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I was living in Berlin, in Spain, and it was a very complicated stage in my life at that time.
And besides, it was winter, and the winters were very difficult for a Cuban,
it was a very complicated winter in the snow.
So I decided to come and spend the winter in Miami,
I would come for 4, 5, 3, 4, 5 months, something like that,
until the spring came, so I returned.
But when I arrived in Miami, Miami caught me, and I couldn't take it anymore,
until today.
When I arrived in Miami, I had to do everything.
I had to work at The Handyman, I had to work with a roof, with a roof,
with a factory, I had to do everything, until I found the music,
I found the way to the music, and from there I never had to do anything else.
I have been in my group for more than 10 years, I have a group,
with whom I work, and with whom I move to all the places.
I go around, here in the United States, I was in the United States,
I played Puerto Rico, I played for Amaz, I went out there,
and apart from several places in the United States, also in Los Angeles,
we were in South Carolina, California, we were in several places,
with the band.
In Cuba, I studied pedagogical, but I presented myself in a program,
it was a program for beginners to sing, try, and I won one of the awards,
and immediately I left everything, and I dedicated myself to making music.
That's what I do in Cuba, I sing, I do many tours, television,
theater, I do everything.
In Miami we are the Cubans, we have a lot of influences,
but Miami is a very different city.
In Miami right now there are a lot of Colombians, there are a lot of Venezuelans,
there are a lot of people from Latin America, from Central America,
who also have their own spaces.
But the Cuban music, yes, there are a lot of places here,
but in Miami we are the Cubans, we are the Cubans.
This exists in very few places in Miami with this characteristic.
Here people are very sociable, we are compatriots, we come here,
we make pietas, my parents are here, we share things,
we make coffee, it's all very tasty.
There is a lot of energy here, very good energy.
Cuba and Miami, yes, of course, have a lot to do with my work.
My work is, it has a very big reference and a link with my life.
In today's art, if you are in a region where it is not cool,
that it is so self-referential to the problems in my work,
my work is still there.
And then almost all my work is present,
the idea of displacement,
the displacement and feeling all the time in a place
making references to the other.
I started to study art for 14 years.
I was interested in the art art practice,
I had the ability to draw and paint,
and I entered school partly because it was one of the ways
to develop the military service system and things like that.
But here in English, nobody practices,
and if you see yourself in the street, a young person,
who attends a store, and that person sees that you are speaking English a little badly,
and then you start speaking Spanish and you stay like this,
you can never practice.
That is perhaps the worst thing in the city.
English teachers tell you, if you want to learn English, go.
Up there, two, a few miles to the north already,
but Miami is quite Spanish.
It has been interesting because it has changed a lot.
When I arrived here, in Miami art was being produced,
it was like finding a new path,
and it had started to internationalize,
but it was mainly Latin American art in general,
not Cuban art or North American art,
not Latin American art.
And Miami was, and I think it continues to be,
very important with respect to Latin American art.
But what happens?
That changed in a moment.
And that art of Latin American,
even though it continues to pass through this city,
the city is becoming an important place,
and where it has to come from.
But it is already an international point.
I have been a fan of Gustavo's work for a very long time.
We actually have pieces of his that we acquired
that were left in Cuba,
and so I knew his work well before I met him.
And he's really been an incredibly important figure
in the history of Cuban art.
The idea of the gallery came when we decided to open
our first gallery in Texas.
And what we tried to do was to show a North American artist
together with a Latin American artist,
and show the dialogue between artists
from different parts of the Americas.
Uprooted Transmigrations is an exhibition
that deals with the concept of exile and forced migration.
So a lot of it is pieces from primarily Cuban artists,
both Cuban artists living and working in Cuba,
as well as those living and working here,
and how they all approach the idea of exile
and being forced out of a country.
It's after Havana, the most populated city
in Cuba, out of Cuba.
It's a street, but it's a street that's impossible.
It's a street that you can't use.
So it's a street that you can't use
because of all the ways you're looking for it.
It's a way of interrogation,
in the sense that even if you throw yourself at it,
you won't find what you're looking for.
So maybe you start thinking,
where are you, and try to achieve a change in your life.
If I had to make a statement about the difference
between Cuban artists living here
as opposed to those in Cuba,
I think that the ones in Cuba focus very much
on the concept of being Cuban,
while the ones here have a little bit more
of an international approach,
both with their aesthetic and with intellectually
but they're focusing on.
It's a street that you can't use.
It's a street that you can't use.
Cuba's cigar is pretty originated.
It's more with when Christopher Columbus went to Cuba
in the 1400s and the Indian people,
the Tiano Indians used to smoke the cigar,
they rolled the leaves up and smoked the cigar
and they gave it as gifts and then throughout the centuries
they debunked the art of making the cigar the right way.
It really started in Cuba in the 1800s.
The first factory was 1845, H-Opman Cigars.
And then from that point I added more brands, so now.
We have a lot of special brands like the Pajón brand,
it's one of the most famous cigar brands in the world.
There are so many, but we sell the best of everything here.
We cannot sell Cuban cigars in the United States by law
because we have a Cuban in embargo, so we cannot sell.
The Pajón cigars, they're from Nicaragua.
Nicaragua makes probably the best cigars with Cuba.
Like these cigars here are 10 years old.
Cigars are a lot like wine or like a cognac.
The more you age, the better they are.
We are a little home of Cuba in Miami, in the Little Havana.
