The world upside down: when the cannibal boxers were right but the revolutionaries won the fight.

The so called Juanes’ Concert or Concert for Peace that was held last September 20th at Havana's Revolution Square has provoked the umpteenth exchange of blows among those who favor revolution and those who favor anthropophagy. There is nothing new in this almost conventional struggle if not that — who knows if anybody has observed it — for once the boxers have reversed their roles, i.e. their arguments, with the paradoxical effect of having to admit that the cannibals were right although the revolutionaries won the fight.

Let me explain. The people who favored the concert (for instance, Jesús Gómez Cairo, Salvador Capote or Luis Toledo) have insisted on denying its political character, invoking “bourgeois” values: the victory of culture, art against barbarism, the right of youth to listen to good songs, quality music above any ideological differences, etc. On the other side, against this claim of “pure art” as an abstract conciliation of wills, the propagandist anti-Cubans have appealed almost nonstop to “guevarist” arguments in order to censor the event’s participants: the need to take sides, artists' commitment, music as a mobilization vehicle…

If we leave aside Miami’s destructive fanaticism, it is odd to see how the Spanish anti-Cuban media — basically all of them — have been frantically demanding higher levels of political conscience of the singers in order to avoid the traps of an “abstract peace” and of “music as a pacifier”. El País newspaper has been once again paradigmatic. In two articles published on September 25th, Verónica Calderón and Diego Manrique ignored the concert’s musical content to explore Juanes and friends’ complicities with “Castro’s dictatorship” and to regret the lack of commitment showed by youth who gathered there without the least conscience, spurred only by pop music hunger.

For once Cubans have wanted to do something simply “beautiful”, kind, with neither spear nor claw; something for everybody (Colombian writer Carlos Alberto Ruiz was right when he pointed out somewhat sadly the deliberately apolitical character of this concert). Cubans have just wanted to sing, so their enemies —those who always defend the purity of art and who detest all ideological contamination — have started to scream: “Politics! Politics! Everything is political!” Instead of meeting in front of the U.S. Interests Section to scream anti-imperialist watchwords, Cubans gathered in a square to listen to the music and then their enemies became even more furious: “Ah, no, don’t deceive us, that is even more political.” Just for once Cubans looked like everybody else and then those who for 50 years have been wanting to crush, to deny, to extirpate their differences were more irritable than ever: “No way, you have to be uninterruptedly socialists.”

Just for once Cubans did a “beautiful” thing and just for once their enemies were right: art, music, and culture are political. It is good that they recognize it, even if once again it is against Cuba (and not against Madonna in Israel, against Al di Meola in Tunisia or against Julio Iglesias in Miami). The great illusion of capitalism is to believe — to make believe — that it has established the only possible conditions where art can finally be only art. But it is just the opposite. To sing is not an innocent act in darkness; to walk is not indifferent on a mined field; to choose a dress or a soda, to kiss, to make a gift, to have a nap… they are not neutral actions in a global economy of uninterrupted anthropophagy. Neither can they be, of course, in one of the few societies on this planet that collectively defends itself against organized madness.

The so called Juanes’ Concert or Concert for Peace was indeed a political act and, while awaiting for the effects it will introduce, both in Cuba and in its relationships with neighbours, it would be fitting if Juanes, Miguel Bosé and Víctor Manuel — just to mention the most mediocre and reactionary of all the participants — also knew that this time, as every time they sing in Bogotá or in Madrid, they have participated in a political act, although perhaps the less political of them all or the potentially more “artistic” one of their career (in fact, that is what put them a little out of place).

Carlos Alberto Ruiz is right when he calls our attention to the deliberate de-politicization of the so called Juanes’ Concert or Concert for Peace, even if he fails to value all the promising or revealing aspects of such an intention. Contrary to what they want to make us believe, capitalist artists and capitalist writers and capitalist painters and capitalist musicians (not to speak of capitalist engineers and capitalist bricklayers) are more capitalist than artists, writers, painters or musicians. Under a global economy of uninterrupted anthropophagy, we are uninterruptedly capitalists and our expressions are so much more political the more de-politicized we find them: when we purchase, when we love, when we have a good time.

Under socialism the opposite happens. You fight for socialism in order not to be socialist the whole day; in order for love, dress, paintbrush and musical notes, poems and laughter to stay for a day at the political margins. We are capitalist 24 hours a day, but we will only be intermittently socialist, whenever it will be necessary to defend the conditions that will allow us to be other things.

For that reason, Gómez Cairo, Capote and Toledo have as much reason as Carlos Alberto Ruiz: because the premeditated de-politicization of the so called Juanes’ Concert makes the world Cuba has been working for during the last 50 years appear in a flash, a world where culture is only culture and art is art and good songs are mainly good songs. No other de-politicization could be more political, in a radical sense, than the one which shelters this embryo. The only doubt right now is whether Cuba has set up socialism so firmly as to undertake this de-politicization without danger, or if, on the contrary, this de-politicization is happening too soon and for that reason it involves some risk for socialism.

I liked very much the answer given by a 24 year-old computer specialist from Havana to a journalist for the Spanish newspaper Público when he was asked about the concert: “What I don’t understand is why they call it Concert for Peace. Here we have peace!” Arleen Rodríguez Derivet expressed the same idea in her La Jornada report: “As for peace, on this planet there is hardly another place, from North to South and from East to West where happiness has so much to do with the absence of violence.”

Why does this small and peaceful country, moderately poor, comparatively generous, conscious and full of solidarity, deserve so much attention, always negative? Why have Miami and Madrid felt so upset because just for once Cubans wanted to sing for the very sake of singing? Why has it infuriated them so much that for once they didn’t meet to mention the incomprehensible Marx or the prolific Martí, to “demagogically” denounce US terrorism or the horrors of the blockade, but instead to listen to pop music and to applaud some singers, some of them very good and others not so bad? Why have those who abhor socialism felt so outraged because for a couple of hours Cubans put aside being socialist to simply have a good time without having to kill anybody?

Who knows if by just asking these questions it is possible to find many answers.

Source (Spanish): La Jiribilla (published on 19-25 September 2009)

Source: (English): Tlaxcala

About the author

Santiago Alba Rico

The Spanish philosopher and writer Santiago Alba Rico is a graduate of Madrid’s Alcalá de Henares University. Between 1984 and 1988 he was one of the screenwriters of a mythical anti-capitalist TV program for children - La bola de cristal - which helped to create in Spain the so called “Bruja Avería left wing generation.” The program was later eradicated from the airwaves by Felipe González’s “socialist” party. Alba Rico’s experiences on this program were later published on two books: Viva el mal, viva el capital and Viva la economía, viva la CIA.

He has written numerous anthropology, philosophy and political essays: Dejar de pensar (Akal), Volver a pensar (Akal), Las reglas del caos (Anagrama), Ciudad intangible (Hiru), El islam jacobino (Hiru), Torres más altas o Vendrá la realidad y nos encontrará dormidos (partes de guerra y prosas de resistencia (Hiru). For the last nineteen years he has lived in the Arab world. He has translated the Egyptian poet Naguib Surur (Cantarabia 1990) and the Iraqi writer Mohamed Judayr (Hiru 2004) into Spanish. He is a longtime collaborator at the Spanish-language left-wing media, Rebel Rebelión. Santiago Alba Rico is one of the most lucid Marxist thinkers in today’s Spain.

Manuel Talens and Machetera are members of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity. Talens is also a member of Rebelión. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the source, author, translator and editor are cited.