Author: Erasmo Calzadilla

My grandparents used to tell me that in their hometown of Madruga, racial discrimination was once alive and well. Few whites would associate with blacks, and a white woman who got involved with a black man was rejected by everyone (white). (8 photos)

About ten years ago, I had a bunch of friends who were “burnouts” (as we used to call them) because of conditions of life here, though I didn’t choose them because of that condition.

A large billboard has popped up around the city with the smiling face of the Jose Antonio Echeverria and the phrase: “A golden heart full of dynamite.” What would a visitor who didn’t know our history think? Or those young people that repudiate it for the way the history is canned in school?

Every six months, during the plenary session of the National Assembly, we have the opportunity to confirm whether democracy exists in Cuba.

It’s surprising that a country that lacks the legal and financial resources to protect animals was the recent recipient of 146 exotic mammals donated by Namibia from nature reserves in that country. The project is called “Noah’s Ark II,” and the animals begin arriving in October.

There’s a rumor circulating, outside of the newspapers. They say it was discovered that a doctor at the Calixto Garcia Hospital had a private clinic for cosmetic surgery, using materials taken from the hospital to treat his patients.

This past Sunday afternoon, by mere chance I was cutting through the busiest and most centrally located park in Havana: “Parque de la Fraternidad” (Fraternity Park). It was drizzling only slightly, the temperature was nice and I was walking along in pretty good spirits, eager for human contact.

I spent the day with a nagging sense of emptiness, as if I were falling. What happened was that last night they stabbed and killed a ‘madman’. For starters, he wasn’t really crazy, he just didn’t think straight.

Native Americans maintain a vast knowledge about curing diseases with plants and substances from their natural environment. For centuries, large pharmaceutical companies have been appropriating and adapting this knowledge to the Western paradigm, to the degree possible.