7 Dancers Abandon Cuban Ballet for USA
HAVANA TIMES — A group of seven dancers from the National Ballet of Cuba left the prestigious company in the middle of last March in Mexico, en route to the United States, reported the Café Fuerte website on Tuesday.
Six of the artists, who had been touring Mexico with the famous dance troupe, have already crossed the border and are in Miami, where they requested “political asylum” from US authorities.
“We were determined to find a better artistic life and economic well-being for our families,” said dancer Annie Ruiz Diaz, 24, who confessed that the group planned their escape to the US while in Cuba.
This new departure comes a month after 21 members of the legendary Los Guaracheros de Regla carnival dance revue slipped away from their company while in Mexico to also head for the United States.
As usual in such cases, the Cuban media does not report when artists or athletes decide to seek their fortune elsewhere.
Mao was a psychopathic killer. He slaughtered millions and starved to death tends of millions. He enjoyed watching films of his enemies being tortured. Without a doubt, Mao was the single worst monster in human history, surpassing even Hitler in brutality.
As for Castro, what kind of man gives 8 hour long speeches? A narcissist. His narcissism is well documented and described by dozens of people who have had to deal with him.
You may be somewhat correct, Griffin, with regard to Stalin, Pol Pot, and Kim. But you are incorrect about Lenin, Mao and the Castro brothers. These men are patriots of the highest order, and they have changed the world for the better. Their main fault is that they bought into the stupidity of state monopoly as the fundamental principle of socialist economy.
The main “evidence” that bankers injected the state monopoly deviation into the socialist movement is derivative. This stupid and pernicious idea is precisely what the monopoly bankers needed, in order to destroy the movement from within. And so, the bottom line is that Marxism is a counter-transformationary ideology and program, and is now the primary tool of the monopoly banks for keeping the socialist Left chasing its own tail.
Mr Patterson, what makes you think these dancers were born into elite homes in Vedado and Miramar and had easy access to flat screens and laptops???? They may have acquired a flat screen and a computer in their travels abroad, painfully saving on their per diem. Actually, they may have been the only reason why their parents and siblings ever enjoyed such fancy appliances in their homes. Many ballet dancers in Cuba and certainly many ballet students come from a humble or average background. The Cuban ballet schools are free, you know? And though everything costs something (resources, transportation, special diets, etc) most Cuban children with enough physical conditions may enter a ballet school regardless of their family’s economic and social status. I am not saying there isn’t any ‘sociolismo’ in this context, but it is not common currency. I went to art school in Cuba, in a province, and I met many ballet students; they were mostly guajiritos and guajiritas without a penny and made it at least to the ENA (National School of Art) in Havana.
Everything else you say is kind of true, factually, but so trite in form, are you not bored of the sound of your own angry commonplace?
There is no evidence that bankers injected the idea into Marxism. Marx and Engels were quite capable of coming up with stupid ideas on their own.
The aural of infalability reflected Karl Marx’s narcissism, a psychological defect shared by so many of their followers. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro and the Kim’s of North Korea all exhibit that same dysfunctional personality trait. Hence the personality cults their regimes established, the infalability and their need for absolute control of every aspect of human life.
Yes, of course, Griffin, it is by design. You now apparently agree with what I’ve argued, over and over, that the systemic “design” is at fault.
What you–and perhaps your tag-team co-thinker–have argued, over and over, is that it all comes from the power-lust of the “evil” Castros.
You ridiculed me previously for believing that Marxism was injected into the socialist movement by ideological agents of the monopoly banks, in order to discredit and destroy the movement from within. Yet, all experience corroborates my view.
What better way to destroy socialism than to redefine original, private property-based, cooperative socialism as state monopoly ownership–a miserable, stupid formula which cannot possibly work!
And what better way to solidify that stupid formula than to create an aura of infallibility around the bourgeois phony Karl Marx.
Why? Because they like it that way and anybody who rocks the boat ends up in prison.
The Cuban system is not an accident, it is what it is by design.
These “defections” demonstrate once again that unscientific Marxism is utterly bankrupt as an ideology of liberation, and that state monopoly ownership is an erroneous strategic program for socialist construction.
The only thing blocking authentic, prosperous, democratic socialism in Cuba is the Marxist cult of personality within the leadership party. Why won’t the comrades of the PCC wake up?
These young people by definition were among the elite. To dance for the National Ballet in Cuba let alone be permitted to travel and perform is a priviledge enjoyed by a tiny fraction of the population. It’s one thing when an unemployed ex-convict will no options left builds a raft from the syrofoam of refrigerator packing and risks becoming shark food to cross the Florida straits. But when the sons and daughters of the priviledged class decide to leave behind their laptops and flatscreen TVs, to leave their family home in El Vedado or Miramar, it really makes you wonder how little hope for the future still remains among the youth. Despite our high unemployment, savage capitalism, street crime, and governmental hypocrisy (did I miss anything Luis?), our best and brightest are still willing to cast their lots here and not flee for the socialist paradise of ‘free’ education, ‘free’ heath care, and safe streets to be found in Castroland. Go figure.
I danced for the scribe and the Pharisee,
But they would not dance and they would not follow me;
I danced for the fishermen, for James and John;
They came to me and the dance went on.