“Music yes, Embargo no!” and “Music yes, Censorship no!” shouted the protesters, largely in Spanish, as each limousine pulled up delivering invitees to the awards ceremony. The demonstration was sponsored by a range of organizations of Cuban Americans opposed to Washington’s economic war on Cuba. These included Alianza Martiana, Antonio Maceo Brigade, José Martí Association, Association of Workers in the Cuban Community (ATC), and the Cuban American Defense League.

Seven musicians—including members of the bands Los Van Van and Los Muñequitos de Matanzas—had applied for U.S. visas in order to enter the United States to attend the ceremony, which was televised. Despite numerous requests from the band members, their representatives in the United States, the Cuban Ministry of Culture, and the Cuban Music Institute, the Latin Recording Academy, the organizers of the Latin Grammy awards, refused to send the letters of invitations needed by the artists to apply for visas at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. Three applications were denied—from Juan Formell, leader of Los Van Van, which was nominated for Best Contemporary Tropical Album; Zenaida Romeu, a musician nominated for Best Flamenco Album; and Diosdado Ramos, leader of Los Muñequitos de Matanzas, which was nominated for Best Folk Album. Other applications remained pending through the end of the event.

The Cuban musicians found out about these nominations through the U.S. media. Three weeks after the nominations were made public, however, they had not received invitations. U.S. law requires letters of invitation from U.S. entities as a requirement for Cubans seeking permission to travel to the United States.

Cuba’s deputy minister of culture Abel Acosta said the Latin Recording Academy failed to send letters of invitation that the nominees needed to apply for U.S. visas. Acosta, who held a news conference in Havana along with several of the nominated musicians, said the letters never arrived even though officials early on reminded academy representatives of the complicated visa process.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said on September 3 that none of the Cubans would be able to attend because their visa applications arrived too late. According to new regulations Washington adopted in the last two years, visa applicants from Cuba need to submit the necessary documents for a visa a minimum of eight weeks before the proposed travel dates.

Although the Grammy’s organizers did not send the invitation letters, they did send tickets necessary for admission to the event. These tickets were sent not only to the nominees, according to Acosta, but to now-deceased artists—including the late Compay Segundo, Frank Emilio, and Armando Romeu.

A coalition of dozens of Cuban American counterrevolutionary groups had planned a protest outside the award ceremony if Cuban musicians attended. The right-wingers later called off their action, when it became clear the artists from Cuba had been denied. “If the agents of Castro aren’t coming, we don’t see a need to protest,” said the rightist coalition’s spokesman Francisco Garcia. In solidarity with the excluded nominees, Cuban musicians who live outside of the country and are opposed to such acts that impede freedom of expression and the arts boycotted the September 3 event here.

The nominees in Cuba, meanwhile, performed a concert in Havana the next day, September 4, to protest this anti-Cuba act. Musicians who did not receive U.S. visas in time to attend the ceremony last year did the same thing. On September 6, about 100 supporters of freedom of expression in Miami attended a showing of that concert, filmed in the Karl Marx theater in Havana.  
 
 
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