GORKI AGUILA
Free from fear, for now
BY MIRTA OJITO
mao35@columbia.edu
He seems to be a youthful 20-something with not a care in the world. In
fact, he is 40 and has plenty of reasons to be worried. Small, slight,
dressed in black with a ring in his nose and red canvas shoes he would
disappear in a big-city crowd if it weren't for the intensity of his
dark eyes and the mane of curly black hair that frames his face defiantly.
And, of course, his message, his words, and his music: ``He is a liar/
He is a troublemaker/He doesn't know how to give a speech/His job was
handed to him.'' That's my translation from the Spanish lyrics of El
General, one of the songs in the latest album of Porno Para Ricardo, the
punk group founded 11 years ago in Havana.
The public face of the band is Gorki Aguila, who is in the United States
these days to promote the CD. And the general in the song is Raúl
Castro. Gorki says he plans to return to Cuba next spring, before his
11-month travel permit expires.
He spoke to more than 100 New York fans Wednesday night. It is unclear
how many were there for his music or for his politics. In 2003, Gorki,
who is openly and loudly anti-communist, was sentenced to four years in
prison on drug trafficking charges (a woman offered him a pill and he
took it, he says). Gorki was in prison for two years and completed the
other two years at home under surveillance. He was arrested again last
summer, but after a quick international campaign, he was released in
five days. He says that prison was horrible. He used to cry in his cell.
And yet, Gorki shuns any attempts to frame his story as one of
unprecedented courage.
Instead, he points to Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, who is in the seventh year
of a 25-year prison sentence, as a man of integrity and valor. As for
his own brand of courage, Gorki is intent on making it all seem
effortless, even fun. In New York, he wore a black shirt with G-2 and
10-C1 embossed on the right breast in bold white letters -- acronyms for
the government's secret police and Cuba's most notorious detention
center, Villa Marista.
``Nobody had ever written a song to Raúl,'' Gorki said with a laugh,
explaining the lyrics of El General.
He grew up in Havana, the son of a homemaker -- a ``guajira,'' or hick,
from Pinar del Rio -- and a bodeguero -- a grocery store employee. His
father bought him his first guitar at 18 or 19, but he never took formal
music lessons. He learned from listening to Led Zeppelin and the Sex
Pistols and from his mother's constant singing around the house. She
liked punto guajiro -- Cuban country music -- and boleros. The first
song of the new album is an old bolero ``Mucho Corazon,'' by Marcelino
Guerra, and it does take a lot of heart to grow up as a rebel in Cuba.
Gorki doesn't remember a time when he wasn't against the government.
``My mother always told me the government wasn't any good,'' he said.
``They talked too much.''
He stopped going to school after his teachers harassed him so much in
high school -- for his tight pants, his long hair -- that going to the
university was no longer an option. For a while, in the 90's he thought
of leaving Cuba, but he couldn't imagine taking to the sea in a raft.
And so, he stayed. Now that he has finally left, he says he is going back.
Asked what he would do if the government does not allow him to return,
Gorki draws a blank. His only plan is to go back to his 13-year-old
daughter, to his band, and to his home in the Havana suburb of Playa.
Gorki isn't the only Cuban or the only artist who says what he thinks
without apparent fear. A rapper that goes by the name of Eskuadron
Patriota (Patriot Squadron) can be seen on Youtube rapping about life in
Cuba with a song called Decadencia. The song is devastating; the images
even more so. And dozens of bloggers, who live and work in Cuba, post
their disappointment with the government online.
But, by virtue of being outside Cuba, Gorki is attracting the kind of
publicity that could doom him or protect him. The world -- that is, the
very small part of the world that cares about what happens in that
impoverished Caribbean island -- will be watching what happens when
Gorki attempts to go home.
He admits that he is afraid. Every day. But every day he wages an
internal battle against it. The free man that Gorki is wins over fear
every time. The question is: Will his captors be able to overcome their
own fear of him? By next Spring, we'll know.
Free from fear, for now - Other Views - MiamiHerald.com (4 October 2009)
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/1264552.html
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