Author: Alfredo Fernandez

Last year was especially hard for me… I lost three people I hold extremely dear and it drove home just how finite our lives are, and that every moment is special.

With recent food shortages being a little more severe than usual, and the government announcement of an upcoming “Fuel and Energy Cuts Plan”, a real hullabaloo has developed on social media with people afraid that a new Special Period crisis is on the horizon for Cuba.

I grew up with the insistent recommendation of reading “The Initials of the Earth”, a fundamental text in understanding the Cuban Revolution’s early years. Today, at last, I was able to finish reading it. This excellent book captivated me so much that I decided to write this article.

I enter the Internet time and time again in search for information on Hurricane Matthew, reviewing the projection cone with the possible path in the Caribbean. I then call home to Santiago de Cuba and talk to my father…

Last July, after three and a half years, I returned to Cuba to find my country three and a half years older, dirty and backward. I couldn’t have received a better welcome…

It would seem that all Cubans over forty have been left with nothing but their memories. Leaving, surviving and – most importantly – remembering are verbs that seem to apply to nearly all Cuban émigrés.

On March 11, 2015, the Cuban government officially ceased to consider me a citizen of my native country. That’s right, I am now a citizen of nowhere, something along the lines of a tropical Palestinian.

A very wise person called Guayaquil the last redoubt of the Caribbean. I don’t know whether it’s because its full name is Santiago de Guayaquil, but the truth of the matter is that I’ve felt at home here since arriving, like in my own Santiago, Santiago de Cuba, that is.