reported.
The event, says Jimmy Maslon, president of Ahi-Nama Music, Issac
Delgado's U.S. recording label, "helped everything and everybody."
Maslon was one of nine speakers at a widely covered September 6 press
conference at the Conga Room, the leading Los Angeles Latin music
club, announcing the public welcome for the Cuban Grammy nominees and
calling for an end to U.S. hostilities toward Cuba.
Enrique Fernández, vice-president of the Latin Recording Academy, the
sponsor of the Latin Grammy Awards, states they hope to reschedule
the ceremony for November 30. "The logistics and the expenditures are
overwhelming," Fernández tells the Los Angeles Times. "Nevertheless,
we really, really want to do it."
The night before, at the reception, one U.S. activist told the Cuban
delegation, "If they reschedule the awards and you come back, we will
build an even bigger welcome to demand the end of the U.S. blockade."
"And if the event is rescheduled," Cuba's Julio Ballester responded,
"we will be back to greet you."
*
Now, under a cloudless sky, the musicians, singers, managers, camera
crews and reporters are all getting their bags together outside the
hotel.
"What a week -- incredible, so many things," says Lupe Pérez Ramírez, a
member of the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores [General Societyof Authors and Editors], enumerating the few gigs they managed to
play, the social events, the small personal encounters, their tour of
the two cities of Los Angeles.
"But it has been sad for us, and it is especially sad for the people
of North America," she says. Yet, despite the "pain of the moment,
what extraordinary hospitality we have received from everybody! We
will never forget the people. We will always be grateful."
I chat for a moment with Alfredo Hechavarría, a 27-year-old trumpet
player with the Isaac Delgado Orchestra. We are talking about what is
coming -- a war of unthinkable dimensions, with consequences that
can't be imagined and an outcome that will be decided in struggle.
"The people of this country," I say, "are going to learn this,"
We shake hands, Alfredo picks up his gear, ready to go home. He
replies softly, but firmly: "The whole world is going to learn this."
-30-
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