Author: Armando Chaguaceda

I recently did a little time traveling. I thought back to almost five years ago, when some of us crazies took on the task of “hooking up” a group of autonomous initiatives we’d been working on.

Chilean student-protest leader Camila Vallejo traveled to Cuba to participate in the events marking the anniversary of the island’s Young Communist League. This young woman combines intelligence, perseverance and social commitment.

“What could I possibly have in common with this man?” was the thought that crossed my mind — almost immediately — when I met Carlos Saladrigas a couple months ago.

There are times when one weighs, with the upmost care, the consequences of their words. This is especially true when these can place cherished friendships at risk, those that we hold with people we admire and respect for their values ??and views.

More and more virtual and real networks are bringing together various voices into dialogue around issues that affect the lives of Cubans on and off the island. Slowly, citizens of the island and its diaspora, as well as friends and supporters, are joining specific causes of social and cultural activism.

The news coming from that assembly didn’t point to dramatic shifts in the island’s politics, and the fragments of the televised speeches showed rhetorical abuses recommended only for those suffering from insomnia.

Over the last several days, news has been circulating inside and outside the island about the complaint raised by Desiderio Navarro. It appears authorites at the Havana airport are holding the issues of his most recent edition of “Criterios” magazinel.

News agencies echoed the bitter statements Reina Luisa Tamayo – the mother of the late Orlando Zapata, who died in Cuba on a hunger strike in 2010. She exposes the neglect and deprivation that she and her family are suffering after a seven-month stay in the US.

The death in Santiago de Cuba of young Wilman Villar Mendoza, 31, after nearly two months on a hunger strike, forces one to choose whether to turn their head or to raise their voice against the incompatibility of what has happened with the most elementary sense of humanity.

I did a little search on the Internet before heading off to bed. It was then, suddenly, that I came across the discomforting news: Julio Garcia Luis, the dean of the College of Journalism, an honest Cuban Communist and a good person, had left us.