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Cuban musicians trickle into US under president Barack Obama
“I didn’t come to do anything political,” bassist Juan Formell said. “We came to play music.” Los Van Van is the latest in a string of Cuban bands to visit the United States during the Obama administration, and the most contentious. Many characterize the group as having a cozy relationship with Cuba’s communist government, which makes them to conservative exiles an emblem of a five-decade-long dictatorship.
Aside from Los Van Van, La Charanga Habanera and Buena Fe, a pop duo, each made recent appearances to sold-out crowds in Miami. The Septeto Nacional visited in November. Folk singer Carlos Varela met with politicians and sang in Washington. Legendary singer Omara Portuondo is scheduled to perform in the United States in March. Figures from the State Department show that the number of visas issued to Cuban artists and athletes has inched up slightly since plummeting during the former Bush administration. In the 2001 fiscal year, 860 such visas were granted; four years later, that number had dropped to 16. Last year, artist and athlete visas rose from 41 to 57.
“I think under Obama, we’ve seen that reversed a little bit,” said Sujatha Fernandes, an assistant sociology professor at Queens College in New York City and author of “Cuba Represent! Cuban Arts, State Power, and the Making of New Revolutionary Cultures.”
“There’s nothing formally written. But we’ve begun to see groups slowly being allowed to enter the country.” As Los Van Van arrived in South Florida, signs of a changing Cuban-American community could be seen.
In late 1999, the band’s performance was greeted by a protest more than 4,000 strong. Some threw garbage at concertgoers. A reporter was injured. People were led away in handcuffs. The lead-up to this past Sunday’s concert in Miami was markedly different.
A billboard alongside one of the city’s major highways pictured Los Van Van playing on stage. Los Van Van’s songs blending Cuban son, jazz and pop were played on Cuban-American radio, hardly imaginable a few short years ago. While a crowd of protesters gathered outside the concert, they were far outnumbered by those going to listen to the music. No items were thrown. No one was arrested. For Cubans who grew up on the island, Los Van Van’s music, with lyrics on everything from love to identity, represent the songs of their youth.
“They still want to be connected to their homeland,” Hugo Cancio, president of Fuego Entertainment, a Miami production company, said of Cubans who have immigrated here during the past 15 years. “They understand that their culture and their music is untouchable. And they refuse to inherit the pain and suffering and hatred of the traditional historical exiles.”
For more conservative exiles, Los Van Van are another extension of the Castro regime. “Inviting ‘Van Van’ at this time is as though the US would have authorized spokesmen for the South African apartheid regime to come to the United States to perform during the final stages of apartheid’s grotesque existence,” said US Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Cuban-American Republican from Miami.
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