Cuban-American producer and singer Gloria Estefan said that the oil blockade on the island “is not a way to put an end to the Castro regime” and insisted that “the only sanctions there have been in Cuba have been from the government itself to the Cubans”.
In an interview with EFE during the 65th edition of the Viña del Mar International Music Festival, the most important music event in Latin America, Gloria Estefan talked about the political situation in Cuba and the oppression of Latin American immigrants in the United States.
On the sanctions that Donald Trump’s administration is applying to those countries that give oil to Cuba to block the Díaz-Canel government, Estefan affirmed that “the only sanctions there have been (are) from the government itself to the Cubans”.
“The blockade that has been created now is because there is no more oil coming in from Venezuela and it has made it very difficult for the Cubans. I think: ‘My God…. What about the ambulances? How can they go to work? They don’t have electricity, it’s dark, they can’t cook, their food gets bad….. It breaks my heart,” he lamented.
“I don’t think this is a way to overthrow any regime, but it has to come from the Cuban people that they say: ‘No more here, we don’t want any more’. And that is difficult, because every time something happens they take young prisoners,” he said about censorship and repression in Cuba.
Estefan said, however, that he notes with concern how the situation on the island is at an unsustainable point for many experts, the most critical since the so-called Special Period after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
“Cuba still buys support from the United States. It buys from many countries, but Cuba pays poorly. So business is cut off. But Cuba receives humanitarian aid. Sometimes they say ‘No, we don’t want it’ so that the people can see that they are not accepting help from anyone,” the singer said.
Gloria Estefan and the Trump administration’s attacks on Latino migrants
Asked about what the U.S. government calls the U.S. government’s national security strategy, in which ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, carries out raids and indiscriminate detentions of Latino migrants in U.S. territory, Estefan explained that “very horrendous things have happened”.
“Americans killed, citizens who were simply walking through a space…. That was harsh,” he developed about the ICE killings of citizens that raised a wave of protests in Minneapolis.
“When I was in college I studied Holocaust literature and I’m not comparing what’s going on to the Holocaust at all, but the message I took away from that class was that silence is the greatest danger. When you see something that is not right, something wrong, that is not moral, that goes against the values and the love of what it is to be a human being, you have to speak up and say, ‘I don’t want this, we can’t stand this,’ ” he added.
During the press conference, Gloria Estefan explained that her debut in Viña del Mar, 44 years ago, was one of the two times in which her “legs trembled” from nerves.
He returns to the great festival to “continue giving the affection” to his audience that they have given him, he explained to EFE.
“The greatest prize for me would be for the audience to come out having fun, enjoying themselves, dancing and having had a nice night, forgetting their problems for a moment”, said the artist about her performance.
Gloria Estefan opens the Viña International Festival on Sunday 22 with the first performance of the evening, reported Agencia EFE, which will be followed by Chilean comedian Stefan Kramer and Italy’s Matteo Bocelli.
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