These days, the name of Cuba has echoed in the Spanish press, but not for the arbitrary arrests and hunger strikes of dozens of imprisoned opponents, but for the statement of actor Willy Toledo — exceptional in his role as a fucker caught in the act in The Perfect Crime — who after embracing Hugo Chavez’s successor in Caracas announced in May that he will go live in Cuba; his calling the regime there marvelous has unleashed satirical comments in El Pais and other Spanish media.
From the largest of the Antilles the names of two characters who passed from this life also echo: Alfredo Guevara, founder and former president of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry, and the composer César Portillo de la Luz, author of With You in the Distance, You My Delirium, Reality and Fantasy and other songs that brought him fame and money, as well as recognition of the cultural institutions of the dictatorship, which he was identified without actually writing laudatory hymns in the style A. Guevara, Filmmaker-in-Chief, and the troubadour and ex-deputy Silvio Rodríguez, an icon of the “committed song.”
I didn’t comment on the Spanish actor’s decision in this blog, because the Iberian cybernauts already did; though perhaps it’s a publicity tactic to get attention and a contract in Havana. It remains to be seen whether the Ministry of the Interior will grant him a Resident Card in Cuba, where they have interests and offer benefits to be well-received.
With regards to the late Alfredo Guevara, I suggest to those who think of him as a “great intellectual, filmmaker and Cuban diplomat,” go to the blog of the writer Zoe Valdes and read her post of April 19; she portrays him in body and soul as she worked with him at the Cuban Embassy and in UNESCO and was formerly editor of the journal Cine Cubano, attached to the film fiefdom of Mr. Guevara.
It seems good to review the life and work of personalities from Cuban culture, but it is unfortunate that the press in Spain and other European countries disseminate the background noise and vagueness about what is Cuban, while they are silent on the tragedy suffered by as island decimated and exhausted by the communist monarchy that still demands an extra effort to survive.
7 May 2013
