Celia Cruz is the Queen of a Free Cuba

 Why Havana still fears this Black Cuban singer who died in 2003. #CeliaCruz100 

 

Celia Cruz was born a hundred years ago, and passed away 22 years ago. Her music continues to be censored in Cuba, and the Cuban dictatorship cannot tolerate a group of Cuban artists honoring her memory. 

The Cuban theater group El Público at Havana’s Fabrica de Arte Cubano (FAC) had planned a gala to celebrate the birth centennial of Celia Cruz on October 19, 2025, but it did not take place because it was censored by Cuban government agents.

What is it that the communists in Havana fear from this Black Cuban woman?

She was born on October 21, 1925 in the poorest section of the Santos Suárez neighborhood in Havana and lived in a small home with 13 relatives. Her mother, Catalina Alfonso, was a stay-at-home mom who looked after her vast extended family, while her father, Simon Cruz, worked as a railroad stoker. He monitored steam pressure, managed water levels, maintained the fire, and regulated steam-powered jets that distributed coal within the firebox of the locomotive engine.

She began singing as a child, and to compete on radio programs as a young woman. Cruz’s cousin Serafín entered her in a competition on the radio program La Hora del Té (Tea Time) in 1947. She received first prize, a meringue cake, for her performance of the tango “Nostalgia.”

Fifty two years later on April 30, 1999 in the Spanish program, Séptimo de caballería”, in which she sang and took part in a panel discussion with other artists: Ángela Carrasco, Lolita Flores, and Miguel Bosé. Celia briefly discussed the role her mom played in circumventing her dad’s objections to his daughter having a career in show business. “My father didn’t want me to be a singer or an artist. My mother told me, ‘Forget it, I’ll get it sorted out with him.’”

To appease her father, who was embarrassed that his daughter was involved in show business, Celia pursued her studies to become a teacher, but continued to compete in singing competitions. She recorded her first track in Venezuela in 1948.

FBI files, declassified in 2004, revealed that she had allegedly flirted with Cuban communists in the early 1950s. This was at the moment that Celia was a breakout star in all of Cuba having joined the Sonora Matancera Orchestra in August 1950.

Celia Cruz and the Sonora Matancera Orchestra

At the height of her popularity in Cuba, Fidel Castro took power in 1959.

Miguel Angel Quevedo, a Cuban businessman, hired Celia Cruz to perform with a pianist in his home at the beginning of 1959. The most influential magazine in Cuba, Bohemia, which had backed the revolution, was owned by Quevedo. … On the night of the performance at Quevedo’s house, Celia was singing when all of a sudden the guests began to rush to the front door. Fidel Castro had arrived. She kept singing.

Celia was informed by Quevedo that Fidel was interested in meeting her. Celia said she was hired to sing next to the piano, and that was her place. Fidel would have to approach her if he wished to meet her. However, the commandant refrained from doing so.

On July 15, 1960, Celia Cruz was forced to leave Cuba because she refused to submit to the new dictator and wanted to carry on living as a free artist. But in 1962, when her mother was sick, she attempted to visit her, but Fidel Castro banned her from entering Cuba. The government once more prevented Celia from going to her mother’s funeral when she passed away. Her music was also censored in Cuba since she did not actively support the dictatorship.

In the same Spanish program, Séptimo de caballería, mentioned earlier she was repeatedly asked to reconcile with the Cuban dictatorship, “to open the door.”

Celia responded to them, “I’m not going to tell you she is above Cuba. But Catalina Alfonso [ her mom] is right next to Cuba, and for her I’m not the one who’s going to open the door. I’m not there, because they closed it to me. My mother died, and I couldn’t go and bury her because they didn’t want to let me in. Let that regime leave then, because it has to go. But should I go there? What you told me are pretty words but I won’t...”

Celia Cruz was punished by Fidel Castro for refusing to bend the knee, and for wanting to live in freedom on her own terms.

