MIAMI, United States. – The Cuban singer-songwriter Alfredito Rodríguez expressed, through a post on your Facebook profilehis desire for Havana and all of Cuba to recover their dynamism and prosperity. In a message, the musician identified himself with the emblematic Havana lighthouse: “I am older than El Morro, this popular Cuban saying fits me like a glove.”
From his own experience, the 74-year-old artist recalled the time when from his “humble little balcony on Lealtad Street” he could observe barges and an intense movement that today, he regrets, has disappeared. “My sea was left without the scenery and the environment that each man’s push forward provides,” he said, alluding to the material and spiritual losses that impede collective progress.
In his reflection, Rodríguez also evoked the image of seagulls, previously present on the coast, and suggests a parallel with the restricted flight of Cubans: “Today, you barely see any seagulls on the sea, with that ‘call’ sound. long’, crying out for Havana and all of Cuba to flourish again.”
The publication culminated with a call to the Cubans, whom he invited to take flight above the impositions: “As the poet said, and I paraphrase, you cannot be a seagull in the sea, because people with foolish command and arrogance throw to kill when we fly too low. Come on, Cuba, fly high!”
Between 1969 and 1990, Alfredito Rodríguez was one of the most acclaimed Cuban pop singers. In 2022 he celebrated his 55 years of artistic career in Miami.
About his songs, the journalist Luis Cino wrote in CubaNet that “they really liked and made life more bearable mainly for the pioneers of socialism, their retired grandmothers, the depressed housewives and the CDR members exhausted by the construction of socialism.”
In the same text, the journalist also recalled that the Cuban authorities “made life impossible” for the musician, who in 2009 complained about the censorship of his songs on the radio and about having been accused “of distorting the public’s taste for being “foreigning and singing ‘easy songs’.”
In November of last year, Rodríguez, who has lived in Miami since 2010, assured that “some” were determined to keep him away from his city, Havana. “My Havana: I have never left, although I know that many feel my distance, and also that some insisted on keeping me away from you, but I am not here,” he wrote on Facebook.
In his words, the musician evoked the essence of the city and his personal connection despite the distances and circumstances. Furthermore, he reflected on the complexity of the terms “leave” and “stay,” suggesting that, regardless of physical presence, those who love Cuba They always carry it with them.
