Cubans mambo towards asylum

By JOHN HISCOCK

A group of 43 Cuban dancers, singers and musicians performing in a Havana Night Club show on the Las Vegas Strip are seeking asylum in the United States.

In the biggest mass defection of Cuban performers to date, the members of the troupe are about to submit their requests at the federal courthouse in Las Vegas, according to the show's founder and director, German-born Nicole Durr.

"Art should have no boundaries," she said. "My artists stood up in one voice and said they wanted to go."

Seven other cast members currently in Germany are also seeking asylum and are expected to arrive in the US within a week, she said.

Another three members are returning to Cuba for personal reasons.

She said the decision was a tough one for the show's performers because most of their immediate family remained in Cuba.

The cast members of Havana Night Club, most of whom are in their 20s and 30s, have performed in 16 countries, including Britain, Germany, Spain, Thailand and Japan since the troupe was founded seven years ago.

But Cuban authorities opposed their intention to seek entry visas to the US.

Several influential people worked to obtain permission for the trip, including the actor Kevin Costner, who contacted the Cuban Interests Section in Washington on the group's behalf, and the entertainers Siegfried And Roy, who helped the group land the engagement at the Stardust Resort and Casino.

Once the visas were granted, Cuban officials allowed the troupe to leave Cuba because, said cast members, the issue had received widespread attention in the US and because the Castro Government did not want to be seen as impeding the flow of culture.

Cuban officials did, however, threaten to make life unpleasant for the performers on their return to Cuba, said Durr.

They were warned they would be jailed, or at the very least, not be allowed to continue working as professional artists in Cuba if they persisted in their plan to work in Las Vegas.

She also said that Cuban officials raided the troupe's office in Havana in August and confiscated about US$250,000 ($360,000) worth of instruments and equipment. She said she was arrested, questioned and given 24 hours to leave Cuba which, she said, was one of the reasons the cast members decided to leave too.

"We've been together for more than six years," she said. "We are like a family."

The group was booked into the Stardust for a three-month run and performances were due to begin on July 31, but because of bureaucratic red tape and the intermittent arrival of performers, it fulfilled only a short engagement. Now it is expecting to perform with a full complement of performers.

Ariel Machado, 33, the group's manager, said it was never the performers' intention to defect.

"For me it was crucial to promote our Cuban culture here even when our Government does not recognise us as an element of Cuban culture," he said.

"It is almost impossible to live apart from the people we love, but you realise when you're out of Cuba you have opportunities to do important things.

"You assume a responsibility for your family and you can't rest until you do everything possible to help them."

He said that when he tried to explain his position to officials from Cuba's Ministry of Culture, "they left me in no doubt that if I continued with this project I ran the risk of going to jail for ignoring the Government's wishes."

One of the group's singers, Lala Montes, 28, said she had not yet told her family in Havana she was planning to defect. "It worries us all here. We've all got family in Cuba and they shouldn't have to pay for our decisions."

In the past, cultural exchanges between Cuba and the US have been allowed for the most part, despite a four-decade long US-imposed trade embargo.

But recently the US authorities have taken a harsher view, this year denying visas to Ibrahim Ferrer, a member of the Buena Vista Social Club, and the pianist Chucho Valdes, among others.

- INDEPENDENT