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was tough even convincing him to let us do a rap concert in his theater.”
    It struck me that Magia did intend the song to have a local resonance. She was claiming that it was a song about capitalist countries. But Magia had never seen a capitalist country. She had never even left Cuba. Just as Titon and Giral had defended their films by saying that they took place in a prerevolutionary past, so Magia was preparing her defense. And this defense would allow her to use the platform of the high-profile Cine Riviera to provoke conversations about a reality that she did know very well—that of the poor black women who worked the streets in neighborhoods like Central Havana, where she had grown up.
    So what was I defending?
    R ap music may have carried a negative stigma with theater managers and event promoters, but salseros were the center-piece of Cuba's emerging tourist culture. A few weeks later I went with Randy's mother, Lily, to an afternoon show at the Casa de la Música (House of Music) in Miramar. The neighborhood had been upscale in prerevolutionary times but was now populated by tourist hotels and the small-scale mansions of foreign embassies; the elegant former homes of upper-class exiles were occupied by multiple working-class Cuban families. The Casa de la Música used to be a popular venue for local Cubans, who would go there on weekends to dance, drink rum, and listen to salsa. It used to cost five pesos for an afternoon show and ten pesos for an evening show. But by the 1990s the Casa de la Música could no longer finance its operations. It began charging forty pesos for afternoon shows and ten dollars at night. With an afternoon show costing more than half their weekly salary, Cubans stopped coming to shows. It was now tourists, accompanied by jineteros , who danced, drank rum, and enjoyed the salsa bands.
    The cabaret-like atmosphere of the Casa de la Musica, with its dimmed lights, round tables with white tablecloths, and neatly attired waiters, contrasted with the bright Caribbean midafternoon sunlight outside. As Lily and I entered the place, we squinted as our eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness. The tableau that materialized before us was strangely reminiscent of a Batista-era nightclub, except that the North American steam-ship owners and businessmen had been replaced by Canadian joint venture executives, pink-faced German tourists, and aging British matrons. A Cuban woman in a tight fluorescent-pink dress fawned over an obese white man in a flower print shirt to our left. In front of us two Cuban youths in guayabera shirts competed with each other for the attention of a tourist.
    The feature band for the afternoon was Dan Den, a salsa dance band founded by Juan Carlos Alfonso. After a few upbeat dance numbers Dan Den switched into the song “Atrevido” (Daring) by the Spanish-based Cuban rap group Orishas. The rap song was about a couple who move from the provinces to Havana and swindle tourists as a way of bringing themselves out of rural poverty.
    The lead singer of Dan Den chanted from the chorus to the Orishas' song: “Everything that she asked for.”
    The Cubans in the audience shouted back, “El punto se la gastaba!” (The idiot paid out.)
    â€œA pretty room in the Cohiba,” the singer intoned.
    â€œThe idiot paid out!”
    â€œA dress for her, and a shirt for me.”
    â€œThe idiot paid out!”
    â€œIf she wanted to go to the beach.”
    â€œThe idiot paid out!”
    â€œHe was running out of money, but…”
    â€œThe idiot paid out!”
    â€œTo dance at a concert with Orishas.”
    â€œThe idiot paid out!”
    The call-and-response went on for the whole chorus. The Cubans were dancing and singing along, especially the jineteros who were there with foreigners. They punctuated their line with emphatic glee, all the while smiling and flirting with their foreigners, who were blissfully unaware of what was going