Each table gives you a flavor of Cuba,
each dishes gives you a flavor of Cuba
and the way that we cook is the way that they cook in Cuba.
For Cuban culture we are not salad, vegetables,
we are really culture of meat, pork, food, chicken.
Red meat, a lot.
Maybe lettuce and tomatoes some, but not that much.
Unfortunately, in 1959 everybody was out of the business in Cuba
and stuff like that, and we immigrated to the United States.
Since then, my uncle first started the business here
and in 1980 I came into the business
and I kept working at the restaurant.
Especially Cubans come over and a lot of tourists, a lot of Europeans
come over here to taste our food and our flavor.
And a lot of American people come over from different parts of the country.
The Cuban refugees began to come to Miami
immediately when Castro took the power in 1959.
Then began the exodus in January.
In 1959 it continued.
The people came with 10 cents in pocket to make a call from the airport.
Something like that.
And programs were established to help the Cubans.
The Cuban refugee center, Pedro Pan group, 14,000 kids.
They said the kids belonged to the state, not to the family,
not to the parents, like in Germany.
And the parents were, you know, no, my kids, I don't want my kids.
You know, sent to the farm and be educated.
At the beginning, of course, the people supported Elwin.
He was in Sierra Maestra because he said that he was going to file
for the freedom in Cuba against the dictatorship, blah, blah, blah.
All this kind of thing that you know that he said.
That he's a liar and he never did what he says that he was going to do.
When he took the power, he did the revolution in this way.
He didn't attack.
He didn't say immediately.
I am a communist.
I have been a communist and I will continue as a communist.
He said that in a speech that he pronounced in 1961 in Havana.
He said those words.
But he didn't say that when he was in Sierra Maestra.
He started to talk with the people in TV almost every day and for hours and hours.
Telling that the business of all these foreign people should be in the hands of the government
or all the Cubans because blah, blah, blah.
And then all the Cubans are like, oh, well, that's true, you know.
And then that is the way that began the revolution.
First he attacked the business that were not owned only by Cubans.
And then the people left because the government wanted to be involved and part of this business
and so on.
And then they said, better go.
Better go and they left.
He took all the private business, the big one.
After that he began a small business, finished with the small business the same.
Then he began with the professionals.
Doctors, lawyers, accountants, teachers, engineers, everybody, the professionals.
The Cuban people always, we have a very good relationship with the Americans.
And then we have, we come here for vacation.
We come here for shopping.
Miami was not a city at that time, 1959.
There were some residents or millionaires from the north that had houses here that used to come here for the wintertime.
Here, I believe, at the end of the 1960s, we were 600,000 Cubans here in Florida.
And here, South Florida.
But sometimes life saves us a letter without giving an explanation.
It turns into wings, dreams and despair.
And it does not do what it thought.
Look, in part this is actually made for Cubans or Latinos.
But mostly for Cubans who are part of the domain.
And this is a domain that goes mostly, as I told you, from Cubans, from Die Ficha.
You have friends here, you visit a lot of political prisoners, government officials from Cuba.
Well, if it is a terrible government, a government that really already has, I mean, it was never good, but it is worse.
And there is no opportunity for Cubans.
None.
And the Cubans that are doing it, they are going.
They have lost a lot of valuable people, artists, professionals, doctors, all of them.
We have a dictatorial government over there instead of a legitimate government.
It's not a country in the world that has been 52 years on the government.
It is very bad the lack of hope that exists within the Cuban nation.
And there are no ways, no ways to change anything democratically.
The ways are all truncated.
There is no government, no freedom to work, no government.
If you are with the government, you have no possibility.
I mean, something completely crazy, absurd, some old men there who are ruling there,
who do not want to go, and then they are doing it.
They are making impossible life, actually.
The elections that take place in Cuba are sent from above.
And in that way, there can never be a change.
There will never be a change in the country.
I don't know what happened in the miracle that happened in Eastern Europe, where you did not expect it either.
That happened.
But it is a very spontaneous phenomenon.
It is very difficult to predict.
I hope it will happen tomorrow.
But it is very difficult.
And I never expected to go back unless the Castro regime is going out of Cuba.
I mean, I think that it is kind of sadness you have to have permission on your country, your own country,
to go back to visit your relatives.
It is disrespectful.
I never, for years, saw that I was going to come to live here because of this problem.
Not like other countries that come here because they need to work in a better position or whatever.
No.
We came here because of political problems.
If not, the Cuban population doesn't come in this way.
Everything seems to indicate that the first groups that came in the 1960s, yes, they felt bad.
It is the relationship with the other.
With the other that speaks your language, with the other that is different from you physically.
And at that time there were many ugly stories of intolerance, it is very famous that there were letters that they said in the rental apartments that they said neither Cuban, nor black, nor Cuban, nor Perot.
No black, no Cuban, no Perot.
And that is hard.
But it has been changing.
Hard workers, we work very hard and we have a lot of business here, a lot of successful people.
And I think it would be great because if everything, if everything, Cuba would change, everything and everything would be a real exchange.
We could not be able to go to play there, or to stay here.
For Cuba, of course, my first wish would be that it was a normal nation.
It is what I would like the most, that it could be a country that works, that has the possibility of changing things, which is the most important.
That would be an illusion, an illusion that I have.
That would be an illusion, more linear that I have.
To be able to play, to be able to play in Cuba.
We would like to have freedom for Cuba, freedom to speak, freedom to think.
Everything would be okay, we would be free to do what we want in life like everybody else.
Thank you.
