Los Frikis

0:00I'm Latif Nasser. This is Radiolab. And today on the show we have a story from our archives. It's about a group of kids growing up in Cuba in the 90s. And these kids, who had great taste in music, by the way, they decided to do something extreme. They decided to escape the system by any means necessary. We wanted to play it for you now, in part because it's Hispanic Heritage Month, but also because of what's going on in Cuba now. In 2025, Cuba is facing a major economic crisis. There are power outages, food shortages, protests. The government is punishing dissent and public criticism, all of which is similar to the situation that was playing out in the 90s when our story begins and that these kids were directly responding to.

0:52So we're going to play you this episode and then we have a quick update for you at the end. So here you are, Lost Freakies. Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. Okay. You're listening to Radiolab. Radiolab. From WNYC. Yeah. Rewind. Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad. This is Radiolab. Robert's traveling today, so it's just me. And today we have a very different kind of story than we've ever done. It comes from a journalist and filmmaker named Luis Treas. and an interesting thing kind of happened as we were reporting this. Sounds pretty clear. Yeah. It's got to be a landline. Luis and one of our producers, Tim Howard, had called up this guy, Vladimir Ceballos, who is a filmmaker himself, a Cuban guy, an exile, and the interview happened to be just a few hours after Obama had made that big announcement.

1:57Today, the United States of America is changing its relationship with the people of Cuba. in the most significant changes in our policy in more than 50 years. That happened just before the interview. Hello, is this Vladimir? Hey, we're recording. Yes, it's Vladimir. Vladimir, how are you doing? This is Tim in New York, and we also have Luis. Hi, Vlad. It's Luis. How are you, Luis? Good, good. And you? About the news, no? Yeah, amazing news, right? Man, I was crying, man. Really? Yeah, I was crying, man. Yeah. Yeah. First of all, you know, I've been here in the United States for 20 years, and I never, never think that I was going to see this day, you know.

2:40Really? We will begin to normalize relations between our two countries. Because it has been 50 years, 53 years since the United States, you know, broke the relationship with, diplomatic relationship with Cuba. Yeah. And nothing happened in Cuba, you know. Everything is the same. Now, everything is going to change.

3:15Today, a collaboration with a fantastic program, Radio Ambulante. Luis Treas comes to us from them. This is a story that predates the stuff you've been hearing in the news. In many ways, it's maybe a tiny, dark preamble to all of that stuff. It's a story about Cuba, the power of music, and a group of Cuban kids who decide to opt out. In this crazy way that when Luis Treas told us about it, we almost couldn't believe. So the reason we called up Vladdy is that we wanted to hear the backstory of all of this. Well, I was born in Pinal del Rio in 1964. Tell me about what it was like for you to be a kid.

3:58I was happy because in Cuba we didn't have any information. We didn't have any communication with anybody outside Cuba. And everything that we received, it was the news that the government wanted to give to us. He remembers listening to endless Fidel Castro speeches on the radio. I remember when I was a kid in elementary school, all the time they were teaching us that Russia was the big country in the world, the big economy, and everything that we would hope is to be like them. It was a given that he would get in line every year to get his toy. You know, I only got three toys every year. Because of rationing?

4:46Exactly. And then every week, he and his folks would wake up, they would go to the nearest church. to throw eggs at the church building. Throw eggs at the church? Why? Because we didn't believe in God. The government, they didn't believe in God, you know? That's how you showed you were a good revolutionary and Vladimir was just being a good boy. But when he turns 14, there comes a day when a friend takes him aside and shows him a video of Led Zeppelin. I remember that day. I remember like a... Do you remember what Led Zeppelin song it was? Kashmir.

5:22Cashmere! Oh yeah. Yeah, Cashmere. It was my first time that I hear rock and roll music. How did it make you feel when you heard Cashmere?

5:36Well, different. You know, you see Robert playing, and you see Jimmy Page with those long hair, and the move that they had.

