Cubans Prepare to Protest Latin Grammys Show

Scattered, politically quiescent and far smaller than its counterpart in Miami, Los Angeles’ Cuban American community faces an uphill struggle to organize a protest outside this year’s Latin Grammy awards Tuesday night.

Activists opposed to participation by artists from Fidel Castro’s Cuba so easily mobilized forces to protest staging the event in Miami that organizers, citing the fear of disruption, decided to hold it in Los Angeles again this year.

Here, emigres have no Cuban radio stations or massive political networks to mobilize action.

Instead, “we’re trying to advise every Cuban through telephone in a kind of chain. You call me, and I call somebody else, and so on,” said Miguel Talleda, California chapter coordinator for Alpha 66, an anti-Castro group.

Their ranks are so thin that one leading Cuban American activist is even talking about asking Vietnamese expatriates--far more numerous in Southern California and similarly vociferous in their anti-communism--for help.

Police in Inglewood are preparing for as many as 1,000 demonstrators to show up outside the Forum, where the event will be held. Protesters and counterdemonstrators who support normalizing ties with Cuba will be kept apart as they demonstrate across from the Forum at Manchester Boulevard and Prairie Avenue, said Inglewood Police Officer Gabriela Garcia.

Other police departments, including the LAPD, could be called for assistance if things get out of hand, Garcia said.

Organizers of the event also say they are prepared. “We and the Inglewood and Los Angeles police departments are aware that . . . groups are planning civil protests, and we are confident about the safety of our guests,” said Enrique Fernandez, senior vice president and executive director of the Latin Recording Academy.

But even some protest organizers doubt that anything close to 1,000 protesters will show up.

“More than 400, I can tell you with honesty, I don’t think will show up,” said Juan Vila, general manager of the Cuban American-owned 20 De Mayo newspaper.

“In Miami, [Cubans] live within a circle. What you tell one person, you tell everybody,” Vila said. “Here, you have a Cuban in Riverside, one in San Bernardino, one in Palm Springs and one in Chino.”

Santiago Martin, who helps run https://www.cubainfolinks.net, a Cuban American political Web site based in Glendale, has launched a campaign to mobilize protesters. But he realizes that the distance between Miami and Los Angeles can be measured by more than miles.

“In Miami, people are stirring things up all the time. They are consumed by these things every day. Over here, people aren’t into it as much,” Martin said. “Cuba is big business in Miami,” and anti-Castro media thrive there.

Still, some say what the protest might lack in numbers, it could make up for in passion.

“This is a thing of honor for Cubans,” said Rene Cruz, director of a Los Angeles-based Cuban political prisoners’ association who gained fame among many Cuban Americans for once being charged in the United States with plotting to invade the island. “We invite everyone with a love of liberty to join us.”

However, another group of people who will demonstrate say that right-wing Cuban groups have unfairly portrayed the Cuban government as an oppressive regime and that the United States should normalize ties with that country.

Jon Hillson of the Los Angeles Coalition in Solidarity With Cuba said people have called him from San Francisco, Santa Barbara and other cities expressing an interest in demonstrating their support of Cuba on Tuesday.

“The [protesters] have a right to express their opinion peacefully and legally, just as the Cuban performers do,” Hillson said. “We’re going to be there to let the Cuban artists know they’re welcome.”