Don't wanna see Celine Dion in Vegas, you may now have an alternative. What do you think of the following New York Times article?
November 15, 2004
Members of Cuban Troupe Say They Will Seek Asylum
By NICK MADIGAN, New York Times
AS VEGAS, Nov. 14 - In what appears to be the largest mass defection of
Cuban performers to date, 44 dancers, singers and musicians, here to stage
a revue, plan to seek political asylum in the United States, troupe members
said on Sunday.
Most of the artists intend to deliver their applications for asylum
personally on Monday morning at the Federal Building here, the performers
said in interviews in an auditorium at the Stardust Resort and Casino,
where their "Havana Night Club" revue is booked for a three-month run.
Seven other members of the ensemble have already sought asylum from United
States officials in Berlin; those performers were due to travel to Las
Vegas in time for the show's opening on Tuesday.
"The only thing we regret is that our families in Cuba may suffer," Puro
Hernández, 31, the troupe's musical director, said in Spanish. "But the
Cuban government left us no choice - they put us between the sword and a
wall."
Members said they had defied Cuban orders in early summer not to seek
United States entry visas. But once the visas were granted, Cuban officials
allowed the troupe to leave Cuba. They did so, the cast members said,
because the issue had received widespread attention in the United States
and because the Castro government did not want to be seen as impeding the
flow of culture.
In addition, organizers of the show said, several influential people worked
to get permission for the trip. The actor Kevin Costner contacted the Cuban
Interests Section in Washington on the group's behalf. Siegfried & Roy
helped the ensemble land the engagement at the Stardust.
Pamela Falk, a law professor at the City University of New York, who worked
to reunite the family of Orlando Hernández, the Yankees pitcher, also
worked behind the scenes in this case, acting as the group's legal adviser,
meeting its members as they arrived from Cuba at the Cancún airport in
Mexico and escorting them to the United States.
The company's founder, Nicole Durr, who is German, said in an interview on
Sunday that Cuban officials raided the troupe's offices in Havana in August
and confiscated about $250,000 worth of instruments and equipment. Ms. Durr
said she was arrested, questioned and given 24 hours to leave Cuba. She
complied. She said the equipment had not been returned. The troupe is
independent, and receives no state support.
After many delays, about two-thirds of the cast were able to leave Cuba and
take part in an abbreviated version of their show at the Stardust here in
late August. It will open with its full complement of players on Tuesday,
after a news conference on Monday at which the defections will be announced
officially.
Despite four decades of a United States-imposed trade embargo against Cuba,
cultural exchanges between the two countries have often passed under the
radar, but they have recently received harsher scrutiny. This year, the
United States authorities denied visas to Ibrahim Ferrer, who gained
worldwide fame as a member of the Buena Vista Social Club, and the pianist
Chucho Valdés, among others.
In October 2003, five dancers with the Ballet Nacional de Cuba defected
while on tour in the United States. They followed 15 others from the
company who in the course of a year defected in Mexico, Spain and the
Dominican Republic.
Cast members of "Havana Night Club," most of whom are in their 20's and
30's, have performed in 17 countries, including Britain, Germany, Spain,
Thailand and Japan, since the troupe was founded seven years ago.
"My show is the love affair between the Spanish culture and the African
drum,'' Ms. Durr said. She said it sketched scenes from Cuban night life in
the 1940's and 50's and traced a time line up through the urban rhythms of
present-day rappers.
The performers said they decided to stay in the United States after the
Cuban authorities told them they could be jailed or at the very least not
be allowed to continue as professional artists in Cuba if they persisted in
their plan to work in Las Vegas.
Ariel Machado, 33, the group's manager, said it was never the performers'
intent to defect. "For me,'' Mr. Machado said, "it was crucial to promote
our Cuban culture here even when our government does not recognize us as an
element of Cuban culture."
With that, Mr. Machado, who is divorced, pulled out a wallet photograph of
his two children, an 8-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl. Speaking in
Spanish, like all his colleagues, he said he hoped that by living and
working in the United States he would be able to guarantee his children a
decent future.
"It's almost impossible to live apart from the people we love, but you
realize when you're out of Cuba that you have opportunities to do important
things," said Mr. Machado, who has an engineering degree. "You assume a
responsibility for your family, and you can't rest until you do everything
possible to help them."
He said that when he tried to explain his position to officials from Cuba's
Ministry of Culture, "they left me in no doubt that if I continued with
this project I ran the risk of going to jail for ignoring the government's
wishes."
Two other performers in the ensemble have told colleagues that for family
reasons they would return to Cuba after the Las Vegas engagement.
Fearing repercussions back home, Lala Montes, 28, a singer, said she had
not yet told her parents, her sister or anyone else in her family in Havana
that she was planning to defect. For the moment, she reasoned, the less
they know the better.
"It worries all of us here," Ms. Montes said. "We've all got family in
Cuba, and they shouldn't have to pay for our decisions."
― steve-k, Monday, 15 November 2004 13:15 (twenty-one years ago)