The gala included a wide repertoire of ballads, boleros, romantic and traditional music, as well as songs in English, the language that makes officials nervous.
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 16 November 2024 – On Friday night, Havana had a respite from its long decline. In the Plaza de Armas, a few meters from the point where the city was founded 505 years ago, music forced a pause in the midst of the agitation and despair that permeates every wall of the Cuban capital. The show Detrás del Muro (Behind the Wall), directed by baritone Ulises Aquino, was one of the few public tributes that the Island’s most populated city has received this year.
Getting to the almost perfect square guarded by the Palacio de los Capitanes Generales and the Palacio del Segundo Cabo was quite a heroic act, given the transport collapse that paralyzed Havana’s streets. “I was able to come because I ordered a car on the La Nave app, it cost me 1,200 pesos from my house in Cerro to here and I’ll have to pay another 1,200 pesos to get back,” said an elderly woman waiting on the other side of the protective fence surrounding the chairs.
Some tourists looking on with curiosity hovered around the area, hoping to sneak into the free concert and take a few snapshots of the moment. The poor, homeless people, with a limping appearance and outstretched hands waiting for some banknotes, preferably in foreign currency, also did not miss an opportunity; nor did the living statues that put their hats on the ground while holding their breath and acting out the cold bronze of a sculpture; and the matrons dressed up as 19th century Havana commoners, with their headscarves and flowers in their hair.
As daylight faded, the place became a magnet that also attracted nearby residents, increasingly absent in a historic center where museums abound and residents are missed. Some arrived with annoyed expression asking what was happening, without remembering that old Havana is blowing out the 505 candles of its existence this Saturday. Joining forces to remind them were the Symphony Orchestra of the Gran Teatro de La Habana, the Chorus of the Teatro Lírico, together with the orchestra and chorus of Opera de la Calle.
The words of Eusebio Leal — the Historian of Havana who died in 2020 — which resonated at the beginning of the show seemed more like an obituary than a text describing a living city. His voice made a tour of the intramuros town and the republican city, stopping at the proclamations, the awnings, the nightly concerts and the commerce in the streets, a vibrant image that has nothing to do with the almost deserted avenues and the countless collapsed houses that characterize Villa de San Cristóbal today.
“I come every year when they do this show because I live nearby and it’s free. I also worked for many years with the Teatro Lírico and this reminds me of those good times,” says Ernesto, dressed for a solemn celebration. The old man, with his impeccable hat, long-sleeved guayabera buttoned up to the top and shiny cane, resembled one of those Havanans from the republican prints that hypnotize you when you look at them and make you sigh with nostalgia.
Ernesto finally got a seat and managed to sit in “the poor people’s area,” he said ironically. “But it sounds perfect because the audio, unlike other years, has been very good,” he said during a short break in the gala. “The stage should have been a little higher to see it well from here, but it’s a minor detail. I’m leaving happy, you can see that they’ve worked hard.”
The first rows of seats were reserved for high-ranking officials of the Cuban capital and other figures of the government, and members of the diplomatic corps of Spain and France were also expected. Guests of the artists who went up on stage also sat in that area, located in front of the façade of the Santa Isabel hotel, in a view from which part of El Templete, the founding auricle of the heart of Havana, could also be seen.
Seen wearing military uniforms were the president of the National Assembly, Esteban Lazo, the secretary of the Communist Party in Havana, Liván Izquierdo Alonso, and the governor of the city, Yanet Hernández Pérez. The olive green color of their attire, the stern look in their faces, and the initials “CDP” on their epaulettes, to warn that they are still mobilized by the Provincial Defense Council after the passage of Hurricane Rafael, seemed as incongruous as arriving at a trench in high heels or participating in a funeral in carnival clothes.
Dressed in civilian clothes were the Vice Prime Minister, Inés María Chapman, and the Vice President of the Republic, Salvador Valdés Mesa. But even their more informal attire did not help them fit in very well at an event where, unlike official events, political slogans, poetic verses intended to praise some leader and party slogans were conspicuous by their absence. Instead, the gala included a wide repertoire of ballads, boleros, romantic and traditional music, as well as songs in English, that language that makes officials and censors nervous.
The weight of the spectacle fell on the actress and singer Gretel Cazón, the tenor Humberto Bernal and Aquino himself.
The weight of the spectacle fell on the actress and singer Gretel Cazón, the tenor Humberto Bernal and Aquino himself, the latter being the mainstay of the gala and a true one-man band who was not discouraged. Minutes before the instruments began to play, the founder and director of Ópera de la Calle was still fighting against the obstacles of bureaucracy and was going from one side to the other trying to tie up the last organizational loose ends in the midst of a context where apathy and improvisation ran rampant.
There was also a hint of support at the end, when the performers were heard singing Silvio Rodríguez’s song Venga la esperanza (Welcome Hope), a song that sounded like an urgent call for hope and enthusiasm to return to the corners of Havana. “Hínchese la vela, rora el motor” (Swell the sail, roar the engine), was the demand in the town whose patron saint who carries a child on his shoulders to the other side of the river. A premonitory metaphor for the exodus and the coyotes that have come to define the city today.
However, it was the song dedicated to the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, patron saint of Cuba, that was the most emotional moment of the concert. The composition by maestro Ernesto Lecuona describes Cachita as a “sweet and dark mother, who showers you with your piety.” The end of the song mobilized enthusiasm by becoming a call “for freedom to shine radiantly in Cuba.” Repeated loudly, that word made hearts beat, provoked tears and turned the faces of the officials in the front row marble.
The attendees loudly applauded this slogan, which, repeated in the streets of Havana during the popular protests of 11 July 2021, cost so many protesters of that historic revolt years in prison. Just a few meters from the spot where the city was once born, on Friday night its residents set themselves a goal more difficult than fighting pirates, building a strong wall or turning this piece of land next to the bay into a dynamic port of the New World. Havana was revered by being reminded of exactly what it lacks most.
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