IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 7 ENGLISH | Page 91

roles. Little by little, common sense began to return and some figures, like
Lilian Rentería or Susana Pérez, began
appearing in patio scenes to the delight
of their followers, which had apparently
only feigned forgetting them. The spirit
of rap really took hold in Cuba quite
easily, and it survives despite having
been the victim of another silent war. It
hinted a spontaneous identification with
the art that had emerged in the U.S., African-American community, and gives
voice to the marginalized. The following
anecdote speaks for itself. In August
2000, the Alamar Festival de Rap, east
of Havana, was at its peak and AfricanAmerican hip hop artist Common read a
letter from another activist on stage. It
was simultaneously translated for the
public. In the missive, the author expressed how he aspired to establish a
Socialist system in the United States.
One could hear shouts of “Now those
yumas [Americans] have really gone
nuts!” from the audience. Since the 80s,
many of these youth were capturing radio and TV signals from the U.S., taking
in music and rhythms that inspired the
creation of break dance schools that
flourished under the suspicion or harassment of the police. That culture,
which was consumed quickly and in
enormous quantities, was the paradigm
for a large majority—even from commercial spots and trashy series. This was
entirely due to rebelliousness or historical memory.
Latent exile
Just as the number of émigrés increases
every year, despite the economic reforms

enacted by Raúl Castro’s government
and the slow defrosting between Cuba
and the U.S., the level of mistrust among
Cubans regarding the island’s future is
also rising. This is made worse by a fear
that the “Adjustment Act,” upon which
hundreds of thousands still set their
hopes, be repealed. The mythical 90
miles have generated dramas and comedies. A young women camouflaged as a
DHL package made the trip, and an athlete made the trip in her kayak with her
baby strapped on her back. Many have
gone to sea in motorized bathtubs and
other artifacts emerged from a desperate
imaginations fueled by desperation. The
Elián González case, a child who was
one of the survivors of a sinking in
which his own mother lost her life while
trying to arrive on American shores, and
the campaign unleashed between Havana
and Miami, is one of the most powerful
examples of the weight the Revolution’s
historical, demonizing goal. Adolescents
were taken out of their schools and
forced to march in front of the Interest’s
Section. Yet, they relieved their disgust
by changing the shout “Free Elián!” to
“Elián, take me to the Yuma!” This sabotage went on without being noticed,
due to the confusion of all the noise. I
have heard “What we have to do here is
leave” since my infancy; “The last one
to leave, turn out the lights at El Morro.”
Each generation has suffered its own
losses and makes the cause unique and
its own. This hemorrhage has devastated
the entire country’s architecture; there
have been visible flare ups in Camarioca
(1965), Mariel (1980), the Rafter Crisis

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