Musician blocked from preforming at 18th WFYS at Miami airport

Reincidentes album cover

Music, song and dance was a dynamic backdrop to the political discussions which took place this December in Quito, Ecuador at the 18th World Festival of Youth and Students.

All that partying spirit wasn't without the interference of imperialism however.

Singer and bassist Fernando Madina of the Spanish punk-rock band Reincidentes was detained at Miami airport en route to the festival. The group was supposed to play a headlining act at the opening ceremonies.

Instead, the lead singer vanished. It took over 48 hours for his family back at home to finally learn what of his arrest after they reported his disappearance to the Spanish National Police as nothing had been heard of his whereabouts, according to the Spanish-language version of Rollling Stone.

Madina claims airport immigration officials also told his band members he was not detained and had probably gone sightseeing.

In fact, the lead singer had been handcuffed and shuttled out of the airport with twenty other people, to the neighboring Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on the charge of "drunkenness and disturbing public order." Madina was held in a cell with no access to a phone or translation. Detained Saturday, it took until Monday morning for a judge via video conference to exonerate him of any wrongdoing leading to his release.
The experience was much more like an arrest than a detention, Madina told the Spanish newsite TerceraInformación, saying that while he was animated when talking on the airplane he was not drunk and had only had a few beers on the long flight.

The band had a similar experience in October 2010, when guitarist Juan Manuel Rodriguez was supposedly confused with a narco trafficker and detained without explanation on a flight transfer passing through Miami for two hours.

Crab Canning Ship

The Spring 2009 issue of Rebel Youth caries a special article on the youth struggle in Japan by RY writer Chevy Philips. The recent re-publication of 80-year-old novel Kani Kosen (Crab-canning Ship, by Marxist author Takiji Kobayashi) has received a great deal of press attention recently as this ‘proletarian novel’ of resistance has skyrocketed to the top of the Japanese bestseller lists. 

Kani Kosen tells the story of a group of crab fishermen trying to survive on poverty wages and their fight against this impoverishment.  It is a vivid portrayal of the worker's struggle.   The fact that its author (only 30 at the time) was tortured and killed for his communist beliefs by the fascist regime of the 1930s has struck a chord with young workers in modern Japan who are now facing a struggles reminiscent of three generations ago. According to Shinchosha, the publisher of the work, the book has been a real hit with those in the prime of their working lives, the 18-49 age group.

Here we present a rought translation of Chapter one of the novel.