Los Frikis

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Get your pin and we can't wait to see you guys next month. Thanks everyone. I'm Lutthuf 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 this 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. So we're gonna play you this episode, and then we have a quick update for you at the end. So here you are, Lost Freakies. Yeah, wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radiolab. Radiolab. From WNYC. Six. Yep. Rewind. Hey, I'm Chad Iboomrod. 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 Louise Treyas. And an interesting thing kind of happened as we were reporting this. Sounds pretty clear. Yeah. It's gotta be a landline. Louise and one of our producers, Tim Howard, had called up this guy, Vladimir Ceballos, who is a filmmaker himself, Cuban guy, exile. And the interview happened to be just a few hours after Obama had made that big announcement. Today, the United States of America is changing its relationship with the people of Cuba. And 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 Louise. Hi, Vlad. It's Louise. How are you, Louise? Good, good. How about the news, no? Yeah, amazing news, right? Man, I was crying, man. Really? Yeah, I was crying, man. 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 gonna see this day, you know? Really? We will begin to normalize relations between our two countries. Because it has been 50 years, 53 years, since the United States, you know, brought the relationship with, diplomatic relationship with Cuba. And nothing happened in Cuba, you know? Everything is the same. Now, everything is gonna change. Today, 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 Bladdy is that we wanted to hear the backstory of all of this. Well, I was born in Pina del Rio in 1964. Tell me about what it was like for you to be a kid. I was happy because in Cuba, we didn't have any information. We didn't have any communication with anybody else, like Cuba. And everything that we received, it was the news that the government wanted to give us to us. He remembers listening to endless videocastro speeches on the radio. I remember when I was a kid in elementary school, all the time they were teaching us that, froscha, 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 get three toys every year. Because of rationing? Exactly. 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 Bladdy 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 it. Do you remember what Led Zeppelin song it was? Kashmir. Kashmir. Kashmir. Oh yeah. Yeah, Kashmir. It was my first time that I hear rock and roll music. How did it make you feel when you heard Kashmir? Well, different. You know, you see roller planes, and you see Jimmy Page with those long hair and the move that they had. And the thing that they say, it was really different. And because of that, you know, it was a completely change. Completely change my life. Let me tell you, completely change 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 freaky's are what Cubans call the most extreme metalheads, hard rock punk rockers. We started wearing dirty clothes, clothes with holes, and long hair. Problem was, the Cuban radio station didn't put any rock music. And remember when I was 19 years old, 20 years old, my father giving a Russian radio, and it was a good FM. We went to the roof of some friends because in those roofs, you can listen to the station from Florida. Amen, we listen to Rolling Stones, it's sympathy with the devil. Hello, baby. Hello, baby, San Mexico. Hello, baby. Man. Barry Manilow, we were excited to listen to Barry Manilow. I said, that I didn't like enough. But in the beginning, everything that came from there in English was good, because I don't know, that kind of music gives us another door. So, Ladi'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. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. The wall went down. They are here in the thousands, they are here in the tens of thousands. And in reaction? They died for socialism. The Castro government dug in. They died for internationalism. Fidel says, socialism, or death. His slogan is painted freshly all over Havana, socialism or death. Suddenly, music you listen to became very ideological, and if you listen to rock, you were listening to the enemy of the Cuban state, the United States. The government created 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. That's like that. In school, they'd often cut your hair against your will. It was abuse. And 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 Papu. We name him Papu La Bala. Papu La Bala, you know, Papu the bullet. I really want to say that he tried to embody that, that kind of bullet to your brain that wake up. That's Bob Ariano. 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 a American flag. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like a bandana. Those are two friends of Papu's, Jesus Diaz and Luis Hernandez, who was also a bandmate of his. So Luis remembers the first time he met Papu, and it was on a night that a Communist Party meeting was taking place right outside his house. Outside the building, and when Papu's coming, he's coming in a bicycle, and his head, a flag, United States flag. And when he's coming. On his head? Yeah, my father, my father going down, seconded. Your father hit when he saw him coming with the American flag on his head. Yeah, my father, my father, he was hiding in the van, and he said, Papu, you're crazy. Are you crazy? Taking your flag out of your head. Papu said, why? Why? And everyone outside the building, silence. Papu was, he was a weird guy. You can see video of Papu, because Vladimir shot a documentary in 1994, where he interviewed Papu and some of the other freaky's. And in that documentary, Papu talks about growing up poor. 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. Just to set it up so that you can understand the context. What happened was that in 1989, I think, in 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 were 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, they went to the school, they went to everybody. I remember they went to my ward and they tested everybody over there in the radio station. 50 people were over there. Give me your blood, give me your blood, give me your blood, give me your blood. Ladi says 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. Papu and his wife? Look, I don't want to live here in this system that is taking me to where it is taking me. I want to live free. Look, they are kicking me out, they are beating me out, they don't want me to live like a rocker here. They are doing a lot of things to me and gonna do a lot of things to them. And he told me, look, I went to this rock concert in Villaclara. Papu 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 gave myself with HIV. I gave myself with blood. Contaminated with HIV, you know. And I look at him and said, man, do you know what you did? Do you know what are you doing? You're gonna die, man. And he said to me, I don't care. That's crazy though. It 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 Papu really knew what they were knowing, but Papu knew. Remember, he said, socialism. Socialismo, or muerte. Or death. And Papu said to me, death is a door. When 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. Hey, Lulu here, and this episode of The Better Help, it is March in like a lion, out like a lamb, and somewhere in the middle, it's International Women's Day. And Better Help wants us all to just take a moment to consider the women in our lives, our personal lives, our society, and thank them for their strength and for all that they carry. That work matters. They matter. You matter. And therapy offers a space for all of us to take care of ourselves in the way we deserve. Think about the roles you play for the people you love. Think about how those roles, intentionally or not, weigh on you, and in the worst moments, work to weigh you down. Therapy helps create perspective, set healthy boundaries, and work toward balance. Better Help has loads of therapists, all of whom work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the US. Why not give it a try? Fill out a short questionnaire, and Better Help will use their 12 plus years of experience to match you with one. If you aren't happy with your match, switch to a different therapist at any time. Your emotional well-being matters. Find support and feel lighter in therapy. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com slash radiolab. That's betterhelp.com slash radiolab. Instagram teen accounts have built-in protections for who can contact teens and what they see. Learn more about teen accounts at instagram.com slash teen accounts. You know what I could really go for right now? Literally anything that comes in a McDonald's carton, wrapper, or bag, or a McDonald's cup. Yes, any of those items you do it. We've got your cravings covered. Now stop in for the flaky flay of fish, the crispy snack wrap, or a large fries for just $2.99. Limited time only, price and participation may vary, cannot be combined with the price of $2.99. You can buy it with any other offer. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba. If you dread dealing with your insurance company more than you dread being stuck in an elevator, with a total stranger, who's an over-sharer, oh, being burrito for lunch, then you might have insuranoia. And if you have insuranoia, then you should have NJM. They go to great lengths to do its best for their policyholders. No jingles or mascots, just great insurance. NJM, insurance underwritten by NJM Insurance Company and its subsidiaries. Hey, I'm Jadabumrod. This is Radio Lab. Yes, one, two, one, two, Mike Chek. 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 Kester government and anyone it deemed anti-social, which included kids with long hair who listened to rock. And it was also a moment where if you were found to be HIV positive in Cuba, you were forcibly quarantined. So 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 Pina 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. Actually, they would roam in as a couple of cows and chickens. It's like kind of an idyllic place. Look! So I went there to visit the last two rockers that still remain in the place. Gerson Govea and his wife, Yoandra. And they're kind of like the keepers of all that went down in there, the memories. So 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 Yoandra are walking me through it. And they're like, OK, so we would be walking around here 10 years ago. And Nirvana would be coming out of here. There's everything. Nirvana. I have Metallica. Metallica would be coming out of the next house. No kidding. Yeah. So it was like a headbanger's ball in Pinard del Rio. 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. But 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 or whatever. Power they didn't have before. Ladi told me this story. The patients who said the sanitarium could go out every 21 days for a day trip. And 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 in two or three occasions that the police came after them. And one of them had a syringe. A syringe. A syringe full of blood. And Ladi says the guy took out the blood and waved it to the police. And said, you want to come to me? Come on. 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. The government today tightened red 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 that used to get that meant. Long lines for bread. Short tempers. Who are we? We're suffering. Ladi Mercavarios, who never actually lived inside the sanitarium, he says that people outside were going hungry. And he himself. I was waiting like 100 pounds. 98 pounds. Oh my god. And his things just kept getting worse. You see like a hungry, sunburned, dehydrated. 50,000 people leave Cuba. They 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, the Clinton era. But. If you were in the sanitarium, you were fine. Yeah. Just being able to get milk and an egg and beans. Valariano 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. Wow. And did the government know that this was happening? Well, there's this Swedish documentary from the time. It's called Socialismo Muerte. And in it, there's this bishop of Havana. On one occasion, I had the opportunity to have a dinner with him. His 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, he spoke to him at the very beginning of this phenomenon. These kids, they're injecting themselves. And Fidel Castro couldn't believe it. He said, I know you're a serious man. And 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. 