Author: Dariela Aquique

As Granma is a publication that for so many years has flirted with silence, censorship and taboos regarding the truth, it struck me as strange that all of a sudden this new license was being granted.

Here online, there is no irksome and inquisitive editorial advice from those who always want to rework your piece. Instead, it’s the readers, through their comments, who even end up telling the writer that he or she is mistaken in their focus or their outlook.

There is another type of totalitarianism that is exercised by political rulers, and its foundation is social. These rulers impose not only a system but an ideology, where it doesn’t matter if it’s erred or if it’s what the population wants to believe. It’s the one that’s established!

An entire movement of opinions around diversity has been stirred up as a result of the May celebration in Santiago de Cuba of national activities focused on the “Campaign against Homophobia.”

My grandparents used to hear a certain legend when they were children. It was told to them by their parents, who lived in low-wage poverty back in the early years of US-controlled Cuba.

Ever since I was a little girl, on isolated occasions I used to hear — in a depressed tone — family members talk about an aunt of mine. For some strange reason that I wasn’t able to understand, she lived outside of Cuba.

The things that take place in this country can be a ludicrous as a comedian all tied up in knots. On more than one occasion I’ve found myself recounting events that have left me astonished for being so preposterous.

Today, among the many errors committed that have weighed down our economic base, the neglect of the sugar industry — which had been the main production line in the country — has been the worst.

I used to get impatient on Sundays waiting to go with my brother and the neighbors to see the matinée adventure movies that were shown at the “Capitolio,” the cinema in the Santiago de Cuba neighborhood where I lived as a child.