The Latin American Report # 347

The tragic end of a Cuban singer of urban music—a controversial way, if you will, to call genres like reggaeton or trap, considered for people with a not very demanding musical ear—makes me return to the hackneyed but always necessary topic of migration, or rather the need to emigrate, particularly in the Cuban case. José Manuel Carvajal, known in the artistic world as “El Taiger”—playing with the concrete pronunciation of tiger (ˈtaɪ.ɡɚ)—finally died last Thursday after days of hard battle against the consequences of a gunshot to his head.

Authorities had found him on October 4 in the back of an abandoned black van near a hospital in Miami, a city of refuge for tens of thousands of Cubans who have sought to crown the “American dream.” El Taiger was one of them, but also of the many who leave here not so much economically urged as attracted by the capitalist idea of having their car—a car to drive around the aesthetic Brickell zone—and a refrigerator full of junk food. But even in the cases of those who feel themselves economically “drowned”, they would value their context better if they knew the stories of many migrants who join them in the journey towards Mexico, the last country separating them from “lands of freedom”.

Many Latin Americans flee from violence and more precarious economic situations than those left behind by Cubans like Carvajal. Cuban artists have always been a different social class here. They have been known to charge decently, at least in the Cuban context. By the latter, I mean that, even if you get $100 for a performance, especially when the late artist peaked here, the buying power of those dollars against the emaciated Cuban peso has always been impressive. They also travel back and forth easily, a luxury here. More than a few Cuban artists have said they feel more financially strapped in the United States.

This country, Cuba, is different for many bad things, but also for many others that can prevent you from a violent death or save your peace of mind. Taiger left Cuba to lose social battles that maybe he would not have had to fight on the Island. Then we realize that neither the car nor the junk food are so decisive in the end. It is clear that on the Island there are people who die violently, but I celebrate that, for better or for worse, in very few cases those deaths include the use of firearms. We did not live the experience that for many Latinos is “normal” of closing our houses because a shooting broke out.

However, in the case of Taiger, everything indicates that it was his surrender to the scourge of drugs that stripped him of his humanity and made him bend his knee to his victimizer. There is a crisis now with drug abuse in Cuba, which is very sad for a society that had some control over it, but I doubt that Carvajal would have succumbed here the way he did in the United States. He was a victim of that society and of the tense and virulent air that is breathed in a deeply divided Cuban community, where many execrated him for not wanting to separate physically from Cuba.

You have to put philosophy and knowledge to life because sometimes both can save you. What is a Cuban doing in a van that was attacked by heavily armed Mexican soldiers last week? What is the big need to have a mother and her underage daughter kidnapped right now by a cartel in Mexico? Why is a young who lived like a prince in Cuba washing dishes in any fast food restaurant in Hialeah? A 26-year-old Cuban man set out to sea about two years ago with about 30 other people on a mission to cross the Florida Straits—one of the five most dangerous crossings globally according to the United Nations—to reach U.S. soil. They have not been heard from since, in what amounts to one of many “invisible” shipwrecks. Washington's policy toward Cuba has for years encouraged this tragedy. But what the mother of the young man buried at sea tells us in her interview with Reuters demonstrates what I have been trying to explain.

González, who would now be 28, was typical of Cuba's youth, his mother said: He loved music and dance, and drove a motorcycle cab. *But he also dreamt of a car, and a better home for his mother and father.

And this is all for our report today. I have referenced the sources dynamically in the text, and remember you can learn how and where to follow the LATAM trail news by reading my work here. Have a nice day.