A music video rattles Cuba’s regime

IN 2018 GENTE DE ZONA, a Cuban reggaeton band based in Miami, performed in Havana for 350,000 people. The duo’s front man, Alexander Delgado, encouraged them to clap for Cuba’s newly inaugurated president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, who was in the audience. Cuban-American musicians and politicians in Miami were furious.

Now it is Mr Díaz-Canel’s turn to fume. In a video released on February 16th, Gente de Zona join other famous reggaetoneros, rappers and hip-hop artists to perform “Patria y Vida” (“Homeland and Life”), which excoriates Cuba’s communist dictatorship and makes common cause with dissidents. Alongside Yotuel and Descemer Bueno, Grammy-winners who live outside Cuba but have strong links to it, Gente de Zona liken the 62 years since Cuba’s revolution to a game of dominoes—a popular pastime on the island—that is blocked, so no player can take a turn. The track’s title is a take-off of the revolutionary slogan “Patria o Muerte” (“Homeland or Death”), which appears on billboards and banknotes.