To Kris Kristofferson and Stephen Stills.

Hi Kris and Stephen:

Long time no see!!!, 27 years to be exact. Last time was at the Karl Marx theater in (what was left of) our former beautiful Capitol City;
and as you probably know, SONY is reissuing that "Havana Jam" 1978 concert on CD and DVD formats. On that occasion, probably you didn't
(want to) notice that you guys and me, along with many other American and Cuban artists, performed on that historic event in front of a
strictly government controlled audience, to a house full of Castro's supporters. Watching the tape now I can see you singing songs to the
dictator, then already 19 years in power, who as expected didn't attended our concert.

But no sweat, you guys are not alone on that one. Ever since Lenin debuted his Bolshevik revolution in 1918, until its noisy downfall 70
years later, in this snobbish world of ours there has never been a lack of those picturesque "tourists of foreign revolutions" who take charge
in celebrating the buffoonery of left-wing tyrants and red parrots of all times and latitudes, from Stalin, Mao, and Nicolae Ceauscescu to
Che Guevera, Ho Chi Minh, Castro and Chavez. So, I mean that, while Jane Fonda, Charlie Haden, Pete Seeger and Joan Baez flew around the World
(first class, of course!), singing freely their "progressive" songs to a system they never had to suffer, solely in Germany, since the first
stone of that mournfully celebrated wall in Berlin was laid at  dawn, on August 13, 1961 until its dramatic collapse thirty years later, more
than 40,000 were sentenced for attempting to escape or helping those who did. The average time just for assisting someone to escape, ranged
 from five years to life imprisonment; that's including parents who helped their children flee from that "workers paradise."

Some managed to survive that odyssey, but hundreds either died in their attempt, or in the jails of the improperly called Democratic Republic
of Germany. Many of these cruel and arbitrary orders to jail or execute captured escapees came directly from the pro-Soviet dictator Erick
Honecker, and I can only imagine the reaction of these victims and their families when, for humanitarian reasons, the newly unified German
government allowed this old tyrant to travel to Chile to treat his cancer, along with his daughter, the wife of an ex-collaborator of the
wasted socialist president Salvador Allende, who also had a suicidal daughter married to a high ranking henchman of Fidel Castro. "God
raises them and the devil piles them together!" as the old Spanish saying goes.

In the case of our suffering Cuba, after more than 46 years of dictatorship, all I can tell you is that, quoting Cuban writer Carlos Eire:
two million people (18% of our population) do not run away from a paradisiacal Caribbean island, only because a beautiful revolution
had just happened.  So I wonder if after all these years of repression, divided families and innocent people killed by firing squad or dying in
the see, still you guys really want to keep those lamentable songs to the older dictator on this planet on that SONY reissue?... I would
really think about it!...

I hope all is well in your life.

Sincerely:

Paquito D'Rivera
Cuban exiled musician-author