“I don’t want to go to a country where I can’t speak like I’m speaking to you now. They were the first to [distance] themselves. Now, since the dollars are so convenient for them, they send all those poor old people here.” …“[Cuba is] a farm, and he’s the owner.” … “There’s a book of Cuban music that couldn’t be released to the world if it didn’t feature Celia Cruz. And it didn’t, because I’m out. So they’re the most unjust and narrow-minded. Because Celia Cruz has to be included there, whether they like it or not, I am Cuba, period.”

The program ended with Celia Cruz responding to the Spanish actress and singer Lolita Flores with a sound bite to sum up her view of the Cuban government. “Let me tell you nicely: May the cancer that this country suffers from disappear.”

Celia Cruz is the “Queen of Salsa.” She was also called the “Queen of Cuba” but in reality she is the “Queen of a Free Cuba.” Celia still holds a symbolic position in Cuba that is a focus for national identity and unity. She is a synthesis both of the Afro-Spanish culture, the defense of human dignity, and resistance to tyranny throughout her own life. 

During the Summit of the Americas in 1994, she asked the leaders of the Americas, “Please, on behalf of my compatriots, I ask you not to help Fidel Castro any more so he can go away and leave us a Cuba free of communism.” She said that all the artists had been asked to refrain from expressing political messages, but she had engaged in an act of civil disobedience.

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.

Even 22 years after her passing she remains a Cuban icon internationally, and her example, when shared with the Cuban populace at large, endangers the continuing rule of Cuba’s communist dictatorship.

This is why they still fear the Queen, and why the secret police continue to censor her memory and ban her music.

More on this important anniversary here. A Spanish version of this OpEd was published in Diario Las Americas earlier today.

A special Mass for Celia Cruz was held on October 21, 2025 at Our Lady of Charity (La Ermita de la Caridad) located at 3609 S Miami Ave, Miami, FL.  Video of the entire occasion is available in thee original Spanish on YouTube.  

Note to His Admirers: Comandante Ernesto "Che" Guevara is still dead, and his ideas are toxic.

"I'd like to confess, at that moment I discovered that I really like killing." Ernesto "Che" Guevara, in a letter to his father after executing an unarmed man.

 

Guevara executed for trying to overthrow Bolivian govt on October 9, 1967

Che Guevara was captured during a guerrilla fight to topple the Bolivian government and create a communist dictatorship, similar to what he did in Cuba, and was executed in Bolivia 58 years ago today.

Unfortunately, his ideas did not die with him.

Ideas have consequences and those ideas are sometimes represented in iconic images. This is the case of the image of Ernesto "Che" Guevara and his toxic philosophy of political action that others seek to emulate.  He embraced hatred and dehumanization of the other as the means to carry out what he thought necessary actions.

“Blind hate against the enemy creates a forceful impulse that cracks the boundaries of natural human limitations, transforming the soldier in an effective, selective and cold killing machine. A people without hate cannot triumph against the adversary.”

Guevara's claim to fame was his collaboration with Fidel and Raul Castro in establishing a totalitarian communist dictatorship in Cuba using violent tactics, including terrorism, and then attempting to expand this model throughout Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.

His efforts failed while he lived.  

The Castro brothers executed tens of thousands of Cubans, locked up hundreds of thousands of Cubans, built a police state, with the assistance of the KGB, the East German Stasi, former Nazis, and imposed revolutionary terror to consolidate power.

Credible and conservative estimates of the Castro regime’s death toll against Cuban nationals ran from 35,000 to 141,000, with a median of 73,000. In the beginning executions were televised in Cuba to terrorize the populace. 

Che Guevara addressing the United Nations on December 11, 1964

Che Guevara, speaking to the United Nations on December 11, 1964, did not mince words: "We must express here something that is a well-known truth and that we have constantly asserted before the entire world: executions? Yes, we have executed individuals; we are currently executing others, and we will continue to do so as long as required. We know what the outcome of a losing struggle would be, and the worms must know what the outcome is today in Cuba." 

In addition to the Hellscape in the Middle East, Ernesto "Che" Guevara laid the groundwork for much of the additional misery in Latin America today.

Guevara with a Cuban delegation visited Mainland China and met with Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and other high ranking Chinese officials in November 1960 to discuss conditions in Cuba and in Latin America, and the prospects for communist revolution in the Western Hemisphere.

