Separated from the real life of Cubans by a thin strip of sea and a causeway, the North Keys of the Island are sold to international tourism as paradise on earth. However, the artists who manage to cross that border and appear on the stages of the opulent hotels in the area go through a Via Crucis to receive the agreed payment.
Although money is not lacking in the safes of Gaviota’s managers and soldiers who manage the hotels in the area, nor in the pockets of large companies based in the Cayería such as the Spanish Meliá, the payments of numerous artists are delayed . “In Villa Clara the situation is unbearable and nobody says anything,” he told 14ymedio Sergio, a musician from Santa Clara who periodically travels “to the Key” – an expression that for Villa Clara residents is synonymous with prosperity – and who prefers to hide his identity.
“Those of us who work at the Meliá Cayo Santa María hotel have not been paid for more than two months. At the Grand Aston Las Brujas they owe us two whole months, at the Grand Sirenis as well. While at the Playa, of which the Government Cuban boasts of owning it without sharing it with any foreign firm, they haven’t paid us since May,” he laments.
“Those of us who work at the Meliá Cayo Santa María hotel have not been paid for more than two months. At the Grand Aston Las Brujas they owe us two whole months, at the Grand Sirenis as well”
Those theoretically responsible for protecting artists are the provincial branch of the Music Company and the Tour Arte company, but in reality they are part of the “exploitation mechanism” in collusion with the hotels, denounces the musician. “Those companies do nothing. What are they going to be able to do for us if they are from the State?
The artists, he continues, are not guaranteed even the slightest logistics. Before starting the journey from their places of residence, they must buy – “very expensive and when they appear”, insists Sergio – food and medicine. The further away the municipality is from the worker, the more work happens. It is not the same to travel to the Cayería from a relatively short distance, such as from Caibarién, Remedios or Camajuaní –the closest towns– than to wait for the well-known “artist” buses in Placetas, Santa Clara or beyond. The journey, one way or another, is often exhausting.
The worst thing, Sergio concludes, is defenselessness: not knowing which instance to turn to to file a complaint for non-payments. “When I, as director of my group, go to the Music Company to demonstrate that an illegality is being committed, the answer is always: ‘Who sues Gaviota?'”.
Of course, to those who enter angrily to expose the situation to a state office, the recommendation, as the one who does not want things, is dropped: “Do not publish anything on social networks, after that there is no fix.”
Mirielis –name changed to avoid reprisals– is 22 years old and is a dancer in the dance group at one of the hotels managed by Meliá in Cayo Santa María. “I have just decided that I am going to request a license in my artistic company, because I have not been paid for three months and I have a small child, I cannot be working without receiving a penny,” she tells 14ymedio.
“At first they told us that it was an organizational matter, that Meliá was negotiating some contracts with the company that represents us, because they were agreements that had been made at a time when it was believed that the level of occupancy was going to be one that, at end, it has not been achieved”, he adds.
Mirielis regrets that those affected are the employees. “I have to stand in front of the public, whether there are a hundred people in the public or just one. If the hotel has not managed to collect what management thought, it can’t be that I pay the blame and I don’t receive what they owe me” .
“Most of what I earn comes from tips,” the dancer acknowledges, “because what I get through the company that represents me is little with the prices that everything has right now. But if enough guests don’t come, my Tips are terrible. It’s not even worth leaving my house, wearing my makeup and sweating on stage, because I don’t get back what I invest.”
“Nothing but stockings panties I spend more than I’m paid, but I can’t stand there under the lights in ripped stockings. These are the things that the company does not calculate and that the hotel administration does not replace us either, “he lists.
Those who are worst late in paying, in his opinion, are the musicians who “have to be entertaining for hours and hours, and sometimes the hotel administration gets very stingy even to give them something to eat or a beer.” But also the entertainers of shows, the magicians and the sports trainers “are in the same”.
A double room, for one night, at the Meliá in Cayo Santa María, costs 232 dollars in this month of July with everything included. “Although few tourists are coming, clients are arriving and it cannot be that we are the fifth wheel of the car when they are charging very expensive for each room,” laments the dancer. “Without us the hotel is not what they promise, but they treat us like we don’t matter.”
Despite the irregularities in the payment to national artists, the Cuban authorities have been able to find the budget to pay for an exclusive show in the North Cays for this summer
Despite the irregularities in the payment of national artists, the Cuban authorities have been able to find the budget to pay for an exclusive show in the North Cays for this summer, the Santa Maria Music Festival. The event, however, threatens to become a fiasco comparable to that of the San Remo Music Awards Festival, whose organizing committee included Lis Cuesta, wife of President Miguel Díaz-Canel. The disappearance of the official poster for the event by the American rapper Arcángel or the request by the Puerto Rican singer La India to withdraw her name from the advertisements are reminiscent of the flight of musicians that characterized that event, held in 2022.
Those who have not unsubscribed from the “ideal summer” in Cayo Santa María are the artists Tito El Bambino, Charly & Johayron, Ñengo Flow, Fixty Ordara & Ja Ruley, Isaac Delgado and Tekashi 6ix9ine, whose strange link with Cuba -country in which he filmed a video clip and plans to release another – has not been cleared since he was wrongly accused of throwing dollar bills in front of the Packard Hotel in Havana (instead, he allowed himself to be filmed handing out dozens of $100 bills in a town in Pinar del Río).
Despite the controversy unleashed by the gesture and the campaign unleashed by the official press against him, Tekashi has kept the doors of the Island open and, of course, of the hotel enclave in the North Cays.
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