A Chat With Ruben Blades

Recently, I got a chance to hang out a little with El Maestro Rubén Blades. Swinging by a dive-y place on Seventh Avenue, we spied Mariano Rivera warming up in the bullpen, about to blow his second save in a row. "My friend," he muttered, and we decided to leave presciently. Outside we ran into one of Chico Alvarez's side guys, who launched into one of those familiar raps about the lack of Latin music clubs. Then we took a walk around the block and wound up talking in a little Cuban-themed place in Chelsea.

Spanglishkid: So tell me more about your new job as Panama’s Minister of Tourism.

Rubén Blades: I’m doing this job for several reasons: altruistic reasons and selfish reasons. I want to earn my opinion of myself. I want to be near my dad, he’s 81, my mother died at 63. I have a great president, Panama has a great president. He’s trying to make a difference. He’s a 42-year-old guy who really wants to change things and I thought I want to try to help him. I thought if he wins I will work with him in whatever capacity he feels I can be useful. I made my money as a musician singing about social problems and I felt hypocritical to make money and live—it’s sort of weird, ironic and contradictory that by singing and writing “Pablo Pueblo” and songs like that then all of a sudden I’m living better than the subjects of the songs. That’s one of the reasons I ran for president in 1994. Now this is a continuation of the debt that I feel I have. Now I’m working to try to make a difference in a government that I believe in. If it was somebody else I don’t think I would have done that.

Spanglishkid: But given that you ran for President before, is this a stepping stone for further aspirations?

Rubén Blades: I don’t have higher aspirations at this time. We’re running the 100-meter dash at the Olympics and we’re running while we’re tying our shoelaces. You need a lot of patience and you need to deal with the status quo while you’re changing it. You’re administrating a country and you’re reforming it at the same time. I think everything is an example in my life. If you play the example and believe and you don’t sell yourself in the process you’re going to transmit that to other people. It’s all about rescuing the idea. The idea only exists when you defend it. If you don’t, it’s just something written on a piece of paper. Everybody knows whether I’m good or bad at what I do—I can get fired. I’m putting everything into it, helped by good people. But the bottom line is that I’m doing it.

Spanglishkid: Tell me more specifically about your functions in this job.

Rubén Blades: We have about 320 people working in the Instituto Panameño de Turismo. Last year we had 6.9 per cent of the contribution to the GNP, almost $900 million. It’s a lot of responsibility. When I walked in I had to understand what we were going to do. I knew one thing, we weren’t going to work just for dollars and destroy the country. I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I started to try to understand what it was that we had. I started traveling throughout the whole country and run an inventory of resources. After doing that I pretty much know what we have and now we’re prioritizing what we can offer. We have to create jobs on a national scale. That’s important because in the past jobs we’re only available in the city of Panama, which is where the power is. We have to present a national plan so that everyone from every indigenous area will benefit. We have to identify offers that don’t compete amongst themselves. Second we have a very bad wealth distribution. We have to change that by providing jobs in areas where there are no jobs. So people can have their businesses and live there. All the taxes are sent to the cities. We need to foster an economic independence that will also foster a political independence. That’s what the president and I talked about. I know that Martin is very political and very practical. He spoke very clearly. Tourism is the only thing that can create all these concepts. Hopefully now that we have identified the areas that we’re going to push, then hopefully by the end of five years we will have a plan that is doable.
We have so many cultural opportunities that were never really explored before as potential tourist offerings. That kind of investment creates an immediate impact. Hotels that may be of certain occupancy and also eco or rural tourism or the mom and pops. It’s not gonna be Cancún. Least of all in areas that are very delicate. Because we didn’t have a boom there are areas that are very fragile. A lot of these places that are pristine are in indigenous areas so they’re protected. People can’t just walk in and do whatever. In Boca del Toro there’s been such a disorder for so long in terms of adjudication of land that we need to restore order to the process. We need to overcome the confusion created by people who were selling rights that were not granted properly. We can’t encourage disorder or go against the constitution. There’s nine projects in development.

Then we’ve been trying very hard to eliminate corruption. If anybody as much as blinks at you, I tell investors, talk to me immediately. There must be no corruption. I feel the president supports me.

Spanglishkid: I don’t know how exaggerated it its, but literature like Le Carre’s Tailor of Panama implies that Panama is recognized as having a classic reputation for corruption.