5:49And the thing that they say, it was really different. And because of that, you know, it was completely changed. Completely changed my life. Let me tell you, completely changed my life. He's not sure why, but in that moment... I went from a good example to Freaky. I went to Freaky. I went to Freaky. What is Freaky? So freakies are what Cubans call the most extreme metalheads, hard rock, punk rockers. We started wearing dirty clothes, clothes with holes, long hair. Problem was? The Cuban radio station didn't put any rock music. I remember when I was 19 years old, 20 years old, my father gave me a Russian radio and it was a good FM.

6:45We went to the roof of some friends because in those roofs, you can listen to the station from Florida. Oh, man, when we listen Rolling Stone, Sympathy with the Devil. Hello, baby. Hello, baby. Say me here. Hello, baby. Man. Barry Manilow. We were excited to listen to Barry Manilow. After that, I didn't like it. In the beginning, everything that came from there in English was good, you know. Because, I don't know, that kind of music gives us another door. So, Vladdy's walking around with ripped jeans, long hair, and that's fine. It's a normal youth rebellion. But then, in the late 80s, everything changes.

7:40Mr. Gorbachev, open. this gate.

7:47Mr. Gorbachev teared down this wall. The wall went down. They are here in the thousands. They are here in the tens of thousands. And in reaction, the Castro government dug in. They died for internationalism. Fidel says, socialism, Socialismo. O muerte. O death. His slogan is painted freshly all over Havana. Socialism or death. Suddenly, music you listened to became very ideological, and if you listened to rock, you were listening to the enemy of the Cuban state, the United States. The government created a police presence in every neighborhood, every five blocks. And Vladimir says, if the police found you and you had long hair, they'd beat us, kick us, send you away to work cutting sugar cane in the cane fields.

8:41That's like that. Boom. In school, they'd often cut your hair against your will. He was abused.

8:49And just to jump in, this is the point in the story where things take a very, no other way to say it, a very punk rock turn. Because into this cultural war... Steps a guy named... Papo. Papo. We name him Papo La Bala. Papo La Bala. You know, Papo the bullet. I really want to say that he tried to embody that. That kind of bullet to your brain, that wake up.

9:15That's Bob Arellano. He's a professor at Southern Oregon University. He went several times in the 90s to Cuba to interview Papu, who he calls the Kurt Cobain of the freakies. Yeah, he looked very intense. He was cocky and confident and just charismatic. Super tall. Skinny. Yeah. He always wear an American flat. Oh, yeah, yeah. like a bandana. Those are two friends of Papo's, Jesús Díaz and Luis Hernández, who was also a bandmate of his.

9:52So Luis remembers the first time he met Papo, and it was on a night that a Communist Party meeting was taking place right outside his house. Outside the building, and when Papo is coming, he's coming in a bicycle and we his head a flag United States flag and when he's coming on his head? yeah my father my father going down he se escondió your father hid your father hid when he saw him coming with the American flag on his head yeah el padre mio se escondió en el balcón y le dijo papo tu estas loco are you crazy taking your flag out of your head. Papo said, why? Why? And everyone outside the building, silence.

10:52Papo was a weird guy.

11:01You can see video of Papo because Vladimir shot a documentary in 1994, where he interviewed Papo and some of the other freakies. And in that documentary, Papo talks about growing up poor. My father is an alcoholic. Mother abandoned. By age 14, he's in the streets. And a few years later, he makes a decision that's really at the heart of this story.

11:29Just to set it up so that you can understand the context. What happened was that in 1989, I think 1990, somewhere around there, the Cuban government is fighting in Angola. It's backing a leftist liberation movement, and it's kind of a proxy war with the United States. And in the late 80s, Cuban soldiers start coming back home. And some soldiers from the Cuban army that weren't in Africa, they came with HIV. HIV positive. And because of that, the government has all the people in Cuba tested with HIV. If you belong to a high-risk group, you were tested. They went to your place of work. They went to your apartment.

