Singer, songwriter, dancer, actress and designer, Beyoncé Giselle Knowles traveled to Cuba in April 2013 with her husband, the also very popular rapper Jay-Z.
The U.S. media was waiting for what the Obama administration would say. There were just two questions: Had Beyoncé and Jay-Z traveled to Cuba under the radar to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary? Or, on the contrary, had they asked for the corresponding license to go to that nearby but at the same time distant forbidden fruit? The initial position of the White House was to open a waiting period until there was an official statement from the Treasury Department.
Two Cuban-American congresspeople sent a public letter to Adam J. Szubin, director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, questioning the legality/legitimacy of the trip and Obama’s policy on cultural exchanges. One of them, Marco Rubio, returned to the fray using traditional arguments: “The Obama administration’s people-to-people cultural exchange programs have been abused by tourists who have no interest in the freedoms of the Cuban people.”
Alastair Fitzpayne, then assistant secretary of the Treasury Department for Legislative Affairs, let the media know that the couple had traveled to Havana on an educational license. And he clarified: “Although parts of the visit, during which the couple celebrated their fifth anniversary, may have seemed like tourism, Jay-Z and Beyoncé fulfilled their obligations by meeting with the children’s theater group La Colmenita and visiting students and teachers of the Higher Institute of Art.”
For its part, Academic Arrangement Abroad, the New York entity that had organized the trip, reaffirmed it in a public statement: “The trip was organized in accordance with federal procedures established for the granting of licenses for people-to-people cultural trips. The couple did not receive any special treatment.” Suddenly, someone ironically said: “but we don’t get involved if they had a mojito or two.”
II
Upon their arrival, perhaps Beyoncé and Jay-Z thought that they would go unnoticed due to the impacts of an imaginary in which Cuba is perceived with its back to the sea of globalizations and as a place full of old things, from automobiles and buildings to the people who appear in mainstream media photos. But just to cite two parallel cases, the same thing happened to other celebrities such as Jack Nicholson in a hostel in Old Havana and to two members of the Backstreet Boys in the lobby of the Hotel Nacional.
The couple of artists were immediately recognized the first night they left the hotel where they were staying, the emblematic and ill-fated Saratoga. It happened in La Guarida, the Centro Habana paladar that, as is known, served as the location for several scenes of Strawberry and Chocolate, where the jet set figures such as Will Smith, Kevin Spacey, Naomi Campbell, Jodie Foster, Natalie Portman, Danny Glover and even Doña Sofía, then queen of Spain, have also visited.
The lack of systematic contact with the other side usually unleashes certain presumptions that disappear like soap bubbles when certain visitors set foot on the island. In any case, the visit of Beyoncé and Jay-Z unleashed an interesting logistical problem: the need to enlist, first at the request of the restaurant owners, and then by their own inertia, the National Revolutionary Police to reinforce the security of the mega-stars, but not for acts of repudiation of the “Yankee,” but for those expressions of empathy that led them to appear several times on the hotel balcony, a few steps from Havana’s Capitol.
The couple walked through emblematic sites of Old Havana, visited the University of the Arts, Contemporary Dance of Cuba, the National Theater, the children’s group La Colmenita, the House of Music in Centro Habana, and attended a presentation by Haila María Mompié and…the Gato Tuerto, where Juana Bacallao was performing.
III
They say that Beyoncé and Jay-Z were at the Gato Tuerto bar. Suddenly, Bacallao addressed her from the stage, inviting her to come up. And in the middle of midnight, she blurted out one of her own: “Let Yonse or whatever her name is come up.” And when Beyoncé began to go on stage, Juana shouted with her microphone in her hand: “Leave her alone, nothing is going to happen to her. This is from panther to panther.” And there they interacted. Dance and humor were the main protagonists.
It’s unlikely that Beyoncé knew her beforehand, but she ended up on stage kissing her hand. Now that she is gone, the queen of the cabarets, I can only evoke her charisma and her stage skills. And her peculiar Cuban surrealism. An artist who, like Fredesvinda García Valdés (Camagüey, 1935 – San Juan de Puerto Rico, 1961), that singer Freddy immortalized by a famous novel by Guillermo Cabrera Infante, came from the most absolutely popular subsoil. The Cuban-American poet Jorge García de la Fe summed it up from Chicago in a few décimas for her 95th birthday:
I
Juana Bacallao has arrived,
the queen of nonsense.
Stop acting up,
splash where it’s wet.
My home is on fire
and my sign is squid.
I am a stellar diva
as bold as brass.
Cuba has me as a goddess,
They had to evaluate me.
II
This black woman is self-made
that’s why the earth shakes
when I get really bitchy
and I escape like a billiard ball.
I roll on the wave,
I am art that does not expire.
Sometimes I get belligerent
and I get out of order.
I perform in the early morning hours
taking off my wig.
III
I shake up the cabaret
with my gift of classic black.
I’m a basic doll
of rumba, palo and bembé.
I carry stars in misstep
and I turned ninety-five
yearlings of jumping from here to there.
Loads of sequins!
Asere, I’m great,
I settle in the heights.
I am Juana Bacallao!
Beyoncé returned to the United States after a few days in Havana that did justice to a critic’s famous phrase based on her personality and her stage projection: “a storm system disguised as a singer.”
That was a unique contact between the two. Afterwards, Juana Bacallao wrote her a letter:
Beyoncé and Husband:
The stars never disappoint the love of people, even if we speak another language, but they always reach the heart of the artist, they are the ones who make us reach stardom. That’s why we can never disappoint these people who, as a people, place us in the public’s preference for the way we develop our art.
Art has no borders or languages, as it comes to give life and understanding to human beings.
I will never forget this day that I shared with the U.S. artist Beyoncé on my humble but large stage of the Gato Tuerto, where great national and international figures of renown have paraded. There the artist took the stage, we greeted each other, we exchanged impressions and it was a very pleasant evening. You will always be present in the heart of my people, which is that of Juana Bacallao, that of Juana la Cubana.
Despite her busy schedule and the private nature of her visit, she gave me the honor of sharing her time and the unexpected joy of her preference.
I wish you to continue with that charisma and virtuosity of love, respect, and rapprochement with other cultures to enhance the artist.
Many blessings for you, your family and the U.S. people.
God bless you.
My best wishes from: Juana Bacallao, Juana la Cubana.
