Sunday, February 13th 2011. The "¡Sí Cuba!" festival soon to arrive in New York is as unusual as it is exciting. Imagine, a two-month marathon of art and culture from the long-proscribed Communist island taking place here in our city. A rare treat, indeed."The festival will showcase the diversity of Cuban arts and culture from the traditional to the contemporary," say organizers of the event, which will kick off March 31 and run through June 16. Billed as "a New York celebration of Cuban arts and culture," ¡Sí Cuba! could never have happened under George W. Bush, but President Obama loosened some travel restrictions and restored much of the "person-to-person" policy of the Clinton era.">Sunday, February 13th 2011. The "¡Sí Cuba!" festival soon to arrive in New York is as unusual as it is exciting. Imagine, a two-month marathon of art and culture from the long-proscribed Communist island taking place here in our city. A rare treat, indeed."The festival will showcase the diversity of Cuban arts and culture from the traditional to the contemporary," say organizers of the event, which will kick off March 31 and run through June 16. Billed as "a New York celebration of Cuban arts and culture," ¡Sí Cuba! could never have happened under George W. Bush, but President Obama loosened some travel restrictions and restored much of the "person-to-person" policy of the Clinton era.">

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Sunday, February 13th 2011. The "¡Sí Cuba!" festival soon to arrive in New York is as unusual as it is exciting. Imagine, a two-month marathon of art and culture from the long-proscribed Communist island taking place here in our city. A rare treat, indeed.

"The festival will showcase the diversity of Cuban arts and culture from the traditional to the contemporary," say organizers of the event, which will kick off March 31 and run through June 16 .

Billed as "a New York celebration of Cuban arts and culture," ¡Sí Cuba! could never have happened under George W. Bush, but President Obama loosened some travel restrictions and restored much of the "person-to-person" policy of the Clinton era.

True, it is not a radical policy change (the 50-year embargo remains), but two-way cultural, academic and religious travel became possible again.

History shows that nothing related to Cuba-U.S. relations is easy. So even though ¡Sí Cuba!, which will be presented in a variety of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens venues, is an important bridge builder, it takes place against a backdrop of several stubborn points of friction.

One is the imprisonment in Cuba of Alan Gross, a U.S. citizen, accused of espionage by the island's authorities. They are demanding a 20-year jail sentence for the 60-year-old contractor. The State Department denies the charges.

Another is the long imprisonment in the U.S. of five Cubans - los cinco héroes, as they are known in their country. They were convicted of espionage in a Miami court, no less, although Havana insists their mission was to thwart new terrorist attacks against their homeland.

These include attacks like the ones Luis Posada Carriles is accused of perpetrating. The Cuban-born Posada Carriles, 82, is on trial in a federal court in El Paso, Tex. A former CIA operative with a long history of violence, he was identified in U.S. intelligence reports as the mastermind behind the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner, which killed the 73 passengers onboard.

Posada Carriles is also linked to seven hotel bombings in Cuba, one of which killed Fabio diCelmo, a young Italian tourist.

Yet he is not on trial for the bombings, but for lying about them and about how he sneaked into this country in March 2005.

Posada Carriles faces 11 counts of perjury, obstruction and immigration fraud but none for murder or terrorism.

Ironically, his trial could have a positive impact on U.S.-Cuba relations. For the first time, a Cuban Ministry of Interior investigator has testified in the trial of an ex-CIA agent.

The investigator, who was the lead detective in the case of the hotel bombings, showed the jury photographs and police reports about the explosions, helping the U.S. to make the case against the old terrorist - and, perhaps, signaling a new level of collaboration to fight terrorism.

What is certain is that ¡Sí Cuba! will be the largest Cuban arts festival ever held in the U.S. An initiative of a coalition of New York art institutions like the Havana Film Festival in NY, America's Society, the Joyce Theater, Brooklyn Academy of Music and others, it is not to be missed.

The festival will give New Yorkers the opportunity to get to know artists, musicians, dancers, and filmmakers from Cuba after decades of isolation.

¡Sí Cuba! promises to be an extraordinary experience as much for the quality, number and variety of the participants, as for bringing together artists from the island and the U.S. in a concrete way to get to know each other.

And, who knows - it may even lead to a more rational policy on both sides of the Gulf of Mexico.

Source: www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/02/13/


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