Concerts and Disconcertions

Concerts and Disconcertions / Miriam Celaya
Miriam Celaya, Translator: Norma Whiting

Last Friday evening, October 19th, a new concert in support for Demanda
Ciudadana por Otra Cuba (Citizen Demand for Another Cuba) was held in
the usual venue for the Estado de SATS Project in Havana. This time, the
young rappers of Ruta 11 and Estudiantes sin Semillas (Seedless
Students) were in charge of the performance, which took place in that
usual lively and peaceful place.

In addition to the enthusiasm and sincerity of these young amateurs and
audience and their overall responsiveness, there were two distinctive
notes: 1) The all too usual arrests of several people who had planned on
attending, intercepted on the street, some of them first taken to a
criminal investigation center in the municipality of Playa, and later
confined to the dungeons of the stations at Santiago de Las Vegas
(Boyeros Municipality) and Infanta and Manglar (Cerro) overnight; and 2)
The panic that was unleashed by the mobilization of operative's vehicles
in the streets near the venue of the concert, where musicians and
audience loudly chanted the chorus of the show's final song: "Freedom ,
freedom, freedom! … ". Obviously, the wolf pack [the authorities] was
afraid we would pour into the streets with such a dangerous clamor, so
they rushed to cover the exits to block us. There are no words as
subversive to the servile slave's mind as that of FREEDOM.

Each concert, as well as the growing consensus the Demanda Ciudadana
wins over across different social sectors, causes confusion among
repression forces, and that evidently frightens the dictatorship. Is the
system so fragile that it gets afraid in the face of what an esteemed
Cuban intellectual termed "the vast minority"? Do the aging leaders feel
so weak that they send out their bigwigs to try to boycott the budding
spirit of freedom? It's all in vain. That other Cuba is already underway.

October 22 2012

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