Waking Up with the Rolling Stones (Video)
Nonardo Perea
HAVANA TIMES — I’d like to share with you a video I recorded with my phone of what happened the day I got to see a band of excellent musicians. I’ve made the most of these circumstances to add a second part to the short film “Despertar”, so that you can see how my life hasn’t changed over the course of eight years, and I’m not only talking about myself with this film but of the majority of the Cuban people.
Yes, it’s true we were able to go to a free concert, but that doesn’t nourish us, it just keeps us entertained. I’m sure that in no time we’ll be seeing the likes of Lady Gaga and Beyonce performing here. We recently welcomed Karl Lagerfeld who put on an exclusive show for the government’s elite, as us ordinary Cubans were not allowed to get anywhere close.
We’ve also had actors and actresses from Hollywood filming the last edition to the saga “The Fast and the Furious”. And in spite of who comes, we carry on with our basic needs.
Let it be known that I haven’t captured everything in this film. Images of corrupt policemen charging 10 dollars to people who wanted to enter the VIP area so they could get a little closer at the celebrities, are missing.
When the concert had finished, there wasn’t any extra transport like the TV had announced there would be. Over the 25 km I had to walk, I only saw two buses pass me by and they were bursting with people. They didn’t stop at any of the bus stops.
But this shouldn’t shock you. In our Cuba, anything is possible. This is the Cuba which US President, Obama, was unable to discover in the short time he was here, our land, which we love so much, in spite of everything.
In Cuba the corporations are subsidiaries of GAESA which was established by Raul Castro and when you refer to the workers making profits for the rich, I assume that you are talking about those with average earnings of $20.68 per month providing an evidently comfortable living for example for a man who has a four house complex with tennis court and swimming pool in Siboney a suburb of Havana, a two island idyllic retreat also with swimming pool and a pier for his yacht Aquarama II and a fleet of BMW’.s. His name is Fidel Castro Ruz, dictator of Cuba for almost fifty years and clearly more successful as a dictator than Batista, Pinochet or Mussolini. If you wish to see the housing complex to which I referred, Google Earth 5 ta D Havana.
So far Fidel Castro and his little brother Raul have got away with making a killing (and killing) off the backs of the people.
There’s no reason in the 21st Century for living conditions to be like this, it’s time that the oppression of the governments and the theft of the corporations came to a halt. Hundreds of Billions of dollars have never returned to the workers who made those profits possible for the rich, and it can’t go on very much longer without a massive revolution occurring, and woe be to the wealthy who think they got away with making a killing off of the backs of the people.
I was a teenager living in NYC in the sixties. There were many issues we as a country faced, black’s being discriminated against (still exists) the start of Vietnam with over 500,000 US troops invading that country and various other problems. The youth movement made a difference especially questioning government polices and in some cases our heads were cracked and witnessed in Chicago, mass arrests of demonstrators. I visualize this happening in Cuba. Either the regime gets it together, which I doubt, or many running Cuba today will be out of a job.