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Global Hit

By The World ⋅ December 23, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment
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Correspondent Betto Arcos tells us about Carlos Varela, a Cuban musician who is lobbying Congress to change the US travel ban to allow Cuban and American artists to travel freely to each other’s countries.

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4 comments for “Global Hit”

  • Stephen Rivers

    Great story!

    For more information on Carlos Varela, here is his website:
    http://carlosvarela.com/

    And for more information on the Center for Democracy in the Americas, their website is http://www.democracyinamericas.org/

  • Arnaldo de Armas

    Once more you employ underhanded tactics to help the Castroite tyranny. Varela is an emissary, sent by the sophisticated thugs who have been brutalizing the Cuban people for more than half a century. His tired chant of “change” does not fool anybody who is not predisposed to be fooled. There are many people serving sentences of up to twenty-eight years, in Castro’s Gulag, just for daring to peacefully ask for change. The kindest thing that I can say about you is that you are TOTALLY OBLIVIOUS TO HUMAN SUFFERING!

  • David Dreyer

    The Varela story is an important story, because it suggests – or at least offers hope – that the Obama administration recognizes the value of cultural exchange. 50 years of isolating the US from Cuba has accomplished nothing. Let’s hope that recognizing the voices of artists in 2009 will lead to recognizing the aspirations of us non-artists to travel freely to Cuba in 2010 (and that all Cubans will enjoy that right as well).

    • Arnaldo de Armas

      The hacks at the Center for Democracy in America do have an agenda. The freedom of the Cuban people is not a part of it. As for David Dreyer: is he calculating, or just plain duplicitous? Is he not aware that it is the Castroite tyranny the one that has always controlled the movement of artists. Does he know that Cuban artists like Willie Chirino, Albita, Paquito D’Rivera, Arturo Sandoval, Gloria Estefan, and many others who have achieved recognition throughout the world can not perform in the country of their births, because the thugs in power in Cuba do not allow them to do so? Is he not aware that the greatest performer ever, of Cuban popular music, Celia Cruz, was prohibited to attend the funeral of her mother by Castro, himself?
      Please, Mister Dreyer, leave kidding aside. Too many people have been deeply hurt in the last fifty-one years of brutal dictatorship.

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