*Originally written in January 2012.
When I was 25, my second first true love of my life and I broke up and moved out of our 1 bedroom apartment with the closet that was too shallow and the kitchen with linoleum floors. I was convinced that the psychosis driving us apart stemmed from the fact that we were organizers in a well meaning but misguided organization that plotted to overthrow the capitalist system and usher in a new society based on austerity and justice for all.
As the organization came crumbling down around us, because we were too annoying to deal with our own political posturing, I was sure, with time, my true love and I would realize we were not the jerk offs we had been for the last two years. When the dust cleared, we would find ourselves embraced, rolling around on the ground, like a bad soap commercial, which is how we ended up moving in together in the first place.
Late at night, we didn’t discuss white picket fences and what we would name our children (thank god, because based on collective cat names at the time, Steinbeck would have been the most socially accepted, but would have gotten his ass beat twice as much as his cousins Mao and Lenin). Lying in each other’s arms, with the moonlight streaming in the window, we debated whether or not Chairman Gonzalez was correct in his assessment of the Cuban revolution having made a complete right wing error while glamorizing the fact that he said that in a striped jail suit from a cage. We dreamed not of moving to a “good neighborhood” with a strong public school system, but of how we would collectively raise our kids while forging a new society and how even the men, even the men! would participate in day care.
And our relationship, and our organization, was a result of well meaning and sensitive young people coming to consciousness of the atrocities of our own government.
Once you understand that Christopher Columbus killed all those defenseless people and that we commemorate it with sales at Macy’s, once you find out where your Nike’s come from, once you find out exactly why you are forced to sit down with your relatives every 4th Thursday of November, (blankets with what!) and then, somehow, always soon after, you understand that it it was written in our Bill of Rights, that we had the right, nay, the duty, to alter, reform or abolish the government, well, you grab your copy of the People’s History, and it’s on.
I can’t stand liars. I’ve lied. But I don’t lie as a matter of fact or as a matter of public policy that gets people’s legs blown off. I try to be accountable. We’ve all found ourselves in those situations where we’ve made bad decisions. But, I’ve never been like, “Let’s go to war because that country will randomly attack us with weapons of mass destruction, send us your sons!” because I wanted oil. George Bush is a liar. And Dick Cheney’s heart has failed us all.
And so this kind of outrage, and I suppose these are evolutionary baby steps we all take as human beings, occurs because we realize our government has been lying to us. And we hate them for it.
Many of us come to this kind of consciousness, and immediately bypass Dr. Martin Luther King, running straight for Malcolm X, white girl from Flanders that you are, because Malcolm doesn’t confront the oppressor out of love, love! He is ready to kick oppressor ass. And it’s true that violence only begets more violence, but the people who told you that see nothing wrong with Columbus Day.
When you come to this kind of consciousness, either through Rage Against the Machine, or Gael Garcia Bernal, or because you are crazy about guys with long hair, somehow, Che Guevera is going to land in your path. Because you loved Tupac Shakur, Assata is going to end up on your coffee table. And because Fidel Castro is the man most despised by the lyingest of liars ever, the demon evoked by Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Bush I and the sequel, which never needed to be made, Bush II, then clearly, clearly, Fidel is the man.
When I was 25, my second first true love and I broke up and I was sure the psychosis of our well intentioned but misguided organization that dreamed of overthrowing the capitalist system and replacing it with each according to his need, each according to his ability, the masculine pronoun of which was excused by the women in organization because Marx didn’t have the correct vocabulary at that time, that psychosis would dissipate and we would realize we really did love each other. The failure of our relationship was because he was an infantile leftist and I was a chauvinist missionary. And in time, we would grow back together, tectonically, like plates.
A few days after commencing our trial separation, a few days later after moving out of our apartment with the closets that upheld my clothes at a right or left wing angle, depending on how you looked at them, and the shower head that didn’t not shower us with water, but dribbled down upon us, he appeared at my new apartment’s door, to tell me he had met someone else. Someone who wrote better poetry. Someone who was taller. Thinner. Younger. I was too young to be -erred out. But there I was. Older. Shorter. Less metaphoric/er.
The decision was made. I would commit myself to the only man who ever loved me: Karl Marx. I would travel to Cuba. Maybe my ex boyfriend’s revolutionary fervor could be quelled by some CPUSA bombshell grappling with the nature of contradictions, but I was going to the motherland. I had outgrown all the foolishness of our local movement and would commit myself to building the true people’s movement, regardless of race or class, something that would have the diverse multi racial composition of a busy Saturday afternoon at IKEAs. To commemorate this great event, I would cut my hair and dye it blonde, descending on Cuba like a furious Billie Jean, a woman scorned.
That’s when I met Chiqui.
Over a decade ago, I traveled to Havana. I lived with a family for a couple of days and then, it was decided, I would move, in what was the first step of my long career as a fag hag, a talent I neither asked for nor deliberately honed, into an apartment closer to the city center with two gay men.
After a celibate but fabulous 9 week introduction to socialism, I prepared myself to return to the belly of the beast. I went, by myself, to UNEAC, a beautiful house in Vedado that hosted a weekly musical performance of trova or rhumba.
It was one of those moments that you never forget, but considering the events afterwards, I’ll spare you the eyes locking, the stomache butterflies, the first touch of our fingers, blah blah blah. What is important about me meeting Julio, aside from the fact that the fucker still owes me money, is that he was the bass player for a Garage H. He brought me to Patio Maria, which is where I met, I am convinced I met Alejandro Padron, and the lead singer, Chiqui.
