December 16, 2022, 7:00 AM
December 16, 2022, 7:00 AM
“I love this island, I am from the Caribbean. I could never set foot on solid ground because it inhibits me” repeated the Cuban singer-songwriter Pablo Milanés in many of his massive concerts. “Don’t talk to me about the continent”, followed the lyrics of this song, one of the many that he shared with Silvio Rodríguez from the incomparable Nueva Trova.
How sad it must have been for him and his family to die in Madrid this November 22, far from the sea! Milanés preferred the mainland that offered him freedom of conscience and freedom of expression after his growing disenchantment with the Cuban Revolution. The poet’s biography cannot be separated from the man who physically and spiritually suffered the hostility of the communist regime.
Milanés always recognized the positive balances of the government established in 1959, especially for overcoming racism and opportunities for the poor. He was born in Bayano in 1943 and moved to Havana with his parents. There he studied music.
In the sixties he felt revolutionary, but his critical thought did not stop expressing his opinions against the excesses of Castroism. That earned him, along with Silvio Rodríguez, being sent to a forced labor camp. Under the name of “Military Unit for Production Aid” (UMAP), a center was hidden to treat those who expressed an opinion against “revolutionary ideals.”
Intellectuals, artists, religious, homosexuals were locked up there. The system wanted to “re-educate” them. Milanés later recounted what it meant for a young man to be humiliated and mistreated. As is known, despite the treatments to break him, Pablo resisted. Not so Silvio, who did not dare to question Fidel; rather he wrote praises and then served with his concerts to support other authoritarian governments.
At the beginning of the nineties, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and with the timid opening in Cuba, Pablo tried to invest his earnings in a musical foundation, but they would not let him. The poet’s estrangement from former colleagues and the cultural bureaucracy of his country was made public.
Milanés did not hesitate to support the San Isidro Movement with strong words in 2021 and the new young people, who like him in the sixties, want to say their own words with their own thoughts. His voice rose haughtily to let the world know that the repression used the same arguments as before, accusing the boys of subversion.
Although Silvio and other established artists have also expressed their annoyance against the massive spy system and the imprisonment of protesters, doubts remain about the sincerity of these statements. Apparently, Havana wants to show that there is an openness, even to film controversial issues.
Milanés died with the sadness of losing her successor, the singer Suylen Milanés at the beginning of this 2022. Suylen was Liam’s twin and one of the three daughters he had with the famous “eternally” Yolanda Bennet. She was the companion of one of Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s sons and therefore Milanés and Che shared a granddaughter.
Each of his four wives, his seven children and his grandchildren was a source of his inspiration, to the delight of the entire world. Pablo Milanés will always be remembered as the author of songs that friends from both sides of ideologies chanted. He represented a moment of utopias in Latin America.
His last tour in La Paz showed his difficulties with altitude. However, as always, he gave his best, while people chanted each of his verses: “I love you, I love you… I love you forever…”.
