Pablo Milanés’s open letter to Edmundo García

- Cuban singer-songwriter Pablo Milanés, who is visiting Miami, has decided to reply via this open letter to an article posted last week by radio commentator Edmundo García questioning the artist’s behavior and his statements to U.S. media.

CaféFuerte reproduces hereinafter Milanés’s response to the presenter of the Miami radio program “La Tarde se Mueve”.

EDITORS, CAFE FUERTE

(In response to his article of August 26, 2011)

A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.

Edmundo,

For years you have tried, unsuccessfully so, to have an interview with me, to the point of being annoyingly insistent, considering that to make matters worse you would attach your questions to your requests, which I had no choice but to rate them as “spam” in order to get rid of them once and for all.

When we first met you were conveniently in bad company, so I had no option but to think to myself, “Birds of a feather…” However, I will explain why I would have never given you an interview: my natural intuition for these things made me see in you ‘The nine signs of the mother******’, a classification –I don’t know if you’ve heard of this– made by Camilo José Cela in his book Mazurca para dos muertos that has gone down in history as proof of his extraordinary eye for anyone who is hateful at first sight. These are the nine features:

1. Sparse hair

2. Low height and shortness of extremities

3. A pale complexion

4. A beard for religion

5. Soft, sweaty, cold hands

6. Evasive eyes

7. A high-pitched voice

8. A limp penis

9. Greed

This reference is enough to make it plain why I have never trusted you.

Edmundo, the way you do journalism is anything but. You don’t ask questions of your victims (the interviewees), you question them and break them apart with an authority that I don’t know which powerful being invested you with, and in the end you stand in victory above a person bewildered by the terror your words convey, typical of an old heavy-handed, ridiculous, old-fashioned method. Such is in my view the essence of your program.

My first reaction after I read your pamphlet was to envision a pubescent girl, amazed and blushed at her first menstrual period, scared of committing a sin in face of a natural expression of her body, still unknown to her. That was my first impression, but the second was even more solemn and dangerous: I realized that you were not only everything I had thought, but also about to join the select group of Miami’s extreme right-wing circles, where reconciliation and criticism are unacceptable and whose members’ sole Neolithic gesture is to break discs with a steamroller. Like them, you don’t want love, but hatred; like them, you don’t want a reconciliation, but resentment and disunity. In short, you don’t love the Cuban people, either here or there. Edmundo, you don’t love anyone, and I would have not been surprised to see you shouting “Down, down” in the middle of that “huge” mob, where I’m sure you would have been well-received.

You have implied that the press in Miami and Spain take advantage of and use my words rather than provide me with that space to charge at Imperialism. You’re wrong, Edmundo. I’m the one who use those newspapers to disseminate the views they refuse to publish in Cuba, the ones I dream Granma will publish one day for everyone to read as I hope that one, only one of the thousands of journalists in the Island has what it takes to post what I have been saying for so many years. What’s more, a good starting point would be to have Granma print both your pamphlet and this letter for the Cuban people to read, think about and reach their own conclusion, so that they once and for all learn to distinguish fact from fiction and aim for the individual liberties we need to recover, the same ones you are denying them with your attitude.

Upon my return to Havana and in keeping with the above paragraph, I hereby declare my intention of asking all Cuban intellectuals, artists, musicians and high-ranking officials to stop whispering in my ear: “I agree with you, but… you know!” I have no regrets about going through the roof alone because of my stance, but it’s sad and shameful to see as fateful a sign as your complicit silence, Edmundo. It’s incredible to see how your twofold behavior here in Miami and there in Havana concur on their own contradictions.

About the Miami intelligentsia whose support you say I’ve had, let me tell you that I’m in no fear at all of any kind or hospitable expression coming from them, nor do I have anything against it. We are not exactly fellow travelers but I like to sum, Edmundo, while you prefer to divide. That’s how you earn your living; that’s what you’re in this city for.

You have also dared say that I’ve been a bad influence for artists as talented and famous as Serrat, Sabina, Víctor Manuel and Ana Belén. It’s clear to me that you’re a complete ignorant in this regard too, because you should know that Juan Manuel Serrat has always been highly admired for his integrity, chivalry and purity, and his position towards Franco’s ideology at the risk of losing his career and his life puts him on a pedestal of dignity. You should know that Joaquín Sabina, who at 23 opposed Franco and even his own father and went into exile in England, is one of the most sincere and honest artists I know (Fidel himself knows this very well), regardless of his talent. You should know that in Franco’s time, even before you were born and made the dubious choice of becoming the extremist we all know you are today, Víctor Manuel and Ana were members of the Communist Party of Spain. That’s something, Edmundo, could have cost them their lives. Those people you have no respect for have a talent and views of their own and let no one sway them. On the contrary, it’s precisely their talent and principles what hold sway over half the world.