The Cuban saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera issued a strong "Let's go!" directed at Miguel Díaz-Canel during an interview given last Friday to journalist Tania Costa from CiberCuba. "Let's go! Let's go! Let's go, it's already settled, it's over! Either he goes to the Cayman or he goes to Barranquilla," he expressed in a decisive tone.
The conversation took place just a day after the Cuban leader made statements to the program "Meet the Press" from NBC News, where he denied the existence of political prisoners on the island. For D’Rivera, that claim is nothing more than “a big lie.”
The musician did not hold back on criticizing the regime and ironically evoked some of its historical failures, such as plastic shoes and the slogan "Cuba advances," while—according to him—"pieces of the roof are falling on our heads."
Regarding the origin of the Cuban crisis, he was categorical: "It didn't go bad when the Russians left; it got worse when they arrived," directly referring to the establishment of socialism.
D’Rivera described the political reality of the island as a "tragicomedy" and also questioned the passivity of the artistic community: "Musicians haven't done much for the freedom of Cuba. That's the truth." To reinforce his stance, he quoted Martin Luther King: "What hurts me the most is not the cruelty of the bad, but the silence of the good."
One of the hardest moments of the interview was his message to the Brazilian singer-songwriter Chico Buarque: “Someone tell Chico Buarque that there is a Grammy award imprisoned in Cuba.” He was referring to rapper Maykel Osorbo, co-author of "Patria y Vida," who was sentenced in June 2022 to nine years in prison and is held at the high-security Kilo 5 y Medio prison in Pinar del Río. Osorbo won two Latin Grammys in November 2021—Best Urban Song and Song of the Year—while still in detention since May of that same year.
“Maykel Osorbo is in prison for singing. Why doesn't Chico Buarque want to understand that? Why hasn’t anyone told him that there is a person, a Grammy winner, in prison for singing a song they didn’t like?” he insisted.
The saxophonist also criticized the recent appearance of Sandro Castro, grandson of Fidel Castro, on CNN, calling it "nonsense" and comparing it to "an update of La Tremenda Corte."
Regarding the consequences of decades of dictatorship, he was equally harsh: “They have destroyed people's ability to think after so many years of not allowing them to think.”
Even so, he left room for hope. He pointed to the protests that took place in Morón, Ciego de Ávila, where demonstrators stormed and set fire to the headquarters of the Communist Party in March, as a sign of change: “The worst has already passed. The worst, which is fear.”
“I still hold onto the hope that something will happen, that something will happen. We can't let it fall through in any way, because it's now or never,” he concluded.
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