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 Vellache, which translates to HIV. But then in the center of the island, this town called Santa Clara, you have 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 Balceros, the Rafters, one of the responses of the Cuban government were billboards that said, que vayan 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. So 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. There's tape of Herson and Yoandra 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. Like, yeah, no, there was a tape of Yoandra saying. And many rockers also said to each other, no, because if you don't have a tape, you're not a rocker. Which is, 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. There 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 leave forever. But everything starts to change when the first of them die. According to Vlad, the first kid that died in Pina 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 Vlad's documentary, which was made in 1994, Papu 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 you had a heart attack or you transform 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. Did kids start saying they wish they hadn't done this? Well, when you see Vlad's documentary and that Swedish documentary, Socialismo en 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. Million, I don't know. How about Papu? Well, I don't... I never heard Papu ever question that he had done it. And in that Swedish documentary, there's a scene towards the end where you see Papu and he's clearly sick. He's raving in his face, swollen. And we see him stepping into an evangelical church. He's wearing an orvaca. He's wearing a Vanna T-shirt, but he's become a fervent Christian. He's found this community of evangelical Christians that accepts AIDS patients, and he's still taunting the government because he says... He's still a rocker, and that he thinks that Christ is the perfect communist. If more communists were like the Christians, that would be perfect. It's interesting though, because in that last video, I also see him taking English classes. How are you? I'm fine. How are you? And he's saying, like, you know... The other patients in the sanitarium, they're like sick like me, they won't go out at night. They won't rock out till the early morning, but I'm like... This is my life. So he was sort of defiant at the end. Yeah. And a few months later, according to Kerrson, Papo started to bleed out from his mouth, and eyes. He had a parasite in his brain. He became a violent, and he died from that disease. Kat, pardon me, wonders, like, is this strong and fierce, or is it just dumb and sad? And maybe fierce also, like, I can't figure out how to feel about this. Yeah, well, I think it can be all those things, right? It was dumb and stupid and immature, and it was also nihilistic and anarchic. And do you think in the end it had any impact? Well, that's hard to say. It must have. It must have. Here's how Luis puts it, not even five years after Papo died. Things did start to shift in Cuba. Make of it what you will, but December 8, 2000, Castro unveils the statue of John Lennon. That same year, Bob Arriano and a bunch of rock musicians, including Will Oldham, David Pajos, they're given permission to play a bunch of rock shows in Cuba, out in the open, and at one of those shows in Pinard del Rio. I announced, listen, we're going to send out this next number to Papo La Bala and Nefriques. And everyone's saying along. Now, it would be impossible to draw any kind of cause and effect and say one thing led to another. That would be ridiculous, but Luis says that back when the Freakies were streaming into the sanatorium, Cuba wasn't changing back then. It started to change precisely because of a hundred gestures, big and small. He says around Cuba at that moment, there are all of these tiny, mostly silent protests taking hold. And then you have the Maleconazo, which was like the first serious civil disobedience that Castro had in 1994, where just a mob in Havana rose up because they were so tired of the power outages. They were angry at their poor living conditions. They were leaving the city in rafts by the thousands, by the hundreds. Castro literally had to come down to the Cuba and Malecon, the beautiful seaside road that circles around Havana. And he literally had to talk the mob down. So at this moment, late 80s, early 90s. There's this breeding ground of discontent all over Cuba. And I think the self-injector movement is the best crystallization we have of that. It's like the sort of a thousand points of light, and this is the brightest point. Right. Or the darkest point, frankly. Right, exactly. Mentira! Okay, so it's Latif here again. Now, the reporter who reported this story back in 2015, Luis Treyes, has an update for you from now 2025. So here it is. Since this story first ran, Bob Arreano has continued traveling to Cuba to work with Vladimir Sabayos on the documentary about the self-injector movement and the Cuban rock scene. I've stayed in touch with Gerson. He's the self-injected punk rocker I visited in the abandoned sanatorium. He's still living there, along with his partner, Yoandra. He tells me that with Cuba's deep political and economic crisis, it's hard to be in a punk band. His town has 18-hour blackouts and even plugging in a guitar is tough. But Gerson says he still thinks about Papua La Balha. He says that in today's Cuba, Papua would be doing the same thing he did when he was alive. He would be finding a way to stay true to himself and keeping it metal. Huge thank you to Luis. He now works as senior editor on the Embedded podcast. That's NPR's home for deeply reported narrative series. And thank you to Radio Ambulante. We were so excited to collaborate with them back in 2015. And thank you to Daniel Alarcón for making that collaboration possible. Radio Ambulante's new season, which is its 15th season, launches on September 30th. If you don't know them, check it out, radioambulante.org. They tell these incredible stories from around the Spanish-speaking world in Spanish. Back in 2015, they also created a Spanish version, a Spanish language version of this story, which goes kind of in a different direction. It goes way more in-depth into Luis's visit to Cuba and the story of Gerson and Yojandra, the last two remaining self-infected freaky's. Thank you to Vladimir Ceballos and Bob Arellano for the use of their documentaries. And to Alio Dai and the Cuban punk bands HIV and Escoria for their original music in this episode. I'm Latif Nasser. Thank you for listening. Hi, I'm Marcella and I'm from Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. And here are the staff credits. Radio Lab was created by Dad Abramran and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lula Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-host. Dylan Keith is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Zindu, Nyaoma Sambandan, Matt Kilty, Annie McEwen, Alex Mison, Sarah Carey, Sarah Sandach, Anissa Veetz, Arian Wack, Tuck Walters, Molly Webster, Jessica Young. The best help from Rebecca Rand, our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Ana Pujol Mazzini, and Natalie Middleton. Hi, this is Les calling from Utah. Leadership support for Radio Lab's science programming is provided by the Simon Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Fundational support for Radio Lab is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. With fresh salsa and guacamole, save during the Cocina Latina event at Whole Foods Market. Instagram teen accounts come with automatic protections for who can contact teens and the content they can see. Learn more about teen accounts at instagram.com. slash teen accounts.