Author: Irina Echarry

Nena didn’t want to think negatively, but nor could she stop thinking they might not give her the visa. She went to the interview at the Venezuelan consulate prepared for either of the two alternatives.

When the Cuban woman visited the Venezuelan consulate in Havana for the second time, it wasn’t at the same address as when she first went there, which was an indication of how much time had lapsed between the two visits.

People had told her that the process and paperwork were killers. What’s involved in leaving Cuba temporarily or permanently is not what one wants to think about most when you decide to take such a step.

Havana looks like a city of smoke. Those of us with allergies or asthma are confronted with a tremendous dilemma: whether to leave town or stay despite the diseases. Leaving the city isn’t so easy, and even if it were, where would we go to save ourselves?

I was going through adolescence when I became interested in the job of people who would read to workers in cigar factories as they rolled tobacco.
I had fallen into the net of passion for books and became convinced that it would be the best job anyone could have: spending the whole day reading…and getting paid for it.

The director Kristina Konrad shows us Cuban soap opera writer Maite Vera in her everyday life: at the corner store, talking with neighbors in her building, on the set of a film, in the company of visiting friends and family members.

Like many poets of her generation, Elena lived in exile, where she continued a work begun in Cuba. Yet she never lost a connection with her country of birth; that she always wore on her back.

A few days ago while walking down Obispo Street, near the Plaza de Armas, I decided to go in the “Goldsmith Museum.” Its windows had always caught my attention, but I had never stopped for a tour. Of course I know why: I don’t care much for jewelry.

“There’s nothing more delightful than rummaging through drawers, you can find anything,” said my aunt. And it was true.