The agony of the reggaeton singer Taiger lasted a week at the Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, since in the early hours of October 3 he was abandoned in the back of a black Mercedes Benz, just a few blocks from the medical center that treated him. with a gunshot wound to the head. He had survived in an extremely critical situation. Through long days of mourning and minimal but contagious optimism, hundreds of thousands of Cubans paid tribute, offered prayers, asked their saints and turned perreo themes into liturgical prayers.
José Manuel Carvajal, which is his official name, was 37 years old, and had become a popular idol. His death, and the crime of which he was a victim, have also been the subject of political debate in the heart of exile. His addiction to hard drugs, his hectic life, his visible contradictions and that kind of destructive drive that has crushed so many artists, those things that are usually romanticized in figures like Brian Jones or Amy Winehouse, have not been completely accepted in his case. , perhaps because he is a black man, self-taught, owner of the aggressive language of ghetto and point of contention within the national crossfire.
Taiger had not given up the possibility of singing in Havana and Miami and crossed the Straits of Florida as many times a year as he wished. They accused him of being an accomplice of the regime, of being a snitch and even of being a henchman. Alexander Otaola, the influencer conservative who functions as the leader of these hordes, went so far as to say: “The Taiger deserves anything, even a myocardial infarction. “Everything bad that happens to the Taiger will always be a cause for celebration.” They also used to challenge his lack of empathy with the political prisoners who left behind the popular protests of July 11, 2021. But that is not entirely true.
After that date, El Taiger launched attacks against Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and confessed that the repression had opened his eyes, that it was a turning point for him. He did not make songs or join the fashion of dissidence, like others, which in the long run seems more respectable. Then he returned to Cuba and his denunciation video was archived, it was destroyed by a media ecosystem that mixes equal parts frivolity with militancy, gossip with slogans, and establishes arbitrary political permissions, according to their private interests. They have no State or law, and in truth they are harmless, but they act as if they wanted to found a new regime in another land.
What has now been in dispute is the legitimacy of this pernicious order, which does not depend only on the particular decisions of a singer. The overwhelming displays of pain or shock at the Taiger murder have received many questions based on a severe control of emotions, a civil code that authorizes what one should suffer or not, why it would be allowed to shudder, and ignores the nature of the bond, which is never uniform, absolute, or exclusive.
Instead of mourning the controversial reggaeton player, we should do it for the political prisoners, unfortunately the ace up the sleeve of many manipulations and blackmail. There is then an ideological hierarchy of affects. If the Taiger had only said what was demanded of him, we would have already gained permission to be moved by his loss. Even so, Miami has given itself over to fervor and sadness, since it found relief and consolation in that music, and no one can legislate with what one is relieved or consoled, or what the intimate heritage of an emigrant is.
On the island, thousands of Cubans took to the streets and improvised altars to pray together for the artist’s life, a gesture that was also partially condemned, since, they say, they are people who do not go out to demand their rights. The claim, in this case, seems even more unfair, because these are people who in the last three years have not stopped protesting and showing their rejection of the regime, even though they have been viciously punished. Furthermore, this audacity when it comes to calling a public meeting, even if it is an act of pilgrimage by a reggaeton singer, must be read as another consequence or auspicious balance of July 11, in an obedient country that before that day only met in mass if ordered by the communist party.
The political nomenclature of the regime remained alert to this symptom and a few days after the event began to condole the fate of Taiger and recognize its imprint on Cuban music, overlooking the fact that for years they persecuted, demonized and censored the reggaeton players of the country, or that most of them are today abroad because life on the island is unsustainable. Since José Lezama Lima and Virgilio Piñera, the demands of Castroism occur without apologies or substantive reparations. Also described as communist, the Taiger then became an unexpected gift for a regime that right now has nothing to hold on to and that, therefore, was not disgusted by a boy who had previously been classified as vulgar, whose art violated the values of socialism.
The Taiger comes from a marginalized class and from a life in principle condemned to poverty, class and life shared with the majority of prisoners and former political prisoners. The substrate of these experiences fostered links that conventional schemes assume to be found, contrary. The rapper Maykel Osorbo, or the comedian Yoandi Montiel, popularly known on social networks as El Gato de Cuba, expressed their support for the singer and lamented his misfortune, something that Al2 or El B also did, truly rebellious artists who in Cuba formed the legendary duo Los Aldeanos.
In this order of things, the prisoner would matter as an argument or abstract category, but not as an individual. He denies what the prisoner likes, the place he belongs to, his sentimental education; which has given him dignity or spiritual options for survival, however precarious they may be. As cannon fodder, an object that through the violence received confirms the dictatorial character of the Cuban Government, the prisoner does not need to listen to the Taiger, nor misalign one inch with the model that guarantees its usefulness: the pure identity of the victim as an archetype.
Ultimately, the enterprise of liberating a country whose emotions are despised does not seem destined for success.
