Hundreds of people crowded last Thursday in front of the Grand Packard Iberostar hotel to try to see rapper Tekashi 6ix9 when they were surprised by a rain of dollar bills flying from this luxury hotel in Havana to the street. There was running, shouting and elbowing and even a cell phone signal interruption during the stampede. The bills are believed to have been thrown by the Mexican-American rapper.
The artist, whose real name is Daniel Hernández, and who is on vacation on the island, confirmed his stay at the Grand Packard Iberostar hotel, on Prado and Malecón in Havana, with a post on Instagram. “I’m with my friend. We are on a girl’s trip, ”he wrote next to a photo where he is seen smiling and with rainbow-dyed hair.
In a video broadcast on social networks, you can see the moment when someone throws green bills, which causes a stampede among young people who try to catch the money that floats in the air by running and pushing.
According to the first versions, the New York artist threw several handfuls of bills of up to 100 dollars from the Gran Packard Hotel on Thursday afternoon, a usual practice of the rapper, known for his eccentric lifestyle. However, it is not confirmed if 6ix9ine – with a criminal record for sexist violence and a conviction for abuse of a child under 13 in 2015 – was the one who threw the tickets.
The police soon arrived at the scene to try to restore order. At the moment, no injuries or material damage have been reported.
The chaos caused was such that it reached the island’s official press. In an article published this Friday, Randy Alonso Falcón, director of the Cubadebate site, criticized the rapper’s attitude. “Even if Elvis Presley himself was resurrected, he can’t come to Havana to put on those humiliating shows. If he wants to be generous with his money, there are other ways and purposes,” he wrote.
For his part, the rapper explained on Instagram that a person “dressed like him” and impersonated him. Although in an earlier recording, also shared on his profile, he shows the crowd gathering from his hotel room.
According to the version released this Friday by an official profile, two masked people got into a vehicle and began throwing money. “They were scammers, who were in a modern private car, a Renault brand, they threw dollar bills, they got in and got lost (…). The rapper Tekashi is known for giving away large sums of money in the countries he visits, but on this occasion, everything indicates that his vacation visit was used by scammers to create chaos in Cuba,” he added.
“You could see how he was throwing away the wads of money, they were saying that the bills were one hundred,” said a young man who could not even get hold of a bill. The boys and girls consulted by Afp narrated that Tekashi 6ix9ine left the place in a vehicle and that the police evacuated Prado street. This agency verified the strong presence of uniformed and plainclothes police officers at the Packard Hotel on Thursday night.
Parallel to the agglomeration in the center of Havana there were cuts in the mobile phone service. The alterations in the service began at approximately 7:00 p.m. (00 GMT on Friday), when users stopped having data on their phones and even telephone communication was suspended, according to the Afp agency.
Cuba is going through a deep economic crisis, aggravated by the pandemic, US sanctions and errors in government management, which translates into shortages, long lines to obtain basic goods and galloping inflation. The average salary of the islanders is below 30 dollars a month.
“We inform our clients that there is currently an affectation in mobile services. Work is being done to identify the failure for the soonest restoration,” the company Etecsa, which has the monopoly of the service, said on Twitter. “Since the early hours of the morning (Friday) the service was fully restored,” the company said this morning.
Etecsa has not clarified what were the causes of the difficulties presented by its services. The Afp agency points out that the internet cuts occurred shortly after the crowd became agitated to see the rapper throwing bills into the air.
