“I want to tell all the influencers and reporters who are saying that I have something to do with the Cuban festival that this is a lie,” singer Lenier Mesa said in his response, in the face of criticism for his visit to Cuba this weekend, while a festival promoted by the island’s government was held to try to reactivate tourism.
Lenier acknowledged that he was on the island, as shown by videos recorded in Cayo Santa María, north of the Caibarién municipality, in the Villa Clara province, venue of the Santa María Music Fest event.
The Cuban said that he was “only 24 hours, I went to see my grandfather who is in poor health.”
But the criticism from Miami even reached some local authorities. Joe Carollo, commissioner of Miami, referred to the issue and expressed: “But if you go to see your grandfather, you are not in Santa María, in the party.”
According to Commissioner Carollo, Lenier’s own representative had told him the real reason for his trip to Cuba. “Just like he had gone with 69 East to Puerto Rico, to the Dominican Republic. To local programs here (…) who went to Cuba with him.”
The rapper Tekashi 6ix9nie, the great star invited to the Festival in Cayo Santa María, had already recorded in Cuba part of the video Leyenda Viva, a song that he sings with Lenier and whose producer is Boris Arencibia, the organizer of the event in the northern Cuban keys.
The organizer of the festival said on social networks that his objective was to demonstrate that the Cuban could contribute to tourism on the island. “More than any Italian, French, Spanish (…) who have been leading tourism in our country for more than 60 years.”
But true control of Cuban tourism, including the room where the video was reportedly recorded, is in the hands of GAE.SA, the US government-sanctioned military conglomerate. There the prices to attend the festival ranged between 900 and 1,090 dollars, impossible for the vast majority of Cubans.
Esteban Bovo, the mayor of Hialeah, said it was shameful and reprehensible for him to join the propaganda manipulation of the Cuban regime.
For his part, Commissioner Carollo canceled Lenier’s performances at Friday’s events in Little Havana and at the New Year’s Eve concert.
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