Author: Jorge Milanes

Just about anyone will tell you here that they’re an experienced builder. You only need to have some construction materials lying around the house for someone to show up and offer you their services. “If you need a builder, just call me,” a new neighbor tells me.

“I give hand jobs, blow jobs and the full package, whatever I need to do, though I don’t like it. I have to feed my three kids and I would rather stand by the side of the road, and make more, than work for the State for a salary that’s doesn’t even cover my bus fare.”

There are people who feel ecstatic when they smoke, forgetting they deal others a record-breaking blow when they exhale the tobacco smoke in their faces. It’s like a slap in the face that causes no apparent pain.

“We’ll be holding a meeting to nominate our candidates next Wednesday, at the market corner,” the chair of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) tells me as she opens the gate of her house. “Can I count on you to go?” she asks

It gives me great pleasure to write for Havana Times because I am free to write about what I wish. I’ve been sharing opinions, describing situations and commenting on socio-cultural phenomena for several years now, always from my own point of view.

My whole family is worried about the recent terrorist attacks in France. Twenty years ago, my sister married a man of Gallic origin and lives in France with my three nephews (the twin sisters Yeica and Yennife and the younger of the three, Julian), with whom she came to visit us in 2014.

“We have to wait and see how things develop,” some people are saying down here. This is very true, because the mental and economic infrastructures developed in the course of more than fifty years cannot be changed overnight.

“The trucks bring 600 concrete blocks a time,” Belkis says to me with a rude tone of voice. “That’s fine,” I reply. “But there’s something I don’t quite understand: the time these materials are received and how they are sold.”

After two years of requesting a State subsidy to finish some construction work at home – work I’d been unable to complete for financial reasons – the municipal government in Habana del Este finally approved the aid, for a value of 48,394 Cuban pesos (or US $ 2,419).

In Cuba, a great many teenagers and young people – and even those who are not so young – prefer to listen and dance to reggaeton music instead of casino, a dance tradition that is part of our identity. For a very long time, casino was Cuba’s popular dance par excellence.