Identidades in English No 4, December 2014 | Page 62

Those who survived the ‘disbanding’ would then
get together on the rooftop of Reina María’s
mother’s home. It was “baptized with lit torches
on the unblemished walls.” That is how the Azoteas Project was born: years later, it moved to the
top of the Palacio del Segundo Cabo, which was
then headquarters for the Instituto Cubano del

took place at summer’s end). AHS was an organization whose supposed purpose was to support
and promote the arts among the young. Rodolfo
Rensoli, GrupoUno’s coordinator, offered a comment on reasons why the authorities intervened:
“The closest thing to a reason they offered us
what something like: “the festival was going far

Rap festival at the Alamar 2000 amphitheater. Photo: OMNI Archive
Libro [Cuban Book Institute]. It became the Torre
de Letras [Literature Tower].
East of Havana
Meanwhile, in Havana’s east, the fifth Festival of
Rap was being held. GrupoUno, a project involving young artists, had created it. Its members held
the utopian belief that they could create an independent company.
When the Asociación Hermanos Saíz (AHS) intervened in it, the festival has already attracted international starts like Harry Belafonte and Danny
Glover, and U.S. activists who called themselves
“Black August” (alluding to their own struggle
for black rights and the large hip hop festival that

62

beyond our capacity.” But much of what they said
was ambivalent. Besides, what right did they have
to take over an event that they themselves did not
create or perform in? All this, and there was never
anything “oppositional” or even “political” (their
terms) about what was being done or said.
Once the event fell into institutional hands, it was
debilitated and destroyed. Then came the (official) Agencia de Rap (Cuban Rap Agency) and a
Hip Hop Symposium quite far from Alamar,
which was already known as the City of Rap. The
area returned to its peripheral, ostracized, forgotten state. Yet, this city of buildings “as ugly as
decrees,”3 with its lack of history or official attention, insists upon constructing its own cultural
identity.