Yotuel, a Cuban musician residing in Spain, declared in an EU parliament event hosted by right-wing MPs, “My people need Europe, my people need Europe to point out the abuser,” before turning the microphone over to Venezuelan coup leader Juan Guaidó. Yotuel conducted a Zoom call with State Department officials a few days later to discuss the anti-communist rap song he helped write, "Patria y Vida."
The Wall Street Journal has named "Patria y Vida" the "common rallying cry" of opponents of Cuba's regime, while Rolling Stone has dubbed it "the song of Cuba's demonstrations," as the dust settles following a day of protests across the country.
Two rappers that participated on the song, in addition to Yotuel, are members of the San Isidro Movement, a group of artists, musicians, and authors. The US media has blamed this group with “acting as a trigger for the present unrest.”
The San Isidro Movement has welcomed open conflict with the state during the last three years, as economic conditions worsened as a consequence of an intensifying US economic war and internet access grew as a result of the Obama Administration's efforts to restore ties with Cuba.
San Isidro has antagonised the authorities with provocative performances that have seen its most prominent figures parade through Old Havana waving American flags and flagrant displays of contempt for Cuban national symbols, resulting in frequent detentions of its members and international campaigns to free them.
San Isidro has also manoeuvred to upend the racially progressive image Cuba's leftist government earned through its historic military campaign against apartheid South Africa and the asylum it offered to Black American dissidents by basing itself in a largely Afro-Cuban area of Old Havana and working through mediums like hip-hop. The San Isidro Movement appears to be following a plan laid forth by the US regime change effort in this regard.
In an intentional attempt to weaponize "desocialized and disadvantaged youth," the US government has spent millions of dollars cultivating anti-government Cuban rappers, rock musicians, artists, and journalists over the last decade. The US policy in Cuba is a real-life equivalent of anti-Trump Democrats' delusions that Russia was secretly funding Black Lives Matter and Antifa in order to destabilise North American civilization.
While meeting with State Department officials, US embassy staff in Havana, right-wing European parliamentarians, and Latin American coup leaders ranging from Venezuela's Juan Guaidó to OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro, leading members of the San Isidro Movement have raked in funding from regime change outfits like the National Endowment for Democracy and US Agency for International Development.
San Isidro has also benefited from the assistance of a network of free market fundamentalist think tanks that have made no secret of their desire to turn Cuba into a corporate colony. San Isidro's leadership collected an honour from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a right-wing Republican think group in Washington that includes Nazi German troops in its list of historic fatalities at the hands of communism, only days after demonstrations erupted in Cuba.
San Isidro's has openly supported the radical ideology of the Miami Cuban lobby under its branding as cosmopolitan intellectuals, rebel rappers, and avant garde musicians.
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