(Fidel Castro with his minstrel show’s late founder Compay Segundo)From CNN today: “For the first time in a half century, a musical act based in Cuba will play at the White House this week, a further sign of the thawing relations between the two former Cold War adversaries.
The Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club will perform at a White House reception in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month on Thursday.
President Barack Obama will deliver remarks at Thursday’s reception, which will also mark the 25th anniversary of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics, a White House official said.
The Cuban ambassador to the U.S. has also been invited to attend the event, the official added.”
Raul Castro with his minstrel show’s Omara Portuondo
Song in tribute to Che Guevara performed by the mostly black Buena Vista Social Club. Among the lyrics:
“We learned to love you
since the historical height
Your revolutionary love
drives you to a new enterprise
where they wait for the firmness
of your liberating arm.”
“The Negro is indolent and spends his money on frivolities and drink; the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent…The Negro has maintained his racial purity by his well known habit of avoiding baths.”(Che Guevara, Motorcycle Diaries)
Well, I’m offended. When is Obama going to invite Mariela’s drag queens to the White House? I smell discrimination here. I definitely smell something foul, and I mean rancid. But hey, enjoy the continued humiliation orgy, and rest assured there’s more to come.
The Portuondo crone, who once dismissively feigned ignorance of Celia Cruz, was no better than B-list material before Castro and would never have risen higher in a free Cuba–the competition would have been too stiff. However, like so many other second-rate performers, writers and so forth, she benefited from the vacuum created by the exodus of greater talent provoked by the “revolution,” and more especially, from the fact that politics always trumped talent in Castrogonia.
In other words, it was much less about how good you were than about how well you served Castro, Inc. In that respect, Portuondo was very good indeed, and being black was a bonus for foreign consumption, so she was duly rewarded. This was a very common occurrence, far more common than someone with serious talent selling out to the Castro regime, such as the case of Alicia Alonso. Thus, by and large, so-called Cuban culture became debased and degraded by people whose “merits” were more political than artistic, as is typical of all totalitarian systems in which prominence is not possible without serving the state–and there are always plenty of people willing to buy success (of sorts) at that price.
Castro, Inc., of course, never cared about the arts for their own sake, only as tools for enhancement and promotion of the regime. The Castro people are vulgarians as well as inveterate opportunists, and Fidel and Raúl came from anything but a cultured household; their family was essentially white trash with money. You’d better believe that Massah Castro wouldn’t deign to kiss Portuondo’s hand if she weren’t a VERY good lackey–otherwise, she’d be no more than “una negra vieja” to him, which I expect is how he really sees her, anyway. I must say, though, that she’s pushing the Aunt Jemima thing herself, but the “look” she’s sporting certainly feeds into a stereotype probably near and dear to the ruling white gerontocracy.