Silvio Rodríguez: “The blockade will cause unrest in Cuba” | Exclusive interview on AM 750

“I am just a person who lives his time, and who makes songs.” Better listen to impossible sunrise the calm voice of Silvio Rodríguez. Hear things like that, or like every word, every reflection, every bet for a brighter world that emanates from it. This time it was in 40 hours, the program that leads Felicitas Bonavitta all the Saturday morning at 750 AM. Through audio recordings in the “Ojalá” studios in Havana, Silvio has manifested himself as this man who lives his time and writes songs, but who is also able to observe with keenness situations such as stuffy blockage that the island has suffered since the beginning of the Revolution; the Covid vaccines that, despite this, the Cuban government has produced; the manifestations of July 11 and 12 pass; the importance of the Great Fatherland and, of course, certain characteristics of his new album.

It is a work that dates back to the early 90s, carried out with the missing Diakara Group. “It is worth showing it, especially for the musical quality that this group led by Oscar Valdés, an extraordinary drummer“Says the troubadour.” It’s about ten songs recorded in two or three mornings in a studio in Coyoacán, after a tour we had done in Mexico. “One of them is” About the parents ” , composed in 1972, recorded in 1991, and recently published by Silvio as the spearhead of the successor to For the wait, his last job to date.

“The pandemic didn’t affect me specifically for this job, but it affected me like everyone else,” the singer-songwriter said on one of the topics he addressed during the virtual interview. “We live in a world where we spend much more to kill human beings than to save them … If what is spent on means of destruction had been used for health, it seems to me that all this would be very different ”, he underlined in the program that Bonavitta broadcasts from La Pampa. “I don’t feel like a propagandist, but necessarily i have ideas. And the first thing I have to say is that we we have vaccines because Fidel Castro put a lot of emphasis on training health professionals and scientific researchers. I think that’s why we have the two vaccines that we have, and the three that are being tested ”.

The most lucid of the singer-songwriters of La Nueva Trova underlined the Cuban achievements by contrasting them with the effects of the blockade. “Our scientists must have worked slower, because there are reagents and chemicals that they don’t sell us, and that we have to buy in remote places, through seconds or third parties. This not only delays us, but also makes it more expensive to manage. There are also raw materials to manufacture drugs that they do not sell to us, because they sell us the drugs that they manufacture, in their dear laboratories, as long as we buy them for them in cash, because not even for health they give us the slightest credit“, He denounced.

As usual whenever Silvio addresses issues related to the revolution, the self-critical view. The need to think, for example, of the mobilizations of last July beyond Manichean visions. “Over half a century ago, when I started making songs and exhibiting them, not all revolutionaries thought the same. Some were more orthodox with sexuality, fashion, or the function of the arts, and others, thankfully, more understanding. Listen to young people better, with more self-confidence. If this had not been the case, perhaps a part of my generation would have experienced crises similar to those some young artists are currently experiencing, ”he said.

“Unfortunately, many historic revolutionaries died, and then to this diversity of thought that there was, he replaced a more unified way of thinking“, did he declare. “It is likely that this is one of the contradictions of having a single party, because if the ideas that emanate from it are inclusive, then there is no problem. But if these ideas are exclusive and severe, then it can be contradictions like those that do occur, that if they are not resolved, they can be made worse, ”said Silvio during the half-hour interview.

Then he returned to other harmful edges of the blockade “whose obvious aim has been from the beginning suffocate the Cuban people, insofar as people come to repudiate the revolutionary government, ”he stressed. “The blockade is meant to create unrest and this has added to the economic slowdown in the decline in tourism due to the pandemic. I have a good opinion of Díaz Canel, our president. He is aware that his leadership inaugurates a new government-people commitment, since this is the first time that the historic leaders have not been present, and this has of course increased the attacks on Cuba by the imperial regime, who of course sees in this absence a factor of weakness. This is why he is increasing his aggressions ”.

Towards the end of his testimony, the singer-songwriter spoke about the role of the press in his country. “Perhaps the approach of the Cuban official press on what has happened lately has been a little propagandist, a little with a sense of defense. I believe that journalism has another more investigative function, and that journalism that we are not able to do for whatever reason, people will look outside … There is a lot of critical thinking circulating in Cuba. And much of this spirit is self-critical, because it is made by people who want the gains of the revolution to be saved … mistakes to be overcome and our sovereignty to be consolidated forever ”.

Silvio also spoke of the permanent links between Cuba and Argentina. “Argentina has always been a friendly country. In general, since the end of the dictatorship, there has been a lot of cultural exchange and good political relations, especially during the governments of Nestor and Cristina. And with the current government, it is obvious that there are many affinities (…) This mutual thing, if it is respected, it seems to me that it was in the hearts of the liberators, in San Martín, in Bolívar, in Juárez , to Martí ”, he added, about Patria Grande and, towards the end, reflected on the past and the present of socialism. “I don’t know what Marx would have written, or what Lenin would have done, in the era of virtuality in which we are. And it’s not that exploitation has ceased to be exploitation, it’s that everyone has much more access to useful knowledge, but also to unnecessary knowledge. In other words, everything is much more complex, more diverse than when these texts were written, and when these first revolutions were made ”.