The Cuban Revolution has a great press. It's incredible. I know Czechs here, my contemporaries, whose parents suffered repression under communism, and they think Cuba was an example. And above all, Spaniards, Spaniards and Italians here in Europe and the French, they have such admiration for the Cuban Revolution that I say, but what, what Cuba have you read about? And even when I tell them, damn it, I would have liked to live in this Cuba, because there is the Cuba that I lived in—the reality. And thanks to that press, I think that in Europe, the Cuban reality is largely unknown. Too much is unknown, especially about the last stage. In the last 20 years, the opposition has changed a lot. And currently in Cuba, there is no leader. They have taken it upon themselves to destroy all the leaders. All the leaders of the Cuban opposition have either been killed or forced to leave Cuba.
"Being part of Porno para Ricardo was brutal. Let's see, I'm going to be honest too, if they had told me when I was 25, after being here, ‘Join Porno para Ricardo,’ I wouldn't have joined. And back then, I lived through a period of less repression. What they did was allow you to leave Cuba, and when you were outside, they pressured you to stay. In my case, with Porno para Ricardo, they did what they did when I was here (in the Czech Republic) to try to persuade my mother, threaten her, and send her court summons, etc. I think it was more to go after the weakest link, and that's how they did it."
"Porno para Ricardo was like a bad apple, if you know what I mean. Anyone who got involved with Porno para Ricardo was screwed. Because Porno para Ricardo wasn't so much a musical group as it was the cultural activists of Omni Zona Franca. No, Porno para Ricardo was practically a political organization. Who were Porno para Ricardo's allies? Macho Rico, Yoani Sánchez, Claudia Canelo, Estado de SATS, Rodiles and his whole gang, UNPACU, the US Embassy. We even played at the US Interests Section back then. To join Porno para Ricardo was to join the devil, it was to earn a one-way ticket to hell, literally. And I recognized what repression was when I started playing with Porno para Ricardo. Before that, it was nothing, it was crazy. Well, it has been proven that no one from Porno para Ricardo can play in Cuba anymore."
"Well, Yimel and I, first of all, have very similar stories. But Yimel became involved with Porno para Ricardo long before I did. He is also 41 years old, I am 32. Yimmi has been friends with Gorki since he was 16, I was 14, but we are talking about a 10-year difference. I have known Yimel since he was 26, I will never forget that. We were friends with the group, and we socialized with the group. So when the previous bassist left, I joined the band to play. I left, and a couple of friends joined. Porno para Ricardo is a very interesting group—no one wants to play with Porno para Ricardo, for the same reason I mentioned before, it's a rotten apple, it's getting yourself into hell without knowing it. So no one dares to play with Porno para Ricardo, and only us friends who are already dissidents play, who are musicians or who know something, a little bit about music. So, because of that, Porno para Ricardo is musically very different. Renai, for example, is more of a jazz musician, I'm more into hardcore or ska music. Yimel is more into son, traditional Cuban music, Ciro is more of a troubadour, and Gorki is a punk, more or less like me. So that's why we're all a bit different. To belong to Porno para Ricardo, first you have to be a political activist and then you have to be a musician. That's basically why Yimel and I ended up in Porno para Ricardo. That's why I say we share stories because we're the only ones after Ebert who have lasted a long time in Porno para Ricardo. Normally, the bassists in Porno para Ricardo, because there are always problems with the bassists, leave in less than a year; they can't take it. And Yimel is the second longest-lasting member of Porno para Ricardo after Ebert Domínguez, who was the bassist for Porno para Ricardo for 10 years, and Yimel has been the bassist for Porno para Ricardo for 9 years. Nine years, which is also something to be proud of, right? And Yimel was the bassist during the period when repression returned to Cuba. And Yimel was the one who lived through the whole issue of Gorki's third arrest, the whole process of repression that was going on, in which Porno para Ricardo could no longer play. There was literally total surveillance of the two members of Porno para Ricardo who remained in Cuba, it was total. It was, it was something, it was something truly mind-boggling. It's Kafkaesque, it's literally Kafkaesque."
William Retureta Rodríguez (Havana, July 4, 1993) is a musician and former member of the rebellious band Porno para Ricardo. The son of Spanish parents, he grew up in an environment critical of Castroism. During high school (in the 2000s), he rejected the activities of the “battle of ideas” and, upon graduation, was denied access to careers associated with that program; he chose to study music on his own in Havana. From adolescence, he associated with dissidents and began to participate in opposition initiatives (the “No Violence” march, contacts with bloggers). He was arrested once at the age of 17 (2010). He joined Porno para Ricardo at the age of 18, between 2009 and 2010, when Gorki Águila returned temporarily from Mexico and the previous bassist left the band. With the group, he participated in the Omni Zona Franca festival in December 2012, a performance that led to confiscations and increased pressure. In 2013, he left the band and decided to stay in the Czech Republic for security reasons and for his personal future. In the following years, he continued to be involved in activism, while his family faced consequences: his mother, a film decorator, faced work restrictions in Cuba, and his father emigrated to Las Vegas in 2021 after pressure at his job in hotels. In 2025, he returned to Prague to play with the band after more than a decade without sharing the stage. He maintains his residence in the Czech Republic and a critical stance toward the Cuban regime.
