A recent experience in south Havana made me think of several things. Firstly, the potential of people’s self-organization and the possibilities of institutions when they involve themselves with popular needs expressed “from below.”
It’s clear that the 2010 Cuba International Book Fair was dedicated to Russia as both a tribute to historic Cuban-Russian relations and the current need for political ties.
As people circulate around Havana with their umbrellas, I’m surprised to find they almost always hold them perpendicular to their bodies, meaning parallel to the ground.
Being a veterinarian can be quite lucrative profession in Cuba. I know several of them who are good people, but there are others who think only of their businesses (be they legal or informal) and not of the animals.
His biography in Wikipedia includes the “uncomfortable” symbol of the A inside the O: a reference to the axiom “Anarchy is Order” and the emblem of the anarchist movement of which he was an adherent. Uncomfortable? – yes. Only a few thinkers today dare to proclaim themselves anarchists. Howard Zinn was one of them.
I don’t believe in the bureaucracy, and less still that somebody is capable of filling out a form to enter the United States admitting “Yes sir, I belonged to a terrorist organization that taught me how to plant bombs on commercial airplanes; in fact, once we did place one, and it worked.”
Anyone strolling down a Cuban street around this time of year will see many homes and some businesses displaying Christmas trees. Since Cuba doesn’t have native firs, all of these evergreens are artificial.
Starting from a strange public exchange of letters between a US African-American group and several representatives of Cuban intellectual circles, the issue of Cuba’s “racial” problem suddenly acquired a prominent international profile in recent weeks.
A year since the elections, reality is something different. And in Cuba, other airs also blow. Unfortunately, the news that we Cubans have received about Obama is not encouraging. The Guantanamo naval base -with its torture center- still remains and another seven new US military bases installed in Colombia.
Few copies of those books were ever printed, though I believe they should be in every university classroom and in each municipal library. Through their presentations, however, the “Revolution Beyond the Walls” meeting was an excellent opportunity to extend bridges between young Cubans and the imaginations of radical thinkers.