12:13They went to the school. They went to everybody. Wow. I remember they went to my work and they test everybody over there in the radio station. 50 people over there. Wow. Give me your blood. Give me your blood. Give me your blood. Give me your blood. Vladichez, they would come in, take your blood. And if they found that you were positive. The police came, put you in the police car, and go straight to the sanatorium. They just locked you up? Yeah. And I remember one day I was talking to him. Papo and his wife? Papo said, look, I want to live free. Look, they're kicking me out. They're beating me out.

12:54They don't want me to live like a rocket here. they are doing a lot of things to me, I'm going to do a lot of things to them. And he told me, look, I went to this rock concert in Villa Clara. Papa told him I met up with these other rockers, they were HIV positive, and I went and took a syringe, drew some blood from their arm, and I put the needle in my own arm. And I get myself with HIV. I get myself with blood, contaminated with HIV. And I looked at him and said, man, do you know what you did? Do you know what you're doing? You're going to die, man. And he said to me, I don't care. That's crazy, though.

13:38It was crazy. He knew for sure that when he did that, that that was a death sentence? For him, yes. He knows. Vladimir's not quite sure that the others that came after Papo really knew what they were doing. But Papo knew. Remember, he said socialism. or death. It's not going to be said to me. Death is a door.

14:06When you don't have any more doors to open, death is a door. Coming up, that door gets wider, others walk through, and for at least a beat, they find something besides death, something quite the opposite.

14:30Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad. This is Radiolab. Yes. One, two, one, two, mic check. That's Luis Treas of Radio Ambalante. Let's go back to his story about Cuba and music in the late 80s and 90s. And so far, a dude has made a crazy decision, a dude named Papo, to inject himself with HIV. Would you call it a protest? I think Papo would have called it a protest, but not the guys that came after. This is at a moment when there was a cultural war happening between the Castro government and anyone it deemed antisocial, which included kids with long hair who listen to rock. And it was also a moment where if you were found to be HIV positive in Cuba, you were forcibly quarantined.

15:09So Papo injects himself and he gets sent to the sanitarium. And can you describe that place? Like, what did he find? Well, he found a beautiful place in the middle of the Pinar del Rio countryside. Really? It's full of palm trees, very green, very lush, farm animals roaming in. And you went there? Yes, yes, I was there. I was there, and there are still farm animals over there. Actually, they would roam in a couple of cows and chickens. It's like kind of an idyllic place. So I went there to visit the last two rockers that still remain in the place. Gerson Govea and his wife, Johandra. And they're kind of like the keepers of all that went down in there, the memories.

16:00So I spent a couple of days with them and they walked me around. And it's full of like these little housing units. And you're saying this place was idyllic even back then? Yeah. Gerson and Johandra are walking me through it and they're like, okay, so we would be walking around here 10 years ago and Nirvana would be coming out of here. In Hibana. I have Metallica. Metallica would be coming out of the next house. No kidding. Yeah, so it was like Headbangers Ball in Pinar del Rio, you know? Wait, but why? I mean, how come they were able to have that freedom in the sanatorium but not outside? Initially, the sanitarium system was under the military, and it was more of a gulag.

16:51But in the late 80s, early 90s, the sanitariums went from the military being in charge to the Ministry of Health and Medicine. And these were, by all accounts, very progressive doctors, very concerned about their patients. They gave them all the food and medicine they needed. And they were like, you want to rock out? Go ahead. So it was like a prison, but it was also kind of a little bubble of freedom. Yeah. And strangely enough, they soon found out that they even had power. No police over there. A power they didn't have before. Vladdy told me this story. The patients who said the sanitarium could go out every 21 days for a day trip.

17:35And some of the freakies would go out. And just by flashing their ID cards that said they were AIDS patients, police would leave them alone. I remember on two or three occasions that the police came after them, and one of them has a syringe. A syringe. A syringe full of blood. And Vladi says the guy took out the blood and waved it at the police. And said, you want to come to me? Come in. Come to me. And they were afraid of that. And so word began to spread about what life was like inside the sanitarium. And you have to keep in mind that outside, Cuba was falling apart. Hard economic times in Cuba.

