Viva Che! End the Embargo ! Song for Elian (written in 2000)
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- čas přidán 8. 10. 2007
- GUSANOS ! BE WARNED ! YOUR HOSTILE MESSAGES WILL BE DELETED. DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME.
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NEWS BULLETIN: Thaw in US-Cuba relations is under way:
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090417/a...
I wrote and recorded this song in 2000 to support the demand that Elian Gonzalez, held captive by Miami Cubans, be returned to his father Juan Gonzalez in Cuba. At this time I have posted it to promote the demand that the embargo against Cuba be ended.
Comments from people around the world who support this demand are invited.
Here is an archive document of an internet post of the lyrics. Read the comments below the song lyrics:
web.archive.org/web/2001100714...
History of Elian's Ordeal and the Song
In 1999 Elian Gonzalez was a 6-year-old boy living in Cuba. His parents were divorced and had joint custody. He was with his mother in December 1999. Instead of returning him to his father Juan, she and her boyfriend boarded a leaky boat with Elian with the intention of stealing him from his father and living in the Cuban community in Miami.
A few miles south of Miami the boat sank. They had one inner tube. The mother put Elian out to sea on the inner tube and she and the boyfriend went down with the boat.
After two days, Elian was discovered by a fisherman who was a Miami Cuban. The fisherman took him to the home of his great uncle Lazaro, who did not send him back to his father in Cuba. Instead, Lazaro tried to turn him into an anti-Castro propaganda tool.
In January the INS ruled that Elian should be returned to his father, but it was several months before they raided Lazaro's home to rescue him. During this period Elian's family in Cuba suffered great torment.
In the meantime, I was inspired to write this song. Now I am posting it at youtube in hopes of helping to re-ignite the demand to end the ridiculous embargo of Cuba.
I recorded the song in 2000. The video is not very good, but files have to be in video format to be uploaded here, so I used it. The background is obviously fake. I made the video in the following year, when the University of Oklahoma student union hired a crew to entertain students by letting them make videos of themselves lip-syncing to pop music recordings.
I showed up with my own recording of the Elian song and asked if they would make a video of me lip-syncing to it. At least it's my own recording. I did the vocal, mandolin, and guitar. The bass was added by Ernie Tullis of PDM Recording, in Oklahoma City. There were no electronic tricks used to make me sound better.
For the video I was wearing a costume I used to wear when playing mandolin in an Italian restaurant.
Here is a BBC report about Elian, five years after the ordeal:
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4...
Amen. This is a masterwork.
Brought tears to my eyes.
Yeah, but subsidies mean there's a problem that needs to be addressed.
The colonials who partook in atrocities during our revolutionary war were no better. How Che's capture was handled, also an atrocity. He should've gone on trial in a court of Bolivian law. Hating him or loving him won't solve anything. Just look at the facts and decide if you think his messages were just. His ideology and that of far leftists would restrict this very conversation. Usted vive en Cuba?
While I supported reuniting the boy with his father, I find the "viva Che" thing disturbing. Che was a communist guerilla who assasinated people without trial. This isn't someone who people should look up to.
The fact that people have glorified him is something I'm sure he would've hated as well.