Since last Saturday, June 14 one can read an extensive challenge to the continuity of the Revolution posted on Manolin’s official site in facebook. Since my return from Cuba on Sunday 15 is constantly repeated in Miami; on the radio, television and websites.

It had to be Manolin, Manolin again, who wanted to be a psychiatrist, devoted himself to salsa music and now, almost aged 50, apparently wants to be a politician.

I knew from his representative Marcos Ayala that Manolin was doing well and about to get his ID as a resident citizen in his country. Manolin was very happy to be in Cuba.

As it’s known, houses are freely available in Cuba’s market, not at low prices but they are for sale there, and Ayala told me that Manolin could find a good offer and bought an excellent house for some 80,000 Euros in the exclusive Miramar neighborhood, which immediately rose to 250,000. He did a good deal tripling the investment in less than two months.

Moreover, he started to perform and also feel the warmth of his public. A very specific public, salsa-loving people, rather from the pre-rap and pre-reggaeton time, who were very young in the early 90s, when he began to gain fame on the island. He reunited with that public at the beginning of 2014 and they asked him, of course, for numbers from twenty years ago, such as “Una aventura loca”, which was a hit in 1994 and famous “La bola” or “Arriba de la bola” that was a hit in 1996.

But should Juan Formell was, is and will be Juan Formell in the history of Cuban popular music said shortly before his death that Van Van was reinventing itself and had incorporated a reggaeton theme in the last album, Manolin must know that he has reunited with a changed public, who learned how to dance without his music and dance other things, and that regaining the level of his 1990 Havana fame isn’t something he could achieve by the day.

Although in Cuba not everybody dances with Manolin’s music today, he knows they do love him. It’s in Miami where he is not welcomed and will never be loved.

Let’s speak out; Manolin was never a good singer nor a great musician. He was rather a social communication phenomenon. Nobody denies he captivated the Cuban public from part of the 90s with simple choruses and an easy-to-dance and romantic salsa, which touched the picaresque thing. It was not an achievement of his own, of course, because he had the support of maestros established in the panorama of Cuban popular music like David Calzado and Jose Luis Cortes, El Tosco, who was also the one who baptized him under the trade name of “El médico de la salsa” (The Doctor of Salsa); and additionally with very excellent academy musicians in his band.

When he leaves Cuba everything messes up, as new stars continue emerging on the island, in the market that he abandoned. That country is a power of artists and not to produce talents. I often go to Cuba, try to be aware, listen to and collect Cuban music, and always get amazed about the number of new names on billboard.

Manolín should worry less about the youth of Cuban politicians and understand his own status as “mature”, “aged” musician, to say the least, in the panorama of contemporary Cuban music.

After his failure in Miami, Manolín went to Spain, where he spoke about the horrors he lived in Miami; then returned to Cuba as I told you, and now he has devoted himself to send messages in the social networks to Cuban rulers. And not to anyone, they’re addressed to Fidel, Raul and all the active members in the government of the Centenary Generation that made the Revolution.

I cannot say this is relevant, but all anti-Cuba media outlets are reporting it; particularly ill-named Radio and TV Marti and Marti News, which is a station of the U.S. government, a federal agency.

This last outlet has called Manolin’s message a sort of ‘song’ addressed to the “ruling leadership” to get out of the way. Manolin, ignoring the cadres renewal that takes place at all levels on the island, says the historical leadership of the Cuban Revolution is trying “to give a shot in the temple to the Cuban nation”.

What I want to clarify Manolin is that the generation he disqualifies, the historical generation of the Revolution, represents the patricians of current Cuba.

What really happens is as Formell said once he arrived in Miami, Manolin’s pitches are no longer fast. He arrived in Cuba and gave a first concert at La Cecilia that worked out because it was his first performance. What happens now? Well, he’s noticing that the full house of his first performance back in Cuba hasn’t been repeated again; as well as the successes of other artists such as Gente de Zona with Enrique Iglesias, which sent him to the bench a while ago; and unstoppable Laritza Bacallao. He wants to get there, but feels he can’t; or that there’s something hindering it. And he finds the cause of his failure in political matters, which in turn he wants to solve using social networks to ask for the immediate resignation of the historical leadership of the Revolution at its highest level. Moreover, I remind him that Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro hasn’t ruled for eight years, though Cubans can never renounce to his practical and theoretical legacy because that would be a suicide. Wherever Cuba goes, it must go with Fidel.

Cubasi Translation Staff