18:18The government today tightened bread rationing and raised egg prices. It blamed delays in Soviet shipments to Cuba. Almost overnight after the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba was left without the massive subsidies it used to get. That meant long lines for bread, short tempers. We were suffering. Vladimir Ceballos, who never actually lived inside the sanitarium, he says that people outside were going hungry, and he himself... I was weighing, like, 100 pounds, 98 pounds. Oh, my God. And as things just kept getting worse... You see, like, a hungry, sunburned, dehydrated... 50 ,000 people leave Cuba.

18:56They manage to escape on a raft and make it to the Florida Keys. These days, more Cubans than ever are taking the risk. It was the big crisis, you know, in the Clinton era, but... If you were in the sanatorium, you were fine. Yeah, just being able to get milk and an egg and beans. Bob Ariano says that that was a big motivation for a lot of kids. Yes, I'm not going to be harassed. Yes, I'm free. And yes, I also get meals. And it went from being a couple of self-injectors, a couple of dozen self-injectors, to being hundreds. Whoa. And did the government know that this was happening? Well, there's this Swedish documentary from the time.

19:44It's called Socialismo Muerte. And in it, there's this bishop of Havana.

19:52His last name is Céspedes. And he says that he met some of the kids that were injecting themselves with AIDS. And that at a state dinner, he approached Fidel. He told him. These kids, they're injecting themselves, and Fidel... Couldn't believe it.

20:15And then after that, in the pharmacy, they don't sell syringe anymore. They put a law that if you inject themselves with HIV, you're going to spend eight years in prison. But... It didn't matter. It was like a movement. It was like a moon. And all of a sudden you have all these bands forming across the island in different sanitariums. In the biggest one of them all, in Santiago de la Vega, Los Cocos, which is like a half hour, 45 minutes south of Havana, you have the first group that gets formed. It's called VIH, which translates to HIV.

21:02But then in the center of the island, in this town called Santa Clara, you had the Cuban punk band Escoria, and Escoria translates as... Scum, right? Escoria. And according to Bob, if you look back to the 80s, the people who were fleeing Cuba... The balseros, the rafters. One of the responses of the Cuban government were billboards that said, Que vaya la Escoria. Que se vayan. Let the scum leave. So to call yourself Escoria, to call yourself scum, that is punk rock. And were these bands big outside the sanatorium too? Escoria is, I mean, you can't talk about Cuban punk without, I mean, Escoria is like...

21:44So their tapes got out or something. Yeah, totally. And what happens next? I mean, these bands are forming, kids are self-injecting. Does it just keep growing and growing? Yeah.

21:55There's tape of Herson and Yohandra saying that it got to be so fashionable that kids started to think that in order to be a freaky, you had to have AIDS. Really? Yeah, no, there was tape of Yohandra saying... And the kids were saying that if you really wanted to be a rocker in that time, you had to have AIDS. It's like the fact that it went from 10 or 20 to 200 or more was obviously this kind of just joiner phenomenon of like, that's so cool, I'm going to do it too.

22:37There was even talk among some of the young people I met of thinking that, oh, eventually Fidel and those guys will find a cure. You're going to find a cure for this. Cuba with one of the best health care systems in the Western Hemisphere. We're going to live forever. But everything started to change when the first of them died.

23:00According to Vladi, the first kid that died in Pinar del Rio was a guy named Manuel. We don't know his last name or his age. He was the first. And when the second died, and when the third died, everything stopped. At one point in Vladi's documentary, which was made in 1994, Papo says that in two years, About 18 people died. And they started seeing how you died, because you don't die like a normal person when they had a heart attack or anything. No, you transformed yourself. A lot of them went blind. Then they went insane. They started getting opportunistic diseases, you know, how AIDS works. Seeing that, they started thinking about what they did.

23:46Did kids start saying they wish they hadn't done this? Well, when you see Vladdy's documentary and that Swedish documentary, Socialismo Muerte, which was made in 1995, you definitely see the kids having deep regrets. You have one of them saying, I regret this. I regret it a million times. How about Papo? Well, I never heard Papo ever question that he had done it.