Rock and roll music, especially punk rock, is dangerous for the Castro dictatorship for how it rejects conformity and promotes the free spirit of man. Musically, I can do without most punk rock, whether from the Sex Pistols or Porno Para Ricardo, the Cuban punk group. But even a cursory listener must acknowledge how dangerous it is for the established order, especially an order as illegitimate as that in Havana.
So it is no surprise that the Cuban secret police have arrested Gorki Aguila, the lead singer of Porno Para Ricardo. Musically, I can do without much of his music, but he is deserving of praise and solidarity for how he sings brutal truth to power.
Aguila has been charged with "pre-criminal social dangerousness," the dictatorship's Orwellian — or maybe it's Dickensian — weapon for choice of silencing its critics. He has committed no crime, but as the dictatorship sees it, the danger is there — dangerous to the dictatorship — and it must be preempted by a jail term of between 1 and 4 years. (The list of names on the right side of this blog includes numerous examples of other Cubans who have been similarly silenced.)
A court hearing for his case is set for Thursday, and his trial convenes Friday.
Gorki's predicament, regardless of what you think about his music, is vital for how it reveals the truly repressive, truly evil nature of the Castro regime. It cannot stand its critics, even those armed only with a microphone or electric guitar, and it cannot stand those Cubans who like Gorki, stand up for themselves, and for their freedom.
For more on Gorki, read Porno Para Ricardo's Web site Babalú, Review of Cuban American Bloggers and especially Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, who writes:
They took him because nothing destabilizes the intransigents more than a man in his most free state. At the Fifth Police Station, 3rd and 62nd in Playa, where the criminals take turns and a toilet is a painful illusion, Gorki rips the strings of his rebelliousness. He is a weird guy, everyone notices it, even more weird in a society where the model of the “New Man” is the coloring book version of the idiot in the classroom.Gorki concentrates the attraction that his critics do not have; he sings, sways, and shouts in his bloody rock lyrics what others mutter with fear. He has a room lined with egg cartons somebody gave him, because if we added up all the eggs he’s entitled to from the rationed market he would not have been able to wallpaper even a closet. He is accused of a crime from the script of the film “Minority Report,” charged under the euphemism of “pre-delinquent dangerousness.” Translated into the language of reality, it means they put you behind bars so you don’t commit the mischief that others see coming.
In the case of Gorki, the charge has been led by a delegate of the constituency with delusions of James Bond, a neighbor woman they “advised” to make the accusation, and by a community that avoids interceding for the “uncomfortable.” On Thursday he will have his preliminary hearing and only some clothes and toiletries brought by his father have managed to make it to him where they have him “guarded.” There is little chance of the defense lawyer convincing the strict prosecutor that Gorki’s long hair, his rock songs, and the noise of his guitar, are not more dangerous than the inertia, conformity and double standard in which everything is wrapped.
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