Mind you, I was young. Mind you, I wasn’t interested in metal bands in Cuba at that time. I was over metal. I was discovering jazz. Participating in weekly study groups left me with a sense of enlightenment, and I was confused why these young men would cling to such a petty bourgeois cultural expression when they lived in paradise, the beacon for all humanity. I mused that their outrage must be against imperialism. I wanted these men to know that I may be a North American, but I was a good one, and I was aware of What Was to be Done.
Understand I had organized and taught in Newark, I saw the diseased and infected intestines of the belly of the beast. I saw the politics of food, adorned on the mustaches and double d cups of 12 year old girls. I saw the politics of race in photos of our governor, Christie Whitman, frisking black men in Camden for folly; Abu Grab lite. I had gotten my ass out of bed to go to demonstrations on cold Saturday mornings in DC for whatever civilian bridges we were bombing at the time. I would have taken over a building to protest George Bush stealing the presidency, but I think the left was too busy blaming Ralph Nader for that.
Havana, on the other hand, was peaceful. There were no drive- bys, children could play in the street unattended, there was no Amadou Diallo in Havana, there were no universities and public institutions being bankrupted for corporate greed, abortion was free and legal, the medical system has been lauded by world renowned organizations, and, in the streets, there was a constant historical record of Cuba’s independence from the United States, a claim very few nations can make.
Back to Chiqui. I spent about three weeks in Miami filming frikis with connections to Escape in February 2010. Chiqui was the original lead singer for Problema, founded with Alejandro and Justo, who would go on to form Escape.
I love Chiqui. If I was People magazine, he’d be one of the top ten personalities of the new millienium. Chiqui and I have drank together in Havana, Topas de los Criantes, Vitoria (Spain) Miami and New York. Our friendship has spanned about 12 years. He is a huge part of this film, he put me in touch with Escape in 2007.
In all the interviews, friquis talk about the beginning of metal in Habana, Patio Maria, how they encountered metal despite a blockade against Cuba and a cultural blockade within. In all the interviews, in Cuba and Miami, they talk about losing friends and band members because of immigration. When I ask Chiqui how he feels when he goes back, the pace starts out very calm, but sad.
“It bothered me to go back and see the people without any power to do anything different. The streets were a little worse, the people a little more poor…I’d prefer to go to Haiti,” he says. “Even though Haiti is in terrible condition right now. But when you see your people suffering, it hurts you more.” As he considers the question, his mouth turns upside down, his forehead wrinkles, he leans forward in his chair. “You are a thief, you are a jinitero” he snarls into the camera. He is louder, he is angry. “The divided family is a business,” he says into the camera. Knowing Chiqui for the last 12 years, where he has been and where he has gone, it’s a beautiful interview.
In a rough cut of the film, I place the interview, intermittently, with Jenny’s (the original keyboard player of Escape) departure at the airport. She is leaving her family, her friends. Even if Jenny had a million dollars, she cannot return to Cuba for three years, and her mother or her boyfriend, Yando, cannot leave the island without an invitation. Her mother can be invited by Jenny in three years. Yando cannot, unless his brother, who left, many years ago and has been out of contact, somehow resurfaces and goes through the very lengthy and expensive process of inviting him.
I am watching this cut with a Cuban editor. The discussion of Chiqui’s testimony lasts for a long time. Which is good. Democracy is messy and should take a long time. It is the form of the discussion around the interview which leaves me exhausted and confused, tired and overwhelmed. I want to hand someone the hard drive and go wait tables off the coast of Oaxaca.
Because the conversation goes like this. The cuban editor argues that I am making Cuba look bad. That what Chiqui is saying is exactly what the right wing in Miami has been saying for the last 40 years. That the film won’t show in Havana if I include that part of the interview.
I argue that I won’t include it if what Chiqui is saying is unoriginal, but I am not going to censor the film so it can be shown in Havana. But the discussion decays into the United States versus Cuba. The discussion has somehow become capitalism versus socialism. We argue about freedom of speech. We argue about civil rights. We argue about segregation. And this has been the problem for the last 51 years. The dialogue is bi-polar, either you are left, or you are right. I don’t want to align myself with either because their fanaticism obscures the truth. And, even though I love Chiqui and I know he is being sincere, I don’t want to put out a film, where one sentence will brand the whole film as right wing propaganda for a population I despise.
Maybe the heartache of my second first love leaving left me lazy. Maybe I just found the most convenient enemy of my enemy, and latched on to the forbidden island. But, after living in Havana for 9 months, I know my love for the island is predicated on my ability to leave. I am also aware that the freedoms I have here come at a cost. Someone’s brother, someone’s father, someone’s mother harvests my coffee. If I want to buy clothes, I have to pay more money to make sure a grown up got paid for their labor. It is because of an underpaid Mexican day laborer who cannot support his or her family, that I can get strawberries in December. My freedom of speech is different than freedom of speech for a day laborer in the south. Or a black person in Newark.
Maybe we can just accept the fact that under capitalism, people are taught to be a little too selfish. And that this selfishness can manifest very ugly and violent things. Like Rudolph Guiliani or Donald Trump. On the other hand, is that if it sucks for one person in Cuba, then it sucks for everyone else in Cuba.
In arguing with the Cuban editor, he refers to Chiqui’s interview again. “I don’t think this is going to change anything. It’s going to add to the hate.” And now we’re getting somewhere.
And so maybe there’s an answer for all of us, living here on planet earth. Not in the middle, but in taking the best parts of both ideas…we should have free health care and education, but we should also be able to protest and speak freely. Two things synonymous with rock and roll.
I consider these kids creating a heavy metal culture in Havana their declaration of independence. I consider the blockades that separate Americans from Cuba ridiculous and obscene. I consider this our moment to reshape the world based on the values we consider important. Like music and humanity. I consider this a message to the people who have been in charge for the last century or so and have fucked things up.
Move over. It’s our time.
Tracey Noelle Luz 