Cuba’s crumbling infrastructure and ubiquitous Revolutionary propaganda give the impression of a five-decade standstill. In Havana’s bustling Vedado district, however, Parque de los Roqueros, or “Rocker Park,” suggests a nation in transition.

Sipping homemade rum from a disfigured juice box, Yoiván Cruz paused to present his identity card to a heavily armed policeman. Better known by his stage name, DJ Crak, Cruz has had many encounters with the Cuban police. His purple-streaked hair and numerous piercings always attract attention from authorities. But among the hundreds of tattooed, pierced, dyed, and leatherclad youths of Rocker Park, Cruz is a celebrity.

“The police are constantly harassing us,” Cruz said. “They don’t like Freakies. But it’s not just us. If you’re black, they stop you. Talking to a tourist, they stop you. Spending tourist currency, they stop you. You breathe and they stop you.”

The “Freakies” are a new generation of Cubans no longer satisfied with the cultural and social realities to which they have grown accustomed: salsa, unemployment, hunger, racism, and police harassment. They gather here, at Rocker Park. Extending for blocks along the Avenue of the Presidents, it is an ordinary city park by day, but at night, it transforms into a policeman’s nightmare. Tight controls on free expression mean that Cuba’s counterculture happens live. Here, hundreds, sometimes thousands, of Cubans in their teens and twenties congregate to collect and distribute clandestine materials. With so many policemen around, they take extreme caution, especially because their activities—the words they write, the pictures they paint, the events they hold, and the drugs they use—are against the law.

The day after, though, the park will be empty.

“Tomorrow is La Madriguera,” said Cruz, who will DJ the event titled for its venue. “Everyone will be there—the Punkies, the Reggaes, the Gays, the Anarchists. All the Freakies.”

La Madriguera, or “The Hideout,” is an uninviting concrete block of buildings hidden behind the large trees of Central Havana’s Infanta Street. It is one of the few spaces available for underground events. Its seclusion and the unpredictability of the events ensure that authorities rarely get word in time.

For many, congregation is in itself a manifestation of rebellion. Few admit to a politically motivated agenda, fearing they will be labeled as “dissidents.”

“We’re always thinking about the situation here, but we don’t talk too much—we create,” said Dione, a 25-year-old rapper and self-described graffiti artist from Alamar, a housing project east of Havana that was originally built to house 10,000 people and is now home to 50,000. Dione has spent months evading authorities for one mural he painted in reference to Castro, displaying the words: “Padre, Traidor, Violador,” or “Father, Traitor, Rapist.”

Home to many of Havana’s cutting-edge and defiant artists, Alamar is a bleak desert of gray buildings straight out of a modernist nightmare. The district hosts Cuba’s only annual rap festival, which the government began subsidizing several years ago in order to undermine the legitimacy of rap as a countercultural movement and entice rappers to produce less political lyrics.

Succumbing to government pressure, subsidized artists often address cultural rather than political themes. Most of these artists have moved out of Cuba—an option few citizens have.

“It’s very easy to write lovely things about Cuba once you’re gone, you know?” Dione said. “We’re not falling for that. Fidel can’t convince us to keep quiet so we can make money and leave. Things need to change here.”

Not everyone shares that opinion. Many Cubans, especially in the Revolutionary generation, call the Freakie movement “misdirected” and “problematic.” Opponents say its purpose is to make noise for the sake of making noise.

Others refuse to acknowledge the movement’s existence. “People talk to get attention,” said a receptionist at Vedado’s Hotel St. John, “but nobody actually wants to see the end of Father’s regime.”

Rocker Park and the graffitied walls of Alamar suggest otherwise.

Although these youths are tired of the story of the Revolution, they are not fighting against communism as a political structure. Rather, they struggle against denied civil liberties and the police who suppress them, against harassment, and, most importantly, against censorship. The movement is not a campaign. However, Castro’s concessions to the rap world reveal that the counterculture’s growing influence makes him nervous.

“We will break free,” Yoiván said, placing his identity card back into his pocket. “One day.”

---

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites