Salsa Si, Castro No
The Univision Spanish International Network flew a TV crew up from San Antonio to cover the ongoing clash of principles. The report was beamed to households in Spain, Mexico, and Central and South America. In Miami, the story topped the Spanish-language news.
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Chicago, so far, has acted just fine. The idea of Viva Chicago, a lakefront Latino music festival, was a terrific one, and the Mayor’s Office of Special Events tried hard to put together a representative planning committee. Juan Montenegro, a sales rep for WIND radio, wound up the only Cuban on the committee, and he’s really catching it now as an inauthentic community spokesman; his big sin is that he makes trips back to Cuba. But Orlando “Pelencho” Miranda, “a true leader” in the eyes of Roth, was asked to join the committee and didn’t. Now he denounces Orquesta Aragon on his daily talk show on station WEDC.
Two weeks ago, the newspaper La Raza, which is read primarily by Puerto Ricans but carries a good deal of Cuban advertising, dropped out as a sponsor. WIND, under similar pressure, persuaded Juan Montenegro to resign from the Viva Chicago committee. The primary private sponsor is the G. Heileman Brewing Company, and if it backs out the festival might collapse. In self-defense, the Office of Special Events did some research and then reminded the brewery that Cubans don’t drink Old Style anyway. It’s the Puerto Ricans’ beer.
Weighing heavily against Orquesta Aragon, says Marlen Roth, is an old issue of the Cuban magazine Bohemia in which Castro hailed the group: “These are my people, the ones I’ll export.” Apparently this article stamped the band not as mere goodwill ambassadors but as the tyrant’s cat’s-paw.
Mike Sneed didn’t speak to the Reporter. But Sun-Times associate editor Mark Eissman, who edits Sneed’s column, answered questions from the Reporter’s Jennifer Juarez Robles. “Are we going to keep seeing these ‘taco beat’ images?” Robles asked him, using a dismissive term popular among Latino journalists in describing gringo coverage of their own people.