Guevara meets Mao Ze Dong in November 1960.

Mao Ze Dong caused the deaths of an estimated 45 million Chinese people in his communist project through famine and mass executions.  He is the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century, and someone Guevara stayed allied to, even after the Castro regime cooled relations with Beijing siding with Moscow.

 

Weeks after the world came perilously close to a nuclear holocaust in October 1962, Che Guevara was disappointed in Moscow’s loss of nerve in launching a first strike, and argued that Cubans were ready to make the ultimate sacrifice in a nuclear conflagration to end Capitalism.

“Here is the electrifying example of a people prepared to suffer nuclear immolation so that its ashes may serve as a foundation for new societies. When an agreement was reached by which the atomic missiles were removed, without asking our people, we were not relieved or thankful for the truce; instead we denounced the move with our own voice. We have demonstrated our firm stand, our own position, our decision to fight, even if alone, against all dangers and against the atomic menace of Yankee imperialism.”

The Argentine went further declaring in November 1962 his continued willingness to engage in a nuclear holocaust to achieve the communist utopia which Guevara called “liberation”.

“We do assert, however, that we must follow the road of liberation even though it may cost millions of nuclear war victims. In the struggle to death between two systems we cannot think of anything but the final victory of socialism or its relapse as a consequence of the nuclear victory of imperialist aggression.”

Guevara explained it more succinctly to London’s Daily Worker in 1962 after the Cuban Missile Crisis, where he also rejected the possibility of peaceful co-existence.

“If the missiles had remained we would have used them against the very heart of the United States, including New York. We must never establish a peaceful coexistence.”

Ernesto Guevara was executed  summarily on October 9, 1967 in La Higuera, Bolivia after he and his band of guerrillas were captured trying to overthrow the legitimate government there and install a Castro style dictatorship. His legacy at the time was already one of blood and terror that should be lamented not celebrated.

Comandante Ernesto "Che" Guevara is still dead, his ideas are still toxic, and need to be buried along with him. For example, the barbarism visited upon the Israeli people by Hamas and Hezbollah, on October 7th and October 8, 2023 respectively, both receiving support from the Cuban dictatorship, demonstrates how the idea of resistance Guevara promoted remain an obstacle to a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Che's so-called "achievement" with the Castro brothers was to replace an authoritarian dictatorship with a totalitarian communist one, all while claiming to be restoring democracy and the 1940 Constitution in Cuba.

The motorcycle diaries do not make up for this bloody legacy that for 66 years and counting continues to rob Cubans of their freedom, and spread totalitarian dictatorship to Nicaragua, and Venezuela, negatively impacting tens of millions of lives.

 

International Day of Nonviolence: Mohandas Gandhi born 156 years ago today on October 2, 1869

"Civil disobedience is the assertion of a right which law should give but which it denies." - Mohandas Gandhi

 

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, 156 years ago today, and his legacy continues to be passionately debated in India. The Economic Times, based in India, in 2021 published an editorial titled "Continuing relevance of Mohandas Gandhi" that highlights the challenges to Gandhian nonviolence today in his home country. 

“Gandhi is remembered for Ahimsa, non-violence. However, Gandhi’s Ahimsa was not passive acceptance of violence, but its active resistance by the force of moral purpose and mobilization of public opinion. Today, we have elected representatives who venerate Gandhi’s assassin, but few supporters who follow his example of opposing violence.”

This debate is not limited to India. The September 29, 2019 story in NPR "Gandhi Is 'An Object Of Intense Debate': A Biographer Reflects On The Indian Leader" contrasts the debate around Gandhi with how the Chinese don't debate Mao Zedong, or the Vietnamese don't debate Ho Chi Minh or the Pakistanis don't debate Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

Perhaps part of the reason for the lack of debate is that China and Vietnam are totalitarian dictatorships where such debate is forbidden, and Pakistan has been divided between periods of democratic and military rule in questioning the founder could prove unhealthy. India on the other hand has been a democracy through out its period of independence.

Gandhi liberated an entire subcontinent from imperial rule without firing a shot. The United Nations, beginning in 2007, has designated his birthday, October 2nd, as the International Day of Nonviolence. Nevertheless,  he did not win the Nobel Peace Prize and is recognized by the Nobel Committee as the "Missing Laureate."

In 2009 the United Nations released a one-dollar postal stamp of Mohandas Gandhi to commemorate his 140th birth anniversary. The stamp was designed by Miami-based artist Ferdie Pacheco.

 

He wasn't a rich man. He never held formal political office. He wasn't a saint or divine figure. He was just a man. An attorney who had taken a vow of poverty and celibacy. His full name was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.   

 

Gandhi transformed himself into a principled strategic non-violent activist in South Africa at the end of the 19th century struggling against racist laws and policies of the colonial authorities. An important theoretical result of his South African campaign was the development of Satyagraha. 

 

Gandhi announced on September 11, 1906 in his newspaper Indian Opinion a contest to submit names to describe this movement. The final name was the fusion of two words as explained by Gandhi: “Truth (Satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force…the Force which is born of Truth and love or nonviolence.”

He was the antithesis of Mao Zedong who took power and killed tens of millions to impose his political ideology on the Chinese. Marxist-Leninists view "truth" as something malleable and in the service of achieving power. 

Gandhi's explicit rejection of Marxist class struggle as hateful, his embrace of truth and love,
 and his critique that socialists and communists did nothing to solve problems are powerful:

The socialists and communists say, they can do nothing to bring about economic equality today. They will just carry on propaganda in its favor and to that end they believe in generating and accentuating hatred. They say, when they get control over the State, they will enforce equality. Under my plan the State will be there to carry out the will of the people, not to dictate to them or force them to do its will. I shall bring about economic equality through non-violence, by converting people to my point of view by harnessing the forces of love as against hatred. I will not wait till I have converted the whole society to my view but will straight away make a beginning with myself. It goes without saying that I cannot hope to bring about economic equality of my conception, if I am the owner of fifty motor-cars or even of ten bighas of land. For that I have to reduce myself to the level of the poorest of the poor.

Gandhi's description of the nature of a regime that sought to use violence to crush capitalism offers an excellent description of what has taken place in Marxist Leninist states that promised paradise but delivered the opposite:

It is my firm conviction that if the State suppressed capitalism by violence, it will be caught in the coils of violence itself, and will fail to develop non-violence at any time. The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence. [...] It can be easily demonstrated that destruction of the capitalist must mean destruction in the end of the worker and as no human being is so bad as to be beyond redemption, no human being is so perfect as to warrant his destroying him whom he wrongly considers to be wholly evil.

This explains in large part the hostility from communists to Mohandas Gandhi's social political agenda, and many on the Left who share the Marxist belief in class struggle.

Gandhi's approach is reflected in what is considered his greatest act of nonviolence, the 1930 Salt March, in which he wrote two letters to his British adversary in India, Viceroy Lord Irwin, who he addressed as a friend in which he outlined both his grievances, and the act of civil disobedience he planned to carry out.

The contrast between those who advocate class struggle and those who advocate nonviolent resistance could not be more stark.

The heirs of Mao Zedong, who were inspired by his violent revolutionary tradition generated great suffering: Ernesto "Che"Guevara in Cuba,  the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Black Panther Party in the United States and Shining Path guerillas in Peru are but just four of many bloody examples.

Contrast these with the heirs of Mohandas Gandhi, who were inspired by his non-violent resistance to injustice and the good they achieved:  Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States,  Steve Biko in South Africa, Abdul Ghaffar Khan in Pakistan, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas in Cuba, Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia, Lech Walesa in Poland, and Corazon Aquino in the Philippines are but just seven of many inspirational examples.

Mohandas Gandhi changed political protests and empowered millions with Satyagraha and the use of strategic nonviolence to battle powerful and violent regimes and great injustices in an effective manner that frustrates those who want to preserve or change the status quo using violence.

Today, as we witness Cubans nonviolently defying the communist dictatorship in Cuba, the legacy of Gandhi continues to shake the foundations of tyrannies around the world.

Nonviolent resistance does not mean the absence of violence. It is a courageous decision to challenge the oppressors using nonviolent means. Telling the truth and resisting a violent adversary with nonviolent means is not without risk, but it has a greater chance of success than violent resistance. Oswaldo Payá spoke truth to power on July 20, 2012, denouncing the fraudulent change of the dictatorship and offering a vision of real change in Cuba.

"The Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) and the opposition do not kill, sabotage or exclude, everyone knows that. Our motto is Liberty and Life. We do not want power for ourselves; we want peace and civil rights for all, because where there are no rights there is no justice. We seek only the power of the people, popular sovereignty, as Martin Luther King did, remember? Power to the people!... We denounce institutionalized corruption. Those who have power declare us enemies and do not compete with the opposition but rather sentence it, stigmatize it and annihilate it." ... "The peaceful, logical and fair solution that can lead to change and genuine dialogue is to recognize these rights. Enough of reactionary justifications that say that the people are not ready, that they do not want change. Do you think that fifty-four years without freedom and without rights are not enough? Others say that the people do not want rights, what an insult! Others may say that many Cubans want this government. I do not believe it, but in any case no Cuban can decide what they want in this environment. With these laws and with this system, Cubans cannot choose who they want to govern them, what system to have. We demand rights for all, without hatred or offense, with justice. Everyone knows that not even the National People's Assembly can decide freely, it also receives orders. This will change only when they are elected by the people, only then will they obey the people. That is our demand. We continue to call on all Cubans, no matter how they think or where they come from, to be part of the solution and the changes. Only the people can do that. Why say no to our rights? Why elitism? Philosophies and theologies? What oppresses us is fear, intolerance and the determination of a group to maintain absolute power. Let us abandon pretense! Let us take the path of the people, which is the path of democracy."

This vision is still relevant today, and the price Payá had to pay for speaking the truth to power and acting accordingly cost him his life and Harold Cepero two days later, on July 22, 2012, when both were murdered by agents of the Cuban dictatorship. They were killed because with their truth telling and their non-violent resistance they threatened the continuity of the dictatorship.

Nonviolence and it's culture of life is a force more powerful, and it offers an alternative to war that threatens humanity's existence with its culture of death. 

Assata Shakur, terrorist and cop killer harbored by Havana since 1984, dies at 78 in Cuba

 She never renounced political violence and terrorism as methods of struggle

 

Cuba’s Foreign Ministry announced earlier today: “On September 25, 2025, U.S. citizen Joanne Deborah Byron, ‘Assata Shakur,’ passed away in Havana, Cuba, as a result of health ailments and her advanced age.” Her full name was Joanne Deborah Byron Chesimard, and she was a terrorist who escaped justice in 1979 while serving a life term for the murder of a New Jersey State Trooper.

The People’s Forum described her in a social media post as an “Anti-racist activist & freedom fighter.”

What happened in 1973?

Troopers Werner Foerster and James Harper arrested Joanne Chesimard and two of her associates on the New Jersey Turnpike on May 2, 1973, for a motor vehicle infraction. Unbeknownst to the troopers, all three subjects were carrying semi-automatic weapons and had fake identities. Chesimard opened fire from the front passenger seat, injuring Trooper James Harper in the shoulder. Chesimard got out of the car and kept shooting at both troopers until Harper’s return fire wounded her as she fled for cover.

Trooper Harper fatally injured James Coston, the passenger in the back seat, who also fired at the troopers. Trooper Werner Foerster and Clark Squire, the driver of the vehicle, were fighting hand-to-hand. After suffering serious injuries to his right arm and abdomen, Foerster was killed by roadside execution with his own military weapon. The jammed firearm belonging to Chesimard was discovered beside Foerster.

Forty years after the cold-blooded murder of this New Jersey state trooper, the fugitive convicted of the killing, Joanne Chesimard a.k.a. Assata Shakur, was named a Most Wanted Terrorist by the FBI, apparently the first woman ever to make the list, on May 2, 2013.

Reports by NPR and the New York Times have whitewashed what happened on May 2, 1973, but the FBI account which provides both context and an outline of what took place is damning.

Chesimard was an active, prominent member of the Black Panther Party and later the Black Liberation Army, which was described as one of the most violent militant organizations of 1970s. During this same time, the Black Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the murder of several police officers throughout the United States. On May 2, 1973, Chesimard and two accomplices were stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike by Troopers James Harper and Werner Foerster for a motor vehicle violation. All three subjects possessed fictitious identification, and, unbeknownst to the troopers, all three were armed with semi-automatic handguns. From the front passenger seat, Chesimard fired the first shot, wounding Trooper James Harper in the shoulder. As Harper moved for cover, Chesimard exited the car and continued to fire at both troopers until she was wounded by Harper’s return fire.

The rear seat passenger, James Coston, also fired at the troopers and was mortally wounded by Trooper Harper. Trooper Werner Foerster was engaged in a hand-to-hand combat with the vehicle’s driver, Clark Squire. Foerster was severely wounded in his right arm and abdomen and then executed with his own service weapon on the roadside. Chesimard’s jammed handgun was found at Foerster’s side.

The three assailants returned to their car and drove down the road approximately five miles before abandoning the vehicle. Within half an hour, Chesimard was arrested by New Jersey State Troopers. Coston was found to have died near their vehicle, and Squire was found 40 hours later within a mile of their car.

Chesimard and Squire were charged, convicted, and sentenced for the murder of Trooper Werner Foerster, as well as on additional charges. Squire remains in jail. In 1979, Chesimard escaped with help from a coalition of radical, domestic terror groups who took two guards hostage during an armed assault at the facility where she was being lodged. She later fled to Cuba. Since this time, she has been classified as a federal fugitive and the subject of an unlawful flight to avoid confinement warrant.

Domestic terrorist who attacked U.S. Capitol broke Chesimard out of prison in 1979

Some more details on her escape. On November 2, 1979, Joanne Deborah Chesimard was broken out from Clinton Correctional Facility for Women by members of the Revolutionary Armed Task Force under the direction of the Black Liberation Army. Leftists over social media have celebrated the escape of this individual on the anniversary of her escape with the hashtag #AssataShakurLiberationDay.

 

 

She is not the only American woman to have links to Cuba and terrorism against the United States. Marilyn Buck engaged in terrorist actions including murdering three police in 1981 and bombing the U.S. Capitol in 1983 to protest the invasion of Grenada. Buck also helped to break Joanne Chesimard out of prison. Buck died of uterine cancer at home at age 62 on August 3, 2010. The Cuban government’s official media refer to her as an “activist and former political prisoner.”

Havana’s ideological defense of terrorism

The Castro dictatorship that harbored her continues to advocate revolutionary violence. The Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerilla by Carlos Marighella which has a chapter on terrorism and in its 1969 introduction states:

The accusation of “violence” or “terrorism” no longer has the negative meaning it used to have. It has acquired new clothing; a new color. It does not divide, it does not discredit; on the contrary, it represents a center of attraction. Today, to be “violent” or a “terrorist” is a quality that ennobles any honorable person, because it is an act worthy of a revolutionary engaged in armed struggle against the shameful military dictatorship and its atrocities.

The Cuban dictatorship published copies of the Mini-Manual in numerous languages and distributed copies worldwide in an effort to encourage urban guerrilla action and terrorism. Many on the left consider Joanne Chesimard a political prisoner because the murder of the police officer was politically motivated. However, she is not a prisoner of conscience because of the acts of violence she committed and continued to espouse until her death.

Who was Werner Foerster, the man Chesimard was found guilty of murdering?

Werner Foerster served two years and 10 months with the New Jersey State Police, and left behind his wife Rosa Charlotte Heider Foerster, and his 3 year-old son Eric. Prior to working for the police he had been a welder. Werner was just 34 years old. Both Werner and Rosa were German immigrants.

Werner Foerster with his son Eric

Today, let us remember Chesimard’s victims, and the sad fact that she evaded justice thanks to the dictatorship in Havana - that also advocated for the terrorism and political violence - leading to blood shed on American soil.

