Singers release CD to benefit Cuban exiles

Havana, Cuba, Mar 10, 2011 / 11:58 am

Thirty Spanish and Cuban singers including Gloria Estefan, Alejandro Sanz, Ricardo Montaner and Willy Chirino, have released a new album to raise funds for the International Committee in Support of the Varela Project.

The CD, titled “Un disco muy especial” (A Very Special CD), was presented in Madrid at the offices of the Society for Performing Artists of Spain.

Oscar Gomez, a writer, composer and the producer of the CD, said it was the first time Cuban artists “who throughout several decades have developed their talents with great success outside Cuba” have joined together “for a humanitarian cause” with “artists who are residents but also dissidents of the totalitarian government.”

The CD includes the song, “Todos Cubanos” (We Are All Cubans), written by Oswaldo Paya Sardinas, coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement and the leader of the Varela Project. The initiative seeks a peaceful transition to democracy for Cuba.

Paya has been nominated to receive the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize.

Regis Iglesias, one of the former political prisoners exiled to Spain, expressed gratitude for the aid from the project. In all of the years of the Communist regime, he said, the people of Cuba have never lost “that free spirit.”

Since July 2010, the Cuban government has released 85 prisoners of conscience and sent them directly to Spain.