MADRID, Spain.- The Cuban singer Haydée Milanés, who has lived in Miami for a few months, offered statements to the independent media Cuban DNAabout her departure from the island and what for her was her last time in the country.
“I can say that the last year was terrible,” said Milanés. As he explained, this was largely due to the fact that the country is “increasingly deteriorated and impoverished (…) while the official discourse does not stop repeating and talking about social equality that is a lie”; the repression; and, of course, the death of his father, the great singer-songwriter Pablo Milanés, who passed away last November 22.
“Very sad to see the imprisonment of the protesters of July 11 and very sad to see the repression of their desperate relatives; Sad to see the censorship and repression against artists, journalists, or anyone who protested against what was established. Sad to see how everyone was leaving and I was left more and more alone, sad to realize that in my country there is no close possibility of a real change”, expressed the singer of songs like “You and I” and “La música”.
The singer also referred to the critical state of schools and hospitals, how “Havana is falling apart in the middle of the big hotels that are rising.”
Haydée Milanés pointed out that she never wanted to leave Cuba, “despite having a hard time for many years; but she was already too much the sparrow and the nonsense of living there ”.
“On the other hand, my father’s death was too sad, because, also, I couldn’t say goodbye to him. Definitely, since I left Cuba I have lived the hardest stage of my life. I think it was a symbolic coincidence and I think it defines a time of great losses, of uprooting, of breaking up, of death, in short, of great changes,” said Milanés.
Asked about the repression of her and her family, for speaking out about the reality of the Island, she recounted that “all the doors were closed little by little, they were marginalizing her.”
“After my first national tour in 2009, I was never able to do one again. They always had a pretext: there is no gasoline, there is no lodging or there is no money for transportation. But around me I saw others who could do it. He was on a blacklist for which there are no resources. (…) In my country, my career was completely strangled”, declared the singer.
Regarding the censorship of her father, she said she would prefer not to speak: “I am not ready for that. It’s hard for me to relive the pain I suffered when I saw the treatment they gave him. Many years of censorship and mistreatment. They were like that until the last moment with him. I’ll talk about it some day.”
As on numerous occasions, last March Haydée Milanés it was pronounced on their social networks against the repression of the Government of the Island and referred to the economic crisis.
“There are many difficulties that arise in the daily life of Cubans, food, transportation, lack of electricity/water, medicines and a long list of basic needs, plus the general deterioration that can be seen just by going out to walking the streets or entering the house of any Cuban. You have to live that to be able to feel and understand it ”, he pointed out.
Haydée Milanés, who recently offered her first concert in Miami, To return to to the stage of the Flamingo Theater Bar on June 16, Father’s Day.
