Saving Norah Jones

_{Norah Jones (source).}

Political polarization in Cuba—from its extreme right—is increasingly irrational and pedantic. It is so frustrating to deal with it that, after the impotence of being unable to contain it, one becomes enervated. The problem is not, as I repeat over and over again, in criticizing the state of affairs in Cuba, the crisis, the shortages, the Government's ravings, the bad and sometimes cruel management of politics, the economy, human rights, information, and everything else that fits. The question is to put the scalpel and make a full description of what is happening here, and why it is happening. But above all, we must not believe that we are the navel of the world in the rare sense that all the worst things happen here. This is not the case and by a long shot. Just look at the region, where there are many countries whose citizens have more reasons to flee—in the classic sense of the term—than we do because they escape from contexts where the risk is not so much to suffer harsh economic hardship, but to die because you were the random citizen who got the stray bullet of the day.

However, I don't see any pressure on artists from various countries here that are experiencing tense social crises, both historical and contemporary, to take a concrete political position inside and outside. Or for renowned artists not to go to these countries with unresolved conflicts, because doing so implies an impulse or a tacit approval to a certain political regime. In México, the truth about what happened 9 years ago with 43 young students has not yet been reached, every day one finds news of multiple murders committed with firearms, the State is failing in specific areas controlled by criminal gangs, but there is no campaign to demand artists like Luis Miguel or Paul McCartney not to perform there soon. Guatemala is a country where 1 in 2 children suffer from chronic malnutrition, the judiciary openly protects criminals and expels the honest, but its citizens will be able to enjoy artists like the classic Marc Anthony this month.

With Cuba things are different. In Miami, they shattered the career of Descemer Bueno, a phenomenal musician who gave in to blackmail and pressure to "take a stand" against the "dictatorship". If you leave Cuba you can't go back not only to sing but even to visit your family, because that means "supporting the regime". A young Cuban musician who recently visited the island was made to explain what he came for, whether he visited his sick grandfather, or how long he stayed in each place. In an appalling show on YouTube, they took the father to rant about him, in an unfortunate act both for the show's host and for the father who lent himself to it, regardless of what happened in that sacred relationship between father and son. Things like this are happening because Cuba has to be culturally blocked even with us inside. Not even Cuban art can be freely "exported". Recently a musical duo could not perform in Spain because the Cuban emigrants there could not allow artists who don't share their anti-government political vision to obtain economic benefits.

The next victim of this horde is Norah Jones, who has recently announced a mini-tour in Havana, planned for luxury consumers. In other words, the target audience is not the average Cuban, not even those who consider themselves "rich" in the local context, but the offer falls within what we could understand as upper-middle-range cultural tourism (the prices of the packages related to Jones' potential tour range between 3,500 and 8,600 dollars). In any case, I would very much like an artist that I have followed for years to pass through here, and in some way contribute to taking the country out of the cultural isolation to which the art world has complicitly and cowardly condemned us.

But a Cuban journalist trained by the U.S. State Department says that there can be no cultural exchange at this time, because what is needed is to continue to make the "dictatorship" bleed, which is tantamount to wishing that we live worse and worse, to such an extent that we launch ourselves into a "final crusade" against the government, to such an extent that we can't even go to bed one day knowing that Norah Jones sang in Havana for rich people. He says that if the celebrated artist comes the "Cuban regime" will sell to the world "a country that is not", as if Norah Jones in Havana, Marc Anthony in Guatemala, or McCartney in Mexico could hide the reality that we live here. Stupidity is being distributed for free, while I don't doubt that soon the "Cuban exile" in Miami will run its fearsome steamroller over a mountain of Jones' records. See you there.

_{Edited with Canva.}