Diaries Archives - Havana Times

The Permitted Christmas

May Cuba be reborn for the new year, because we have crossed the limit—the one between illness and decomposition.

What I did promise myself after finishing this reel, is that I will try to be kinder to my compatriots, whether they think like me or not.

The news about what is being cooked up in the upper echelons of the country surprised me in the early hours of Wednesday.

Viruses—about six of them are circulating, a friend tells me. There may be more. Who knows? They attack relentlessly, all the time.

At 9:00 PM in Havana, the fan stops turning, the television switches off in the middle of a soap opera, and the lamp’s dim glow disappears.

As a people who have lived under 66 years of brainwashing, now any mediocre politician can manipulate us as they wish.

In Cuba, turning fifteen is a kind of rite of passage: the waltz, princess dresses, retouched photos, & a party that leaves parents proud…

The day in a Havana tenement building doesn’t begin; it emerges. The first ray of sunlight slips between the bars of a balcony…

News has reached me of the death of one of our professors at the Evangelical Theology Seminary in Matanzas.

I just finished reading “Kat of Nine” [nine short stories set in different moments of Cuban history], by Canadian author Jenny Cressman.