Ironic: members of a choir founded by commie hero Che Guevara have jumped at a chance to escape from the island workers' paradise of Cuba.
Ernesto Cendoya-Sotomayor, a Cuban baritone, thought about defecting even before he landed in Toronto on a Canadian tour with the prestigious Coro Nacional de Cuba.Posted by Alan at October 27, 2005 10:33 AMThis was his first foreign tour -- and the 27-year-old singer saw it as his one chance to escape the repression and fear that marks his life in Cuba, where the indomitable Fidel Castro has ruled since the Communist revolution in 1959, the same year the choir was founded by Ernesto (Che) Guevara.
After a performance Sunday in a Toronto church, Mr. Cendoya-Sotomayor saw two fellow singers fleeing the hotel, suitcases in hand. He knew he had to act quickly. He called the Cuban-Canadian Foundation and within an hour, the foundation's president had sent a car to collect him, and two more singers.
"It is hard to choose between your freedom and your family. But this was my one opportunity to escape," said Mr. Cendoya-Sotomayor in an interview yesterday in the home of Ismael Sambra, a Cuban exile and the foundation's president. The singer is so worried about the safety of his four-year-old daughter and wife in Havana that he did not want his face to appear in a photograph.
In all, 11 of the 41-member choir managed to flee the hotel between 6 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. on Sunday, when Digna Guerra, the choir's manager, discovered the absences. In an emergency meeting, she warned the remaining singers that the Cuban government would retaliate against their family members if they tried to seek asylum here, according to Mr. Sambra.
Before this, Mr. Sambra had organized a second vehicle to pick up several more defectors. Others escaped with the help of Cuban-Canadian friends, while one unlucky singer who went back to the hotel to collect her belongings lost her chance.