Rubén Blades: In Latin America, corruption has been rampant in public administration. That’s a fact. The issue is we have a president and administration that since the election, the campaign promise is zero corruption. You can’t do business and work for the government. You don’t get the sense that the government is encouraging this.

It’s hard to go back to being decent. You gotta do it step by step. If you take everything down the thing falls down. You have to change one thing at a time because you have to administer the country. You can’t stop the country because then you have civil war. There are so many degrees and shades and forms of corruption. The sad part is that we talk about it as if it were a rarity. My experience is we’ve been in trouble since I don’t know when. It’s an institutionalized deformation of the civic ideal. What we’re changing is an ingrained situation. What you have to eliminate is the perception of impunity and eliminate the opportunity for corruption and you have to punish it.

Spanglishkid: What do you think of the emerging leadership in Latin America that is taking a left point of view and resisting the free trade imperatives of the U.S. and Europe?

Rubén Blades: I think that right now because of all the developments occurring worldwide nations are beginning to elect groups that have social concerns that never were before allowed a position of leadership by interests that control the country to satisfy their own agendas. Once these groups adopt the democratic process and reach the presidency, they find that in order to carry their social agenda they have to make deals with the powers that exist. It’s unavoidable short of confrontation, one that Lula could not win. Some countries have a better shot than others. I don’t know how a country with 50 or 60 million can redress decade and decades of abuse, low self-esteem, corruption. There could be a change that could make a difference. They have to make deals and save as many people as they can. In smaller countries like Panama we have a shot at redefining the relationship we have with economic and military powers of the world. Because since we have the resources and less than 3 million people, we just need leadership that was lacking in the past. Ideology as such doesn’t have a place to administrate resources. But solidarity is a form of ideology and so is humanity. Not to build your happiness on the back of someone else’s unhappiness. If the country supports the leadership they have a shot. Venezuela is one case where there seems to be a penchant for confrontation from both sides. The world today is a very strange world. It’s no longer defined ideologically which means the actors and the arguments change constantly and mutate. You have a situation where what you knew is no longer applicable with certainty. That is an opportunity for positive things and also a danger of opportunism. If the US foreign policy was once containment of communism which led to the support of corrupt regimes and military dictatorships, the new strategy is economic and the US has mutated into one that will allow left governments as long as they’re efficient. Sooner or later there has to be a head to head confrontation between US and China and it’s not going to be because of ideology. It’s going to be because of economics. If the Chinese form an oriental cartel where based on cultural reasons a bloc is formed between China, Japan, the two Koreas and all the smaller countries of southeast Asia, and they collaborate economically and scientifically what would the reaction be when they invent a car that runs on water and you can buy it for $29.99? Everything we know today is obsolete the moment you thought it because everything is changing at an amazing speed.

Spanglishkid: What implications does this new Latin American politics have for Panama?

Rubén Blades: We’re in the middle of negotiations about NAFTA. We have to defend our interests. There are some areas in the agricultural area of the treaty that we aren’t discussing anymore because we felt our position was being threatened. In the past they’d buy you off with something. What’s different now is that you’re not being bought off. They know that. The autonomy of the decisions is about all we can do.

What they did to save the economy with the double currency in Cuba was incredible. Imagine the ideological shock that produced. You see changes that you can’t even begin to imagine, and compromise. They had to explain that internally. The creation of two types of people in Cuba and all the things that result from that. But it gave them the space to sustain the regime. Did they compromise completely? That’s a semantic discussion. Imagine the politburo discussion “in order to save Marxism we have to bring in tourists.” What? That must have been a hell of a discussion internally.

All of that is going to depend on to what degree these alliances create for Panama things that we need. There’s a movement about creating unity for Latin American countries. In my opinion if we can create in tourism, people who are coming from Europe, the multi-destination thing is a must. We have to explore other conditions. Are we going to be presenting a package where people feel they’re as secure in Panama as in a different country? We need to be clear about our goals and explain them publicly. We’re dealing with every scenario from South to Central America, need to establish alliances but be clear what our interests are.

Spanglishkid: Did you read the article in The New York Times about U.S. policy directed at disrupting Daniel Ortega’s attempt to run again for president of Nicaragua?

