Cuba’s totalitarian apparatus seeks to perpetuate itself, following in the footsteps of the Chinese elite. The least any suicidal individual who chooses to strike this apparatus kamikaze style deserves is our support. Let’s hope that Carasses’ daring gesture was a seed that will tomorrow bear a lush tree.
It’s true that the Cuban revolution focused much of its efforts on the countryside, but it is also true that, in exchange for this, it demanded that the countryside become revolutionary.
For some years now, Cuban television viewers have had the “pleasure” of seeing three new faces in the field of international political analysis: Walter Martinez, the host of Telesur’s program Dossier, Oliver Zamora, who has a light opinion segment in the Sunday news and Cristina Escobar, the new host of Cuba’s nightly Round Table program.
Juan Triana is a Cuban economist we’re hearing more and more of in these days of change. An articulate man, he is precise in his proposals and implacable in his criticisms. Listening to him speak, suggest that there is really no way around simple economics, that the system is about mathematics and that we will always pay dearly for our idealistic fantasies.
I have been a sci-fi addict ever since I discovered the works of Jules Verne, back in the tender years of my childhood. However, for a while, nothing interesting came my way and I got disconnected from science fiction altogether. Now, since I own a computer, I’ve been revisiting the genre more and more.
A few days ago, I had to do some repair work around the apartment where I live and had no other choice but to shut down the computer and bite the bullet. When I finished working every night, exhausted, I would ask myself how anyone in their right mind could devote their entire life to something like that.
One of the most significant socio-cultural events Cuba is witnessing today is something we could call the “Revolt of the Rabble”. This issue is cause for concern, particularly for those who feel most affected by it: the older generations, people who have other values and are unwilling to renounce them, intellectuals and those interested in social matters.
Thanks to movie pirating, the mockumentary Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden, which premiered at the end of 2012, has already hit the streets of Havana. “What a great movie,” the buddy who lent it to me said. “They’ll never be able to show it in theaters or the TV here.”
I hadn’t seen a spectacle as ridiculous and sad as the now-concluded congress of Cuba’s Federation of University Students (FEU) in a long time. As I watched the young students speak their minds at the gathering (in the segments shown on TV, at least), I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Till recently, school and repression were for me synonymous. At least, this is how I felt about Cuba’s educational system, which devotes arduous efforts to inculcate distorted values in you from the time you enter pre-school urges you to follow in the footsteps of someone you don’t yet know from the first grade on and…