Author: Dariela Aquique

When the use of political power granted to a person becomes indiscriminate, there always comes a day of reckoning. Like life itself, that power is not perpetual.

At every step in the life Cubans are beaten over the head with officialized kitsch, from posters with the faces and names of the “Five Heroes” forming a star or the crappy neighborhood decorations for the annual CDR festivities.

Still being passed from PC to PC is a file that’s being called “The Compendium of Information on the visit of Pablo Milanes to the United States.” Right now Pablo doesn’t seem to be pleasing either side.

I’m sure that if one was to survey a good number of Cubans, the overwhelming majority wouldn’t know anything about the phenomenon of “blogging.”

The situation in Palestine has made me reflect a little. We believe that our problems are the biggest and most important. It’s to the point of ignoring everything that’s happening in the rest of the world.

The policies designed in the ‘80s by the Cuban government to in some way accommodate intellectuals consisted of providing them with certain privileges and “some rights” (very limited ones) to expression in certain frameworks.

“Divide and conquer” is a legendary phrase that is attributed to Machiavelli and that points to a not so healthy way of achieving victory. Everything seems to indicate that, unfortunately, many of my compatriots have adopted this maxim.

As is custom, the Cuban press is up to its same old thing antics. I was left dumbfounded the other day when I heard all of the praises being made during the sports segment of the TV news.

The Edmundo-Pablo controversial has been hot and heavy in the online press of late. For some time, the insidious writings of Edmundo Garcia have made me think of him as a sort of tropical Mata Hari.

Marked social differences in Cuba have never ceased to exist. They were there while we were a Spanish colony, while we were an American colony, and they’re here today though we’re not a colony of anyone, but victims of obstinate ideologies.