Rubén Blades: Some people in the States are caught in a time warp. I’ve been asked twice about Noriega. That was 16 years ago. The perception is that there’s still a war raging in Nicaragua. Why does Ortega want to run again after everything he’s been through? He still wants to be relevant politically as a leader. Whether the people are going to present him with that opportunity, that’s none of my business. We tend to be remembered by what caused the biggest impact. Whether the U.S. has the right to interfere, they will tell you it’s for the preservation of their national interests and that’s unassailable. More than becoming involved in the Ortega scenario they’re already saying we don’t like this guy.

Danny Glover invited me to be a part of a TransAfrica forum but now that I’m working as the minister, but now that because they support Chavez and my name comes up all of a sudden I’m supporting Chavez. I believe in African American initiatives and Danny is my friend. But now I’m a public functionary. I’m not just Rubén Blades, it’s the Minister of Tourism of Panama said that…boom. Then I’m going to have an effect. People are going to wonder if this is the policy of the government of Panama.

You can’t have an objective discussion. I used to try but it doesn’t work any more. Are you for or against? They ask you. And I say it’s not that simple. But then they want you to state things and you end up supporting ideological lies. It’s a tricky scenario my friend.

Spanglishkid: How do you use appreciation of Panamanian music and culture to promote tourism?

Rubén Blades: What I think we can offer is festivals dances of authentic music from Spanish to mestizo to African and indigenous heritage. National competitions. Even solidarity experiments like building la casa. Junta de Embares. They build a house like the quakers did. This is good for our self-esteem on a national scale. We’re also talking about internal tourism. Reflecting who we are on a national scale.

Spanglishkid: The official rhetoric of reggaetón gives props to El General and Panamanian rappers as the beginning of the genre. Did you ever think of promoting that?

Rubén Blades: I’d go as far as saying the first time I saw the original rappers…the way they held their hands and the way they moved, the way the street people in Panama moved their hands, that’s Panamanian. My feeling is that somewhere along the line, the rappers in Brooklyn must have been panameño. Those movements are Panamanian and I saw that when I was 17 or 18 in Panama. I'd never seen anybody moving their hands that way. With reggaeton, they began their interpretation of rap. It’s more rhythmic, more sexual and some of it has a tremendous sense of humor and it’s oriented towards dancing, which rap is not. This is openly about dancing. Not much ideological content really.

Spanglishkid: So your music career is not over yet, right?

Rubén Blades: I have some demos that I started recording about 2 ½ years ago, almost finishing Mundo. What I did was guitar, acoustic. I got a Cuban tres—never played one in my life. I played bongos and bells, clave, maracas. And Walter Flores, the piano player from Editus and arranger, composer played bass and flute. All original songs. The direction of the songs is Siembra, Buscando América. You could say this is a continuation of Buscando América/Nuestra Vida. It’s around that trilogy. All the subject matter. The demo is going to be called “Los Cantares del Subdesarrollo.” It’s got a lot of humor. More humor than anything I’ve done before. It was recorded in a garage in Los Angeles. A little studio that I bought. One microphone, eight channels. And I left it pretty much the way it was because I wanted to send a message to the industry at large. You don’t need to spend a lot of money doing this. You can do it as long as you have the material and you know what you’re doing. You don’t need to spend thousands and thousands of dollars. It’s going to fly or fall based on the quality of what you’ve done. The lyrics are going to carry it through. The melody. I may re-record them later but right now I’m just doing it very physical natural, basic stuff. It’s urban son. I’m going to release it in Puerto Rico only and I’m going to have a limited release on my web page. You can download it, we’ll keep the prices really low. It has a song called “Las calles” that is a very… it swings, man. This is just basic shit. There’s no intro, no mambo, no coda, it’s just the song. The conga we sampled Bobby Allende. I did all the vocals, coros and soneo and everything. This month I’m going to do it at some point. I’m also doing a record with Cheo Feliciano, because he’s been my idol and we’re not getting any younger. We talked about this a long time ago and about Tito Curet too and I was going to do something with him and then I got sidetracked and we never did it and now he’s dead. God bless him. Cheo recorded four of my songs “Sin tu cariño,” “Guanamayo.” “Busca lo tuyo.” We’re going to do a song together, “Si te dicen” with Jimmy Sabater. So we’ll have nine songs. I don’t know when it will be released. Cheo means a lot to me as a musician and a person and I want to make sure that in the future we can work together.