Mick Jagger’s Vacation in Stalinist Havana An aging rocker reaches out to a regime that jailed people for listening to his music. by Humberto Fontova
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260368/mick-jaggers-vacation-stalinist-havana-humberto-fontova
A delighted Mick Jagger just visited the Stalinist nation that criminalized his music and herded many of its listeners into forced-labor camps at Soviet bayonet-point as punishment.
The visit was reported by the proud Stalinist regime’s captive (literally!) press this week.
The exact purpose of the visit was not ascertained but the Rolling Stones (renown for their tributes to black music and musicians) seem to be planning a concert sponsored by the lily-white regime that jailed and tortured the most and longest-suffering black political prisoners in the modern history of the Western hemisphere.
In fact, this Castroite jailing and torture of blacks took a nice uptick precisely during Jagger’s visit.
Back in 1985 Rolling Stones’ guitarists Keith Richards and Ron Wood proudly joined Artists United Against Apartheid and played on the ad-hoc music group’s anti-Apartheid anthem titled: “Sun City.” Sun City was a resort in segregationist South Africa during the 1980’s (but this resort wasn’t itself subject to segregationist laws.)
No matter, the very notion of performing in a venue tainted by association with a segregationist government horrified rockers like Keith Richard, Ron Wood, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, among many, many others. At the time Nelson Mandela was in a South African prison and his plight was a deafening and incessant worldwide, multi-media cause célèbre.
Based on an interview with Spain’s El Mundo, Keith Richards seems thrilled to be planning a concert sponsored by the lily-white Castro family’s Stalinist-Apartheid regime which jailed political prisoners (many black) longer than did South Africa and under much worse conditions. This Rolling Stones’ concert is certain to further enrich the racist Castro family and their lily-white military cronies who run the (mostly-black and mulatto) nation of Cuba.
During the mid-1960s rock music was frowned-upon in Castro’s Cuba as a “yankee-imperialist” subversion. Sure, here in America we had the much-dreaded and maligned Legion of Decency, Hay’s Code, Catholic League, etc. But the much-admired (by leftists) Castro regime went a bit further than finger-wagging sermons and government lobbying by a few church ladies. They even went further than Ed Sullivan issuing a few admonitions before rockers took to his stage (as happened to the very Rolling Stones in 1967).
Instead, the Castro regime simply rounded up Cuban “roqueros” (rock-music fans), blue-jean wearers, draft-dodgers, gays and other such “long-haired, hippie-types” en-masse and herded them into Soviet-designed forced-labor camps. “Work Will Make Men Out of You,” read the sign in bold letters above the gate, beside the machine gunners posted all along the watchtowers.
“These youths walk around with their transistor radios listening to imperialist music!” raved Fidel Castro in a 1968 speech. “They corrupt the morals of young girls — and destroy posters of Che! What do they think? That this is a bourgeois liberal regime? NO! There’s nothing liberal in us! We are collectivists! We are communists! There will be no Prague Spring here!”
Yes, you read right: long-haired youths were “destroying images of Che Guevara.” But how could such a thing be, you might ask.
Easy. Unlike Bernie Sanders campaign volunteers, Occupy demonstrators and Lollapalooza attendees, they were actually forced to live under Che Guevara’s handiwork. The impulse for such vandalism then became irresistible.
Actually, for a rocker, Mick Jagger is rather late in the game with his Cuba visit. When in 1979 Fidel Castro invited Stephen Stills to perform in Cuba, the famous Woodstocker could hardly contain his elation. This fervent champion of human-rights, civil rights and free-speech (indeed Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young’s last tour in 2010 was titled “The Free-Speech Tour”) not only took up the offer to perform at this “Havana-Jam,” but also composed a song in Castro’s honor titled “Cuba al Fin.”
Jazz-master Paquito‘ d Rivera, still living in Cuba at the time, recalled watching Stills on stage at Havana’s Karl Marx theatre lovingly crooning the song to the families of Castro’s Stalinist nomenklatura as if Havana-Jam were a personal performance for the Soviet Satrap himself. Within blocks of this cheeky “Havana-Jam,” (which also included fervent Human-Rights activist Kris Kristofferson along with Billy Joel) Cuban youths, black and white, languished in dungeons suffering longer prison sentences than Nelson Mandela’s. The Cubans’ crimes were attempting free speech.
“They [Castro’s Stalinist regime] invited me because they knew I was politically astute,” gloated Stephen Stills regarding the acumen and good taste of his Cuban hosts, who to this day jail Cuban youths for the crime of saying “Down with Fidel!”
“You have to give them [Cuba’s Stalinists] due respect because they have a unique form of socialism that’s very significant in the scheme of world history,” Stills said while explaining his Cuba visit.
Oh, it’s unique alright, Mr. Stills. Few 20th century regimes jailed and tortured youths en-masse for the crime of growing long hair and craving rock music.
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