Aguila was right when he said it’s difficult, if not impossible, to hold such a concert under Castro’s iron fist on the communist island.
It’s evident that Aguila, even though he is fully aware of the steep price he pays for his views, seems not to be backing down anytime soon from his comments about the Cuban government. Aguila could easily be the poster child for freedom of speech for the young generation in Cuba, but the reality is that he’s frightened.
During his interviews with the American media, he often adds the phrase, “I’m scared” Despite dressing in a t-shirt that states “59: The Year of the Error” a direct reference to the year Fidel Castro came into power.
The revolutionary slogan for the past fifty years in Cuba has been “Patria o Muerte” (“Country or Death”), and Aguila points out that his band’s name, Porno para Ricardo is a direct jab at that phrase. Aguila explains that the word “porn,” for him, holds meaning of pleasure and life and that Ricardo represents an individual rather then the masses being viewed as one. Aguila was also rather bold in choosing his album’s cover graphic, which features a phallus replacing the well-known picture of a communist hammer.
Aguila is one of a long line of Cubans who have opposed an oppressive government, and who have expressed the wish for freedom in an artistic way.
During Cuba’s war for independence from Spain (starting before the Spanish-American War), a poet named Jose Marti fought the Spanish both on the battlefield and on paper with his scathing poetry “" beautiful verses that described the wishes of ordinary Cubans to be freed from the yolk of the Spanish, who raped and pillaged the island.
Aguila, like most Cubans, no doubt knows Marti’s story. He also knows the impact that an artist can have on his countrymen. Marti was killed on his horse while crossing a river during the Ten Years’ War, and a statue of him now stands at the 57th Street entrance of New York’s Central Park.
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I am hearing about Aguila’s troubles and struggles from the comfort and safety of my home on Miami Beach, but I can relate to what he is going through. And I share in his wishes for a country free from the repressive government that has been in control for more than 50 years.
I am a first generation Cuban”"American, 23-years-old, living in Miami, a city that is home to hundreds of thousands of Cuban exiles. Miami is the American epicenter of Cuban affairs. We eat, sleep, and dream about Cuba. We listen to all the news coming out of the island just 90 miles away, including the health of the country’s octogenarian leaders.
My family has personal experience with the way the Cuban government has run the country. Although they were never involved in politics, my mother’s family was forced to leave Cuba after eight generations to escape Castro’s oppression.
The actual revolution happened decades ago, in 1959. It started as a popular uprising that was supposed to bring openness and democracy to the people, but the Cubans lost their freedom and their human rights, democracy, religion, rights to own private property, to travel, to read and write as they wish, to publish a newspaper.
To sing songs critical of the government.
The tragic history of Cuba has been degraded to the corporate propaganda of t-shirt companies emblazoning Che Guevara’s face. A word of advice: Don’t wear one of those shirts in Miami’s Little Havana. To us, he’s a ruthless killer.
In all actuality, if I were in Cuba now, this article would be written by hand, since laptops are as futuristic as “The Jetsons.” The government has to approve all computer ownership. Officials monitor all emails. Internet cafes are monitored. This article would be deemed illegal, and I would probably be arrested for writing it. It would probably never be able to be published in the first place.
I would most likely be sitting in a jail cell for some period of time like Gorki Aguila has done.
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Aguila’s future is fraught with uncertainty. Porno para Ricardo will continue to represent a struggle for freedom of speech. Speech that, in the face of fear and consequences, Gorki Aguila has chosen to exercise.
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