Havana Cuba. – No institution of the regime or any of its propaganda media has deigned to publish how much the San Remo Music Award has cost us and will continue to cost us for a long time, just in money. I write “it has cost us” because, as has always happened here, we will pay that bill out of our own pockets, just as we paid at the worst moment of the “Special Period” for the desire to celebrate the 1991 Pan American Games in Havana, precisely when on the Island the best dish that someone on foot could bring to the table was a puree of banana peels or a grapefruit “steak”.
But it doesn’t matter, the last cents of the Soviet era were wasted by Fidel Castro in those two or three days of sporting events, even though months and years of blackouts, famine, desperation, seawalls and mass exoduses followed. We never knew how much that circus act without bread or peace really cost us, but since we were ragged and savage, left to our own devices, that’s how we suppose it would have been a waste.
Something similar or worse has happened with this surrogate San Remo, despite the fact that many independent media outlets alerted that it was the invention of some Italian rascals that would not have any international repercussions, while the main justification for the regime was the need to attract international tourism with a supposed “mega event”. But it turns out that this almost plagiarized “copy” of the San Remo is not related to the Italian Radio Television franchise where artists like Laura Pausini and Eros Ramazotti became known.
They are so desperate these days, clinging to anything to pretend that nothing is happening here, that not even discovering they were scammed seemed to bother them, even not giving the arm to twist they have “made the shovel” of some adventurers and… Long live the sausage! In the end, a few dollars spent on “fiestas and pachanga” does not make a dent in an economy where many know how to grow hotels for tourists who do not arrive, but none have yet discovered how to produce basic food for millions who, desperate for hunger, They only dream of running away from this madness.
It matters little to them that they were given a cat for a hare, because after all, they themselves have been giving chicken for fish and soy yogurt for milk for years, the very rare times that they give them. In addition, being consistent with their peculiar way of acting, recognizing that they had been deceived, in something where the “first lady” was fully involved, was not only accepting that they were wrong (the communists are never wrong) but also agreeing. to the “enemy”, therefore, the show had to continue “at whatever price was necessary”.
Although they may have always known what this “Italian sausage” was stuffed with, they thought no one would notice. They have tried to underestimate the independent press so much that not only do they believe they are right and act intelligently in disregarding it, but they continue to act so self-confident, just as they did in the 60s, 70s and 80s. where the absence of the internet made them the absolute owners of the information. In fact, the PCC department that controls it never goes into hiding to do it, although every day the “little job” becomes more difficult and obsolete for them.
In short, they were in time to correct the error and they did not do it for a matter of “pride”. They became so obsessed with giving the media smackdown with the little festival that they didn’t mind making a fool of themselves in a country where ridiculous things, if they were eaten, could be turned into sausages to be exported all over the world. They really have to stop, and it should be now if they really intend to recover an iota of credibility among their own “unconditional”, fed up with so much “embarrassment”.
Summoning the regime, it is not only our duty as citizens to ask ourselves how much money, so necessary to buy food and medicine in a country totally deprived of supplies, was wasted during these days of spectacle, but also if it was worth doing it when it was already known that it would not serve not at all for the initial purposes of attracting tourism.
Who has assumed the payment to the artists, the international promotions, the transportation -land and air-, the food, the production of the shows, the logistics, the customary “royalties” so usual in such events? Do we really have enough food left over to host culinary shows? Are we doing so well in terms of textile productions for a fashion show in a country where the people who manage to do it dress very badly, horrible, but still only thanks to mules and resellers?
Of course, with these shots, who says that we are not headed for the saddest ruin of all, but rather that we are almost at the bottom of the well that we got into more than half a century ago. Well, if you look closely, we have gone from that ostentatious Chanel parade on the Paseo del Prado and The Rolling Stones concert, which undoubtedly attracted so many tourists, to this bad imitation of the legitimate San Remo that, because of the “profits” that he could have thrown, it seems more like a conspiracy of idiots to scare away even the Pipisigallo. What continuity they want to offer us with a blow of sticks!
I am more than sure that not even a single tourist spent a peso to come expressly to San Remo and, judging by the images of the parallel events of fashion and cuisine that have circulated around there, the public was scarce and made up mostly of The organizers themselves and the occasional Cuban —privileged alienated from exoduses and queues— or some foreigner, of those who always have around here the same making a bundle in a parade for May Day than fishing prostitutes in a Varadero nightclub.
In short, the false Cuban-style San Remo has been, in addition to another manifestation of the arrogance and lack of transparency with which it is “governed” in these parts, another waste of money that may soon translate into a new rise in prices in the stores in MLC, in more shortages in the agro-markets, in a deepening of the black market, more chaos and abuse in all the places where we know that Cubans and Cubans always end up paying, at gunpoint, the constants “ errors” in the construction of this great sausage called “socialism”.
OPINION ARTICLE
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