The music icon
The Embassy of the United States in Cuba honors and celebrates Celia Cruz being featured on the U.S. quarter on their X account.
On July 16, 2003, Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso died at the age of 77 from a protracted illness. Millions of fans throughout the world mourned her demise. Large Cuban expatriate communities in Miami, Florida and Hoboken, New Jersey were especially devastated. She was best known as Celia Cruz, the Queen of Salsa.
First encounter with the Cuban dictator
Fidel Castro attempted to force the salsa singer to pay him homage in the first months of the Revolution, but she refused. Salserísimo Perú, a Youtube site founded by three Peruvian journalists to disseminate knowledge on salsa and tropical music, provides the following account of Celia Cruz’s first “encounter” with Fidel Castro.
“In the early months of 1959, Celia Cruz was hired to sing with a pianist at the house of the Cuban businessman Miguel Angel Quevedo. Quevedo owned the magazine Bohemia, the most influential in Cuba and who had supported the revolution in the last few years. The guerrilla movement with a certain Fidel Castro in front proclaimed in Santiago the beginning of the revolution. At that moment Celia enjoyed great popularity for “Yebero Moderno”, “Tu voz” and “Burundanga” songs she had recorded with the Sonora Matancera. As a guest artist of Rogelio Martinez’s group the Guarachera (Celia) was free to accept other contracts as a soloist. This allowed her to show her talent on different radio stations in Havana, and perform in Mexico, Venezuela, and Peru.
Communists were consolidating control
Since the regime of Fidel took power, it had begun to systematically seize businesses, radio and television stations. [Fidel Castro speaking: ‘The revolution was something like a hope and that joy, possibly, prevented us from thinking all that we still had to do.’ For the Guarechera, Fidel was ending free expression and the arts in her country. The night of the show in the home of Quevedo, Celia was singing standing next to the pianist, when suddenly the guests started to run to the front door of the house. Fidel Castro had arrived. Neither she nor the pianist moved and continued singing. Suddenly, Quevedo approached Celia and told her that Fidel wanted to meet her because in his guerrilla days, when he cleaned his rifle he was listening to Burundanga. Celia replied that she had been hired to sing next to the piano, and that was her place. If Fidel wanted to meet her, he would have to come to her. But the commandant did not do that.”
Fidel Castro barred Celia Cruz from visiting her dying mother
Celia Cruz was forced to leave Cuba on July 15, 1960, because she refused to bend to the new ruler and wanted to continue living her life as a free artist. In 1962, when her mother became ill, she attempted to see her, but was denied entry by Fidel Castro. Celia couldn’t attend her mother’s burial due to the dictatorship’s restrictions. Because she was not an enthusiastic supporter of the dictatorship, her music was censored in Cuba.
In 1994 during Concert of the Americas at the Summit of the Americas in Miami, Celia sang Guantanamera and in the midst of the song made a special plea to the heads of state gathered there: “Señores presidentes por favor en nombre de mis compatriotas, no sigan ayudando a Fidel Castro para que se vaya y deja una Cuba libre del comunismo. Muchas gracias. Muchas gracias, Perdone.” [ “Dear presidents, please, on behalf of my compatriots, stop helping Fidel Castro so that he departs and leaves a Cuba free of communism. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Forgive me.”]
On August 7th, the U.S. Mint honored the “Queen of Salsa” Celia Cruz a cultural icon in an X post..
The human rights icon
A second Cuban icon was also honored. Today, the Argentine NGO Cultura Democratica on X remembered that “On August 8, 2006, Gustavo Arcos Bergnes, President of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights (CCPDH) and the Cuban Hispanic Foundation, died in Havana.”
His birthplace was Caibarién, a small village in central Cuba. He studied diplomatic law at the University of Havana when he was a young man. However, on March 10, 1952, Fulgencio Batista’s coup interrupted his academic career.
This is where he met Fidel Castro and later joined him on the July 26, 1953 assault on the Moncada military barracks. Gustavo was shot in the back, touching his spine and damaging the sciatic nerve, and left partly paralyzed by the wound suffered in the assault. [ Anita Snow reported in the Associated Press on Wednesday, May. 18, 2005 that “His sciatic nerve was damaged and has deteriorated over the years, making walking difficult, especially up the one flight of stairs from the street.”]
Brother Luis killed by Fulgencio Batista’s forces
Gustavo was sentenced to ten years in prison but was pardoned and released 22 months later in 1955 and went with the rest of the group to organize a rebel army in Mexico. He traveled through Latin America and the United States gathering money and munitions. His brother Luis Arcos Bergnes was killed when the Granma expedition landed in Cuba in 1956 and were met by Batista’s forces.
Gustavo Arcos was appointed Cuba’s ambassador to Belgium following Castro’s arrival to power in 1959. Wounded in the Moncada assault with a martyred brother, he could have easily remained a privileged member of the revolutionary elite, but that was not why he had taken up arms against Fulgencio Batista. He had fought for an end to dictatorship and the restoration of a democratic Cuba. When he returned to Cuba in 1964 he saw not only that the government had turned communist but that Fidel Castro was another dictator. At the time Raul Castro personally offered Gustavo a position in the regime leadership. Gustavo rejected the offer. He was already disenchanted and preferred to remain in the diplomatic corps, away from Havana.Gustavo expressed his dissent privately.
“They shot a lot of people,” Mr. Arcos told the Associated Press in 2005 during the summary trials held after the revolutionaries took power. “They shot people who could have easily been imprisoned.”
On March 15, 1966 he was detained and in 1967 he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. for alleged counterrevolutionary activity. He served three years in prison before being released after a long hunger strike in 1969, but was not allowed to leave the country.
Joining the Cuban Committee for Human Rights
He and his younger brother, Sebastián Arcos Bergnes, joined the 1976-founded Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1982 while incarcerated at the Combinado de Este. In 1981, the brothers were imprisoned for attempting to leave the country. Not long after, the Committee started issuing declarations criticizing the deplorable conditions under which political detainees were housed.
In 1986, international pressure compelled the Cuban government to grant a few concessions, including visits from several international human rights organizations and the release of several political prisoners, who subsequently carried out the Committee’s activities in Havana’s streets. Gustavo Arcos succeeded the committee’s exiled executive director, Dr. Ricardo Bofill, shortly after his release from prison in 1988.
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