Ministerial Hustling

Ministerial Hustling / 14ymedio
Posted on September 12, 2014

14ymedio, Havana, Luzbely Escobar, 11 September 2014 – When I was
younger and went out looking for something to do in Havana's evenings or
nights, one day I stumbled over Julio. I went out with a girlfriend from
Berlin and he was looking to make a living scamming innocent foreigners.
He approached us intending to invite us to a Rumba Festival, but was
disappointed by our refusal. The trick was easy: lead the unwary to
Hamel Alley where there was almost always the sound of drums and right
now there was the Festival he mentioned.

I had warned my German friend about those characters who invent
everything to attract the tourists, and the truth was that, in those
days of September 1993, there wasn't much to do. Every encounter ended
in a park, along the Malecon, or the home of a friend. Julio didn't give
up and told my friend, Angelica, that he knew a place where there was
salsa dancing. We turned our worst faces to the old rockers and took off
before they came up with something else. I remember my friend at the end
of this episode telling me, "That's what I would call cultural hustling."

I'm telling this story because right now there is a cultural event
called Habanarte. I support the theory that this is more or less the
same thing, but organized by the Ministry of Culture itself. With a
program that includes everything but which, in reality, brings little
new, one more festival where supposedly a program specially designed for
the event is created, which comes to be a kind of umbrella that covers
everything and anything that's happening in Havana lately. Thus, this
umbrella festival takes credit for everything and even includes visits
to museums on its list of events.

Presentations by the National Ballet of Cuba, Haydée Milanés, Descemer
Bueno,
among others, are part of the shows absorbed by Habanarte. Also, the Art
in the Rampa show, and even the sixth Salon of Contemporary Art, have
been put under the umbrella.

An odd, or revealing, piece of data is that the Paradiso agency
confirmed the participation of 1,500 Venezuelans and announced that the
event in question is being marketed to tourists passing through Havana
and Varadero. The perfect mix to ideologize even more the cultural
spaces that, gradually, we Havanans have conquered to relax the everyday
political ballad.

At the press conference that took place a few days ago, we learned that
the Festival Information Center will be located at the Casa del Alba,
the most rancid epicenter of political propaganda masquerading as
culture. All this made me remember Julio and his fake musical event, and
my friend Angelica who realized the farce in time. However, unlike that
lie to get some money from unsuspecting tourists, Habanarte is a huge
ministerial balloon scamming thousands of people.

(The event takes place from 11 to 21 September, but the official opening
is on September 12, at 11 pm, at El Sauce Cultural Center, of Artex,
with a concert by El Chevere de la Salsa, Isaac Delgado.)

Source: Ministerial Hustling / 14ymedio | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/ministerial-hustling-14ymedio/