Cuba's Celia Cruz still banned, and slandered by the dictatorship in Cuba but honored everywhere else
Cuban salsa star's desire to live in freedom led to her banishment from Cuba
On July 16, 2003, Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso passed away at the age of 77 after a long illness. Her millions of fans worldwide mourned her death.
Large Cuban exile communities in Miami, Florida and Hoboken, New Jersey experienced particularly strong waves of grief. She was better known under her stage name, Celia Cruz, the Queen of Salsa.
Celia Cruz on the U.S. Quarter
Last month on August 7, 2024 the U.S. Mint began to circulate her image on the U.S. quarter. under the American Women Quarters Program.
In 2011, the U.S. Postal Service featured her along side Latin American artists Selena, Carlos Gardel, Carmen Miranda, and Tito Puente as part of the Forever Stamps series to honor Latin Music Legends.
Twenty one years after her passing she remains a cultural icon, but her legacy is contested by some, and misrepresented by others.
Hated by the Cuban dictatorship
The mourning for Celia in 2003 was nearly universal, except in her homeland Cuba where the official media printed a small note on her passing recognizing Celia as an “important Cuban performer who popularized our country’s music in the United States,” it went on to say that “during the last four decades, she was systematically active in campaigns against the Cuban revolution generated in the United States.”
The Smithsonian’s whitewash
Unfortunately, the Smithsonian Institution’s March 5, 2020 video titled “Why Is Celia Cruz Called the Queen of Salsa? #BecauseOfHerStory” does not explain the Castro regime’s hostility toward Celia Cruz, her refusal to bow to Fidel Castro, her legacy defending freedom of expression, or the high price she paid. Ariana A. Curtis, curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, is interviewed by a student identified as Mincy, who conflates Celia’s history with the immigration experience in America. Celia was a Cuban exile barred from returning to her homeland by the Castro dictatorship, and her music is still banned in Cuba today. This is the misleading portion of the interview that describes her departure from Cuba:
“Ariana A. Curtis: Because especially during the early 1960s when she left, that was right after the Cuban Revolution, you know. And so Cuba was in the news a lot about politics, and about socialism, and about military things. But she really wanted to be able to show this “other side” of Cuba, right. The arts and culture side. And so she definitely used her style, sort of like satin dresses with the ruffles, and like these long trains.
Mincy: People migrate here and they tend to change their names and change who they are so that they can get jobs or so that they can get opportunities. So they hide that part of themselves in order to like grow in this country, it’s so important that we have an example that Celia Cruz did not hide herself.”
Setting the record straight
This omits much of Celia’s past and could be interpreted as an Orwellian rewriting that Havana would embrace because it accomplishes something the Queen of Salsa never did: it conceals who she truly was. And this process had been ongoing for several years prior to the 2020 interview. This is concerning since the Smithsonian Institution is funded by American taxpayers and should not be producing such bad content to advance a false narrative.
Celia decided to live and perform in freedom, which meant leaving Cuba during the Castro dictatorship. Fidel Castro attempted to force the salsa singer to pay him homage, but she refused. Salserísimo Perú, a Youtube site founded by three Peruvian journalists to disseminate knowledge on salsa and tropical music, provides a more comprehensive and accurate history than the Smithsonian Institution. The following is an account of Celia Cruz’s first “encounter” with Fidel Castro.
“In the early months of 1959, Celia Cruz was hired to sing with a pianist at the house of the Cuban businessman Miguel Angel Quevedo. Quevedo owned the magazine Bohemia, the most influential in Cuba and who had supported the revolution in the last few years. The guerrilla movement with a certain Fidel Castro in front proclaimed in Santiago the beginning of the revolution. At that moment Celia enjoyed great popularity for “Yebero Moderno”, “Tu voz” and “Burundanga” songs she had recorded with the Sonora Matancera. As a guest artist of Rogelio Martinez’s group the Guarachera (Celia) was free to accept other contracts as a soloist. This allowed her to show her talent on different radio stations in Havana, and perform in Mexico, Venezuela, and Peru. Since the regime of Fidel took power, it had begun to systematically seize businesses, radio and television stations. [Fidel Castro speaking: ‘The revolution was something like a hope and that joy, possibly, prevented us from thinking all that we still had to do.’ For the Guarechera, Fidel was ending free expression and the arts in her country. The night of the show in the home of Quevedo, Celia was singing standing next to the pianist, when suddenly the guests started to run to the front door of the house. Fidel Castro had arrived. Neither she nor the pianist moved and continued singing. Suddenly, Quevedo approached Celia and told her that Fidel wanted to meet her because in his guerrilla days, when he cleaned his rifle he was listening to Burundanga. Celia replied that she had been hired to sing next to the piano, and that was her place. If Fidel wanted to meet her, he would have to come to her. But the commandant did not do that.”
Castro barred Celia Cruz from visiting her dying mother
Since Celia Cruz refused to bow to the new dictator, and wanted to continue to live the life of a free artist, she had to leave Cuba on July 15, 1960. However, when her mom was ill she tried to return to see her in 1962, but was barred from entering the country by Fidel Castro. When her mother died Celia was again blocked by the dictatorship from attending her funeral. Because she was not an active supporter of the regime, her music was banned in Cuba.
She was finally able to return to Cuba in 1990, but not on territory controlled by the Castro dictatorship, when she played a concert for Cuban employees who worked on the U.S. Guantanamo Naval Base, and collected Cuban soil that would be entombed with her in 2003.
Music still banned in Cuba today
Regime apologists and their agents of influence have attempted to pretend that things have changed with regards to artistic freedom.
On August 8, 2012 BBC News reported that Cuba’s ban on anti-Castro musicians had been quietly lifted and on August 10 the BBC correspondent in Cuba, Sarah Rainsford, tweeted that she had been given names of forbidden artists by the central committee and the internet was a buzz that the ban on anti-Castro musicians had been quietly lifted. Others soon followed reporting on the news. The stories specifically mentioned Celia Cruz as one of the artists whose music would return to Cuban radio.
There was only one problem. It was not true. Diario de Cuba reported on August 21, 2012 that Tony Pinelli, a well known musician and radio producer, distributed an e-mail in which Rolando Álvarez, the national director of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión (ICRT) confirmed that the music of the late Celia Cruz would continue to be banned. The e-mail clearly stated: “All those who had allied with the enemy, who acted against our families, like Celia Cruz, who went to sing at the Guantanamo Base, the ICRT arrogated to itself the right, quite properly, not to disseminate them on Cuban radio ”
Celia is in good company. Other major Cuban artists who have had their music banned by the Castro regime are Olga Guillot, Rolando Lecuona, Paquito D’Rivera, Arturo Sandoval, Israel Cachao López, Ramón “Mongo” Santamaría, Mario Bauza, Arsenio Rodríguez, Willy Chirino, and Gloria Estefan.
Cuban cultural genocide
According to the 2004 book Shoot the Singer!: Music Censorship Today edited by Marie Korpe, there is growing concern that post-revolution generations in Cuba are growing up without knowing or hearing censored musicians such as Celia Cruz, Olga Guillot, and the long list above. This could lead to a loss of Cuban identity in future generations. This approach has been referred to as a Cuban cultural genocide, denying generations of Cubans their history.
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture should provide the complete story of Celia Cruz, rather than the politically correct version currently presented on YouTube. Meanwhile, supporters of freedom and beautiful music may commemorate her entire life and legacy through her music, and speaking up for jailed Cuban artists today, who like Celia spoke out for freedom, such as prisoners of conscience Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo Pérez and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara.