Cuban punk rockers tear it up at Churchill's

 "It's only rock n roll but it bothers you." - Porno para Ricardo

Porno para Ricardo tearing it up at Churchill's on Saturday night (March 5, 2015)

Cuba's best known punk rock band, Porno para Ricardo, played a blistering set at Churchill's last night in Miami's punk Mecca. They maybe a Havana based band but their anarchic spirit and punk rock attitude fit right in with this South Florida landmark which has hosted everyone from Marilyn Manson and Social Distortion to Dick Dale and Agent Orange.

Porno para Ricardo founded in Cuba has been a fixture there in the music scene since 1998. The lead singer Gorki Águila has paid the price for his critical lyrics being sentenced to four years in prison in 2003 on trumped up charges and got out in 2007. Only to face one year later the charge of "dangerousness" with the potential for another four year prison sentence, but the mobilization of punk rockers and human rights activists around the world and in Cuba succeeded in saving him from another prison sentence in 2008.

However short term arrests, threats and the occasional beating by the secret police still continue. For example in 2015, according to the Danish human rights NGO, Freemuse, Gorki was arrested on three occasions and in one of them beaten up by Castro's agents for demanding the freedom of Cuban artist Daniel Maldonado "El Sexto" who had been jailed for 10 months beginning in December of 2014 for trying carry out a performance art piece critical of the Cuban dictatorship. He was freed in October of 2015 and on March 2, 2016 kicked off an exhibition of his art work on South Beach with his performance art piece and Porno para Ricardo performing a set of their music. However, the concert in Churchills was special because for the first time the entire band (Gorki Águila, Ciro Díaz, Lia Villares, and Renay Kairus) was able to play together outside of Cuba.

If you missed this great performance you have one more chance today at 6pm in Little Havana at Cubaocho Museum and Peforming Arts Center where they will be playing. The band returns to Cuba later this week.

Porno para Ricardo plays Cubaocho Museum and Performing Arts Center (1465 SW 8th Street, Miami FL 33135) today, Sunday, March 6, 2016 at 6:00pm

More Cuban dissidents kept out of public view

BBC mentioned some but left other prominent Cuban dissidents out

This blog entry aims to highlight a few more members of the Cuban democratic opposition as well as post Amnesty International's new video on Freedom of Expression in Cuba:



The video features punk rockers Gorki Aguila and Ciro Diaz of Porno para Ricardo; blogger Yoani Sanchez; and recently released from 11 months in prison and now under house arrest prisoner of conscience Dr. Darsi Ferrer. All of them are in the above video calling for freedom, democracy and human rights.

Dr. Óscar Elías Biscet González

"To love one's neighbor is also to love one's enemy. Although in reality that qualifier-"enemy" does not exist in my vocabulary. I recognize that I only have adversaries and I have acquired the capacity to love them because in this way we do away with violence, wrath, vengeance, hatred and substitute them with justice and forgiveness."
- Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet Gonzalez, upon completing 40 day fast in 1999 to protest 40 years of dictatorship

Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, has been recognized by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience and is serving an unjust prison sentence and a month before his last detention he had just finished serving a three year prison sentence for holding a press conference in 1999.

Dr. Biscet organized teach-ins on nonviolence and human rights; distributed copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and organized a 40-day fast in 1999. He is a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Although detained since December 2002 he was included in the group of 75 activists rounded up and arrested in March 2003, during what became known as the Black Spring and sentenced to 25 years in prison. A documentary on his life, Oscar's Cuba, is currently being screened in film festivals around the world.

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas

"There are still those who perpetuate the myth that the exercising of political and civil rights is an alternative to a society’s ability to achieve social justice and development. They are not mutually exclusive. The absence of any civil and political rights in Cuba has had serious consequences such as inequality, the poverty of the majority and privileges of a minority and the deterioration of certain services, even though these were conceived as a positive system to benefit to the people."

- Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, Strasbourg, France upon accepting EU's Sakharov Prize 2002

Oswaldo Payá a founding member of the Christian Liberation Movement in 1988. In 1997, Payá and other members of the Christian Liberation Movement collected hundreds of signatures in support of their candidacy to the National Assembly. It was the first time that citizens had presented themselves as candidates with popular support and without the government’s backing; however, the electoral commission did not accept their candidacies.

In 1998, together with other members of the Christian Liberation Movement Payá founded the Varela Project and with the coalition “All United” collected more than 25,000 signatures from Cubans and presented them to the Cuban National Assembly for democratic changes via a national referendum. However, the National Assembly has ignored this constitutional request. In October 2002 Oswaldo Payá was awarded the European Union’s Sakharov Prize.

Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez"

"We are defending the right of all Cubans to be free through their own efforts, because we must not forget that the tragedy of Cuba is in the daily confrontation of the people with the dictatorship that oppresses them."

-Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez" Cuba, June 2010

Jorge Luis Garcia Perez “Antunez spent 17 years as a political prisoner due to his nonviolent advocacy for democracy in Cuba. He was released in 2007 having served his full sentence. He and his wife, Iris Perez Aguilera have been detained, harassed, spat upon and beaten innumerable times since his release from prison. He has a blog, “Ni me callo, ni me voy,” (“I won’t shut up, I won’t leave”) and is on twitter. He is organizing a nationwide civic resistance coalition despite the dictatorship’s repression.

Juan Carlos González Leiva

"I'm not afraid at all. These people threaten that they are going to enter my home, but they will have to take me by force," he states. "If I withstood 26 months in prison under daily torture by Cuban military officials, harassed, beaten up, and poisoned by chemical substances from which I still suffer, then I will withstand inside my house for 26 months more."

- Juan Carlos González Leiva Cuba, January 2006

Lawyer Juan Carlos González Leiva, who is President of the Cuban Foundation for Human Rights (Fundación Cubana de Derechos Humanos), and is blind has been subjected to a number of so-called "acts of repudiation" ("acto de repudio"), gatherings of government supporters outside the homes of dissidents and activists, which are often orchestrated by the authorities.

Amnesty International believes that these "acts of repudiation" could amount to psychological torture. Despite that he has organized a nationwide network of human rights activists called the Council of Human Rights Rapporteurs of Cuba and successfully presented a report on Cuba’s human rights situation that was taken into consideration during Cuba’s first Universal Periodic Review at the United Nations Human Rights Council

This is just a small sampling, and like the BBC news article that inspired this blog entry, there are many other worthy activists that deserve to be highlighted both in and out of Cuban prisons. There are also images of Cubans taking to the streets, even an individual protest has an impact.

In the video below posted on Cuban blogger Claudia Cadelo's website Juan Juan Almeida, who went on hunger strike on June 15, 2010 demanding the right to leave Cuba to obtain medical treatment not available in the island, takes to the street at 23 and L in Havana protesting his situation and is met by Cuban state security.

Damas de Blanco: Un documental del Ciro Díaz y Claudio Fuentes

Damas de Blanco
Un documental del Ciro Díaz y Claudio Fuentes
Música: Eric Sánchez

This short documentary has a cinema verite quality which interviews the Ladies in White in the midst of their weekly walk to Santa Rita Church in which they call for their loved one's freedom from unjust imprisonment. Clocking in at 10 minutes 54 seconds there is no fluff or padding but direct interviews in real time as the action takes place, and filming the surrounding environment.

Although not a political film but rather a human rights film it documents a slice of life and is worthy of a larger audience.