Let’s Change Our Tune on Cuban Ties

I’ve heard of hot music before, but this is ridiculous.

The Times reported last week that the CIA and FBI, no less, are to blame for delaying a much-anticipated concert at the Conga Room--Los Angeles’ hot new venue for Latin American music and dance--by the popular Cuban band Sierra Maestra.

It seems that two of the band’s musicians, percussionist Eduardo Rico and tres guitar player Emilio Ramos, have never been to the U.S. That means both need security clearance from our official spy agency and our official counterespionage agency before being granted visas to travel here to perform.

Of all the serious--but often silly--twists and turns that have marked U.S.-Cuba relations since Fidel Castro’s revolution came to power 40 years ago, this ranks among the most inane. Granted, it is not on a par with the CIA’s efforts to undermine Castro by using chemicals to make his beard fall out, or the great plot to kill Cuba’s Lider Maximo with exploding cigars. But the Cold War just ain’t what it used to be.

That is why Cold War-inspired rules and regulations like Washington’s economic embargo of Cuba and the more recent Helms-Burton law that aims to tighten that blockade are now being applied less against genuine security threats than to talented artists whose only sin is reminding us of the persistence of Cuban culture--in spite of Castro’s regime.

For those who’ve never heard the band, Sierra Maestra’s musicians are among the leading exponents of son, an infectious Cuban dance music. Son is so popular and fundamental a form of Latin American music that its influence can be heard in everything from Mexican boleros (soft romantic ballads) to the Puerto Rican jazz popularly known as salsa.

But, of course, you have to hear it to appreciate it. And even a cynical journalist like me is certain Washington’s national security bureaucrats are not trying to prevent U.S. citizens from hearing son in its undiluted Cuban form because they fear its subversive potential. Most likely the official explanation--that this is a simple paperwork delay--is true.

But that is all the more reason that Latin music buffs should not be the only ones troubled by this silly turn of events. This is another one of those incidents that illustrates just how outdated the estrangement between Cuba and the United States is, and why it must change sooner rather than later.

Let me rephrase that last sentence: It will change, sooner rather than later. The inevitablility of that fact became obvious to me a few weeks ago at a meeting on the future of U.S.-Cuba relations organized by the Pacific Council on International Policy, the West Coast affiliate of the Council on Foreign Relations.

An impressive array of foreign policy specialists, including former U.S. diplomats and Cuba experts from universities, and research centers across the country were in agreement that change will occur. The only big question was whether it will happen before or after Castro dies.

But the handful of Cuban Americans who were present made it equally clear that change is already well underway as they and thousands of other U.S.-born and -bred Cubanos use the few remaining loopholes in this country’s anti-Cuba laws to get dollars and medicine to family members on the island. Castro’s anti-U.S. rhetoric and Washington’s blockade nothwithstanding, those family ties have softened the attitude of the average Cuban citizen toward this country.

Perhaps more important, those persistent family ties have even helped soften the stance of hardliners in the Cuban exile community. Most will now tolerate dealing with Cuba as long as benefits flow to the average Cuban rather than Castro.

This new flexibility has also been apparent in the Clinton administration’s willingness to allow increased travel by Cuban artists to this country. Which is what made last week’s flap over Sierra Maestra so surprising and disappointing.

“I really don’t understand,” band leader Alejandro Galarraga told my colleague Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, who covers Latin music for The Times. “We’re artists, not terrorists.”

There once may have been valid security reasons for being careful about which Cuban citizens we allowed into the United States. But the passage of time, and all that has changed since the Soviet Union collapsed, has reduced Cold War imperatives to little more than bureaucratic inanities.

It’s time Washington changed the tune.