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The Middle Ground
An
article
published today in the New York Times, the home of
such perceptive and honest journalists as Herbert
Matthews, Jayson Blair, and Frank Rich, brings us
the story of a group of Cuban musicians and
intellectuals that have chosen Madrid as their place
of exile. Surprisingly, the story mentions how
some of these individuals (not all of them, the
writer is sure to point out—there is at least one,
Chucho Valdés, that travels back and forth to
communist Cuba) left Cuba seeking freedom of
expression. The reason they chose Madrid
over the United States—Miami to be exact—was due to
the extreme political atmosphere they would
encounter among the Cuban exiles here.
As a matter of
fact, both communist Cuba and Miami are described as
being equally intolerable to these intellectuals.
Although at polar opposites, both locations,
according to the writer and the Cubans in the
article, force the performers and intellectuals to
make a political choice. Madrid, however, allows
them to exist and live in ambiguity.
Boris Larramendi
sums it up well with this quote:
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“In Cuba and
Miami, there is no middle ground,” said
Boris Larramendi, 37, one of the lead
musicians of Habana Abierta, a group that
has already released three albums in Madrid
and has played both in Cuba and Miami. “Here
you can feel somewhat distant from both
extremes and take certain positions that
would be difficult to maintain in Havana or
Miami, particularly in Cuba, where I know
that if I said the things I say here, I’d be
jailed.” |
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Well, Mr. Larramendi,
I am sorry to inject a little reality into your
otherwise ambiguous existence in Madrid, but when it
comes to life or death, freedom or slavery, there is
no middle ground.
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