Art and Identity
Remembering It Is to Live It Again
Yoandri J. Kindelán Sierra( MC Nene 9 mmm) Hip Hop Musician: La Alianza( The Alliance) Havana, Cuba
I dare say that October 29th, 2007, was a legitimate lesson that induced a discouraging force in me. In turn, that discouragement gave me more strength to exclude both the love and respect for the revolution from my songs. They are not and would never be in me. From that day on, I was another person. It wasn’ t even because of the physical pain caused by specialized troops, men with black berets known as black wasps. One of them stuck its sting until the blood flowed in the streets of Aldabó neighborhood. Such a pain could be ignored, because wounds heal. However, there is no healing for the fear, interspersed with the hatred, while seeing the attrition of my mother Regla. What did they make to us, mother? They not only condemned your children, they also condemned you and I will never forgive it. The last in the line paid, and in what a way. How is it possible that the alleged victims of that night defended us more than our own lawyer? Now I know he was never willing to win the case. Just minutes before the trial began, he told us with firm conviction: " This has not begun yet, and you are already sentenced." It couldn’ t be more clear. That dawn in 2007, 7 or 8 passengers in a route 114 bus were, without knowing it, in the right place to witness the facts.
But no witnesses went to trial; none of them opened their mouth, even after having told my family they were going to testify about what happened. What happened? What supernatural force prevented them telling what they saw? The editors of the Havanan newspaper Tribuna did their work again, this time with our photos and the story told by a police officer, Alexis Bandera, who was far from fulfilling his duty and showed that he was seeking promotion with his actions. That night, he had the opportunity to score a good point. He shamelessly lied in court about a physical assault by me against him. Then, he recanted. What can you expect from a police officer who lied in the courtroom and, seeing himself in contradiction to the facts, decides to catch an air before carrying on with the game knowing that he has an unsurmountable advantage? Let ' s see how I can explain it. We were leaving a girl’ s fifteenth birthday party, held in the house of the cousin of one of our six friends in Martí neighborhood. We just wanted to have fun and it wasn’ t something new for us. While one of us made Beat Box( guttural sound that imitates a musical background), the others were ready to rap one at a time. We used to do it during our gatherings to freshen up after
77