CDMX, Mexico.- Pablo Milanés, founder of Nueva Trova together with Silvio Rodríguez and Noel Nicola, was one of the main promoters of the Cuban regime during the first decades of the Revolution. Milanés was also a reference among the main voices of the Latin American leftist movement that saw a paradise in the government of the island. As proof of his political commitment, several songs survive in Pablo’s valuable work that were hymns in acts of government propaganda.
However, over the years the author of “Yolanda” gave a twist to his speech about the government of the island. Since the 90s you can find critical statements by the musician and where he pointed out that the system had failed. Time passed and Pablo’s positions were less lukewarm. One of his most publicized statements occurred after July 11, 2021 when he described the government as “repressive.” But this was not the only one.
Cubanet presents four critical statements by Pablo about the government that he once supported.
After the fall of the USSR
In July 2021 he wrote Pablo in their networks “In 1992 I was convinced that the Cuban system had definitely failed and I denounced it. I now reiterate my pronouncements.”
The singer-songwriter was referring to these pronouncements: “I am a standard bearer of the revolution, not of the government. If the revolution gets stuck, becomes orthodox, reactionary, contrary to the ideas that originated it, one has to fight against that”.
At that time, Pablo’s gaze on the Cuban reality that was experiencing a deep crisis and the disappointment that many felt was also glimpsed in his songs.
Let’s remember “Glory Days”: “I live with ghosts / That feed dreams and false promises / That don’t give me back / The glory days I once had”.
Also in “Exodus” he described the migration that was skyrocketing on the island “Where are the friends I had yesterday? / What happened to you? What happened? Where did they go? / I am so sad”.
Stalinism and repression
“Stalinism is still in force, and the repression prevents street protests; the strike is impossible because there are no independent unions and the Cuban press is silent or complicit”,Paul said in 2015 in statements to a Dominican television channel.
“There are repressive mechanisms that do not allow protest in the street, they do not allow free expression of the unions,” said Milanés, who warned that “the Secretary of the unions is from the Central Committee of the Party or a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Cuba. So, what independence can the unions have to express themselves in the street, in the sense that there is a strike or something? There can’t be.”
The musician also warned that “there cannot be meetings of more than I don’t know how many people” and that “there is no sense of free expression.”
“The only thing the Cuban people have now, and I’m talking about 95%, is hope. The rest is speculation, visions, tourist images, false information, ”she declared on the Noche De Luz program.
About his time at the Umap
In February 2015, Pablo answered a question from journalist Mauricio Vincent for The country about the UMAPs.
“I have never been asked so directly about the UMAP (ironically Military Production Aid Units). The Cuban press does not dare and the foreign press is unaware of the disastrous significance of that repressive measure of a purely Stalinist nature.
“There we were, between 1965 and the end of 1967, more than 40,000 people in isolated concentration camps in the province of Camagüey, with forced labor from five in the morning until nightfall without any justification or explanation, much less the forgiveness that I am waiting for the Cuban government to request it. I was 23 years old, I escaped from my camp —280 other prisoners from my territory followed me— and I went to Havana to denounce the injustice they were committing. The result was that they sent me to the La Cabaña fortress for two months, and then I was in a punishment camp worse than the UMAP, where I remained until they were dissolved due to how scandalous it was in the eyes of international opinion.”
In 2019, a documentary was produced where Pablo narrated his experiences in the Cuban concentration camps. There he recounted:
“One day common prisoners began to arrive at the camp. People who had committed different crimes and who were in Havana prisons, old prisons in the year 1965, mainly the Castillo del Príncipe. They came from there and joined us. We ask ourselves, ‘what’s the point of this? face us? Or are the jails very full and they need to be emptied and brought here?’” the troubadour recalled. “In the end, it was a dark idea that we never understood and that could have caused confrontations.”
The troubadour also shared what people with non-heteronormative gender identities or sexual orientation suffered.
“Actually, those who had it worse were still homosexuals. One afternoon trucks showed up… With a list, some officials, naming people in a lightning operation. That happened in all the fields of Camagüey, the same afternoon, timed. They picked them all up and took them to distant ghettos, and isolated them all together,” the troubadour said in the documentary.
July 11
On July 24, after the massive protests in Cuba, Pablo shared this statement on his networks.
“It is irresponsible and absurd to blame and repress a people that has sacrificed and given everything for decades to support a regime that in the end what it does is imprison them. For a long time, I have been expressing the injustices and errors in the politics and government of my country. In 1992 I was convinced that the Cuban system had definitely failed and I denounced it. Now I reiterate my pronouncements and I trust the Cuban people to seek the best possible system of coexistence and prosperity, with full freedoms, without repression and without hunger. I believe in young people, who with the help of all Cubans, should be and will be the engine of change. At 78 years old, I will continue to express these same opinions as long as my health allows me.
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