“64 years have passed, that’s it, it’s over. Enough of blaming the US blockade. We must find a more intelligent way so that people do not continue to die of hunger or in the sea“, said Fito Páez, protagonist of a controversy with the cultural authorities of Cuba, who they censored, first, and then manipulated, a documentary that has him as the protagonist.
Fito’s Havana it did not go unnoticed by the regime. The documentary, directed by the Cuban filmmaker Juan Pin Villarhad a bumpy journey on the island, despite the fact that it was one of the projects winners of the Fund for the Promotion of Cuban Cinema in 2021 and it was eScreened at the Havana Film Festival in New York in 2022a fact that was even disseminated by the official media of the Caribbean country.
But someone took a closer look at the documentary, which became a problem for the regime.
“I was fully aware of what happened with the documentary. First with the suspension of the three scheduled screenings and the manipulation when it was broadcast on television,” Páez complained. “I knew there was a bit of noise, but without any apparent explanation; which is how things work in Cuba unfortunately”.
The documentary is simple, it is built from a series of interviews and old images that reflect Páez’s link with Cuba over more than four decades. The Argentine is from Rosario, the city of Ernesto “Che” Guevaraicon of the Cuban revolution that in 1959 overthrew the dictator Fulgencio Batista to end up becoming another dictatorship of the opposite sign, the longest-lived on the continent.