Justin who?

With all the hoopla going on in South Beach about “The Game” this weekend, I had no clue about who Justin Bieber was and looking at the crowd of teen girls acting maniacally, I knew that at least for a fact I was in the wrong age group to even know about him. But since this time I was carrying my camera on our daily walk, I decided to wait around for this new teen idol to show up so I could snap a couple of pictures and wait until I get home to figure out who he was. Turned out to be pretty famous in the music world, specially given that he’s only 15 years old.

Anyhow, in case you just landed from Mars and don’t know what I’m talking about, “The Game” I’m referring to is the Super Bowl football game planned for next Sunday in Miami Life Sun Stadium. From all the media events, sports paraphernalia and T-shirts surrounding us I am guessing it will be between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts, and that’s the extent of my knowledge on that matter.

But the reason I was carrying a camera during our daily walk this morning was not to take pictures of Justin Bieber but as of regret that yesterday I could have taken my picture with Gloria Estefan, A.K.A. “The Queen of Miami”, when we stumbled upon the stage where she was going to perform live for the Early Show on CBS. Since most of the Super Bowl activities are in the evenings, this early morning show was relatively empty so it gave me the chance of moving very close to the stage and be close enough to have my picture taken with her. Except that I didn’t have my camera and can only share my memories of the experience.

Gloria is pretty famous in this parts of the country, but in Cuba she turned out to be a lot less famous than I imagined. For some reason, maybe because I was visiting my birth country for the first time in my conscious life, I found my self humming the words to Gloria’s song “Mi Tierra”. It was with me pretty much the whole 10 days I was there. In a couple of occasions I asked two Cuban family members if they had heard the songs of Gloria Estefan and to my surprise, they had no clue of who she was. How about Willy Chirino, a known Cuban from Miami that also sings strongly against the Castro regime? Nope. No clue. They knew about Juanes and Olga Tañón, but nothing about Gloria or Willy. How convenient to know about those that supported your politics, but know nothing about those that spoke against your system.

Thinking about it, it wasn’t that surprising after all. During my visit to Cuba I realized that if you could control the information that people heard (the news media), then you could control just about everything. If the only facts you were allowed to hear were anything that told you that you were in heaven, in less than a generation away, people would believe that they were indeed in heaven. All the Cuban news, in print, radio and TV, talks about the wonderful things the Cuban government does there and abroad. Any of the troubles the country may have are usually minimized or if acknowledged, at least blamed on the Imperialists to the North and their embargo.

So Gloria, if you want your songs to be more popular in Cuba, you’re going to have to do a little better at praising the accomplishments of the communist way of living and be a lot less critical. Otherwise I don’t see Gloria becoming the Queen of Havana anytime soon.

In the mean time, I’ll just continue praising the accomplishments of the capitalist’s ways and enjoy all-things Super Bowl this last weekend before The Game. And may the best team (and the best political system) win.