Goodbye Marx: Cuba welcomes Satanic Majesties – El Universal (Venezuela)

Havana .- You have to rub your eyes to believe it: Cuba, the only communist country in the Americas, will receive in March to the British band Rolling Stones, one of the “demons” against which he fought for decades .

Since Cuba began the rapprochement with the United States in 2014, the press has been used ad nauseum historical adjective to describe the slow process of political and economic openness in the Caribbean country, which is still far from meeting expectations their stressed-out after years of restrictions. But perhaps the truly historic recently have consolidated this month, at least for observers, when Barack Obama lands in Havana on March 21.

Three days after that visit, on March 25, will perform at Havana in a free concert, the Rolling Stones, whose music was banned by the communist government in the early sixties.

The veto included the Rolling Stones, but he was open to any musical genre in English. “Cuba marginalizing the rock because rock came from the United States and that country had a hostile attitude toward the island. It was (a veto) to the musical genre as such,” he told AFP Guillermo Vilar, ‘Guille’, director of one of radio programs on the most listened gender in Havana and artistic director of bar Yellow Submarine.

there was never a decree explicitly prohibiting the rock in English, but Cubans recall that at that time listened to the Beatles or the Rolling Stones in the privacy of the rooms in cassettes circulating as if they were contraband, reported AFP.

in the same discreet censorship ebbed and in 2000, then-President Fidel Castro, retired of power by disease six years later, he unveiled a statue of John Lennon in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana.

Castro publicly apologized censorship arguing that for a long time did not know the music of the Beatles because of their responsibilities at the forefront of the fight against “the empire.” “I regret very sorry not known before,” said the Cuban leader, now nearly 90 years, referring to Lennon.

In 2007 the Cuban Rock Agency, a government agency that promotes gender was opened, and today on the island there is also a theater, the Maxim Rock, reserved for local bands, over a hundred.

The band Mick Jagger, who made a private visit to Cuba last October, also looks particularly expectation presentation at the Coliseum Sports City of Havana, which will crown its Latin America Olé Tour .

“We acted in many special places during our long career, but this show in Havana will be a milestone for us,” said his “Satanic Majesties” in a statement.

” one might wonder to what extent we will not turn into a theme park of communism, where people go to see sights of the distant past and where we, to have tourists, we have to disguise ourselves, “said the director Eduardo del Llano.