/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/ARTS-CUBA: Lennon Takes a Seat in Havana Park

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Jan 23 2001 (IPS) - A statue of John Lennon graces a centrally located park of the Cuban capital as a sort of unusual attraction in a country where, his band, The Beatles, was once banned.

At least five people can be seen at any one time, at any hour of the day, beside the composer of ‘Imagine’, who is permanently seated on a bench with his legs crossed and leaning slightly to the left, as if conversing with whoever has taken the seat next to him.

There is always someone who leaves a flower, or newlyweds who have their photo taken as they embrace the statue, or a young woman who holds the musician’s hand, or tourists who approach and speak in Japanese or German, as if this Havana version of Lennon were multilingual.

“This was a fairly peaceful and solitary place, but now there are always people who come to see Lennon,” comments Juan Manuel Gutiérrez, who for the last two years has visited the park every day to play a few hours with his young son.

There are also police who watch over the site, and not without reason. On Dec. 21, during a heavy evening downpour, someone stole the statue’s bronze glasses, meaning the sculptor had to create a new pair.

The life-sized work was created by Cuban artist José Villa, who says he attempted to keep alive the image of the British musician as his fans remember him: without a marble pedestal, but with the long hair, jeans, boots and glasses Lennon was known for.

“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one,” a line from ‘Imagine,’ one of Lennon’s songs, shares the foot of the park bench with the city shield of Havana.

The monument was inaugurated Dec. 8 as part of a day of tribute held on the island on the 20th anniversary of Lennon’s murder. Also on that day, a plaque was unveiled at the house located at 251 Menlove Avenue, in Liverpool, England, where Lennon lived with an aunt following his parents’ divorce.

Stories in the world media mentioned a project for a statue in Trafalgar Square, in London, and of promises to restore and make into a cultural centre a property in Costa del Sol, Spain, belonging to Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono.

The drape covering the statue in the Havana park was removed by singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez, founder of the ‘New Trova’ musical movement in Cuba and a known admirer of The Beatles, the globally famous British group that also included Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

President Fidel Castro also took part in the unveiling, and lamented that he had never met Lennon.

“There are convictions that are quite justified,” said the president, in reference to the era when Cuba’s official line identified The Beatles as symbols of the imperialist ideology and enemies of the Cuban revolution.

The ban on The Beatles lasted until 1966, when a radio programme broadcast a song by the Liverpool quartet for the first time on the island. But many years had to go by before rock fans, who had long hair and wore jeans, were no longer automatically seen in Cuba as the opposition to Castro’s socialist regime.

“The Beatles influenced my way of thinking. As in many other cases, they were always misunderstood, but their artistic legend is strong and prevailed over all prejudices,” commented writer Francisco López Sacha.

López Sacha heads the literary section at the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists, a group linked to the government, that organises annual seminars about the transcendence of The Beatles.

The colloquia originated with a group of musicians who, in the early 1990s, decided to hold a concert in homage to Lennon in the same park where the statue is now found, a park known informally by the name of the former Beatle.

The first concert, which involved performances by all singers and musicians who wanted to take part, won the support of the governmental Institute of Art and Cinema, and used sound equipment provided by the Afro-Cuban rock group, Síntesis.

It was then that a group of art students proposed creating a monument to Lennon, but the idea went no farther than a commemorative stone that was stolen two days after it was placed in the park.

“The statue weighs more than two tons, so it would be difficult to carry away. If it didn’t weigh so much, someone would have already taken it,” commented one of the guards, adding that just two weeks after Lennon’s first pair of glasses were stolen, the replacement pair was already loose in its fittings.