#RememberWernerFoerster

Forget Fidel Castro, Celebrate Celia Cruz

The People's Forum warmly welcomes the Cuban dictatorship’s Foreign Minister, Bruno Eduardo Rodríguez Parrilla in New York City, but should be celebrating the life and legacy of Celia Cruz instead.

Forgiving is not forgetting. Forgiving is remembering without pain.” – Celia Cruz

The centennial of Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso's birth will be celebrated on October 21, 2025. She is better known by her stage name Celia Cruz.

Celia had agency and she decided not to bend the knee to the dictatorship. She wanted to live and perform in freedom, which meant leaving Cuba after 1959.

Fidel Castro attempted to force the salsa singer to pay him homage, but Celia 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.

Communists are celebrating the centenary of the birth of Fidel Castro with a series of propaganda stunts over the next year. They should be called out and fact checked.

One of these stunts was carried out by the People's Forum in New York City on September 21, 2025, and was an effort to whitewash the racist legacy of the Cuban dictatorship.

The People’s Forum, September 21, 2025 on X

In September 1960 Fidel Castro met with Malcolm X in Harlem, and this past Sunday the People’s Forum sought to celebrate this encounter and host Bruno Rodriguez, the foreign minister of the Cuban dictatorship.

Left out of the celebration was the anti-Black legacy of the Cuban revolution that continues to reverberate to the present day in Cuba.

Castro’s communist revolution ended Black Cuban's agency in Cuba.

This was known by 1961 when Cuban black nationalist Juan René Betancourt in his essay, "Castro and the Cuban Negro", published in the NAACP publication The Crisis in 1961 detailed how it was done.

“Of the 256 Negro societies in Cuba, many have had to close their doors and others are in death agony. One can truthfully say, and this is without the slightest exaggeration, that the Negro movement in Cuba died at the hands of Sr. Fidel Castro.” … “Yet this is the man who had the cynical impudence to visit the United States in 1960 for the purpose of censuring American racial discrimination. Although this evil obviously exists in the United States, Castro is not precisely the man to offer America solutions, nor even to pass judgement.”

Between 1898 and 1959 the relationship between Black-Americans and Black-Cubans was based on their being part of an international black diaspora. This relationship ended when the Castro regime ended autonomous black civil society in 1962, and consolidated totalitarian rule.

It was replaced by Castro and his white revolutionary elite allying with Black elites in the United States, and Africa while criticizing racism in the United States.

For decades, the Castro regime expected Black Cubans to be obedient, submissive, and grateful to the white revolutionary elite, and this was reflected in official propaganda with racist tropes. 

Castro regime's publication Verde Olivo 1, no. 29 (October 1, 1960)

The elimination of Afro-Cubans from this dynamic by the new communist revolutionary elite turned racism into a political tool outside of Cuba to advance the Castro regime's communist agenda, but turned it into a taboo topic by ungrateful blacks, labeled counter-revolutionaries by the dictatorship.

Black Cubans who think for themselves are still punished today, and often with greater severity than their white counterparts.

Cuban blacks today that would have been political leaders in the 1940s and 1950s are dissidents persecuted, hunted and killed by the secret police.

Based on the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research, according to the January 13, 2020 article by EuropaPress, Cuba today has the largest per capita prison population in the world. Although official data is unavailable, it is known that a disproportionate number are Black Cubans.

On March 22, 1959 Fidel Castro declared that racism no longer existed in Cuba, to question that was to be a counter-revolutionary. The regime claimed over the next six decades that there is no racism in Cuba while poverty disproportionately impacts black Cubans with 95% having the lowest incomes compared to 58% of white Cubans, after six decades of communism, and independent black voices continue to be silenced.

An opportunity next month to counter The Peoples Forum's and Castroism's lies. 

However, next month supporters of freedom and beautiful music should commemorate Celia Cruz’s entire life and legacy through her music, and words.

Speaking up for jailed Cuban artists today, who Celia would have spoken up for their freedom if she were alive today, such as prisoners of conscience Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo Pérez and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara.