Could it be the guarapo?
Juanes will sing on the Mexico-U.S. border
A conversation in Havana
By Manuel Alberto Ramy
“After going to Cuba, the idea is to go to the border between the United States and Mexico, between Ciudad Juárez and El Paso,” said Juanes during an Internet chat with his fans.
During that exchange on the Web, the famous Colombian singer, winner of numerous Latin Grammys, reiterated his decision to give a concert in Havana on Sept. 20.
The so-called Concert for Peace — with the participation of singers from Spain and Latin America, in addition to Cuban singer-composers Silvio Rodríguez and Amaury Pérez Vidal, and the fabulous orchestra Los Van Van — attracted the hostility of the most reactionary sectors of the Miami right. It also attracted the support of famous artists from various latitudes and numerous members of the Cuban exile community.
Juanes took advantage of his dialogue with the Internauts to announce that he was in the process of writing “a song about Cuba that will appear in my new album. I hope you like it and can enjoy it.”
Before I learned about these statements from Juanes, I was walking through the Historic Quarter of Havana, camera and tape recorder in hand, when I ran into a diplomat whom I had met some time before at a reception. We greeted each other and the topic of Juanes came into our conversation when the voice of the famous singer drifted down from one of the renovated buildings and touched our ears.
I invited the diplomat to drink guarapo (the juice of sugar cane) and he accepted. We sat at a cafeteria that sold the refreshing and invigorating juice. Between sips, we talked about Juanes.
“The pressures to put the brakes on his project have created the opposite effect; they have given the show more publicity and impetus,” he said, after asking that his name not be published, “for obvious reasons.”
“Everything related to this country [Cuba], whether it is music or the arts in general, is excessively politicized,” he said. “While everything in this world has a political charge (even God is accused of being partial), there are positive efforts toward rapprochement, peace and love that deserve support. For example, any effort that leads to an improvement in the lives of the Cuban people, to openness in communications and spaces.”
Odd. When I mentioned the reaction of a certain group in the City of Miami — of which my interlocutor was well aware — he smiled while he shook his head in a nonverbal gesture that I translated to be “Does that surprise you?”
In direct language, he made a comment that was succinct but quite eloquent: “I know that city and I appreciate the many good people who live there and work hard. I also know of its suffering and difficulties, made worse by the rift between the two countries. But [Miami] needs a psychosocial study — sometimes it acts like a demented society, out of its mind.”
And he added — in my opinion, not to pit Miami and Cuba against each other but to compare them — this appreciation, worthy of reflection: “Meanwhile, Cuban society — in its daily, familiar life, in the relations between its people — has become ever so tolerant, don’t you think so?”
I smiled. “Could it be the guarapo?” I answered.
Taken from M. A. Ramy’s ‘A Reporter’s Notebook.
http://progreso-semanal.com/4/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=9&Itemid=10
