Several times a year the Cuban Telecommunications Company makes tempting offers to increase their number of cellphone subscribers. Typically, this is at the end of the year, when they offer a phone card balance of 30 CUCs (about $33 USD) to whoever buys a line for that same amount.

The government says that if Cuba’s companies aren’t profitable, then it won’t have the money to pay the workers a decent wage; while the workers say that if they’re not paid more, it doesn’t make sense to work hard all day.

Though private food services in Cuba haven’t succeeded in outstripping state-run food services, in the sale of day-to-day consumer articles this isn’t the case. This is due in large part to a strange solidarity between private vendors.

After several years of Cuba’s great “energy revolution,” the debts shouldered by the Cuban people to the government for the purchase the energy-efficient appliances are beginning to take their toll.

My mother’s scooter is red not only in color, but also because it belongs to the socialist state, that being an abstraction of what we are all supposed to be a part. That’s why the scooter doesn’t belong to her.

Everyone knows that Cuban baseball is not enjoying its finest moment. One problem that’s been fully discussed is the imbalance between its pitching and batting capabilities, with the latter possessing an overwhelming advantage.

I’m here at the bank where I’m unable to cash a check for 100 pesos ($5 USD), which I earned for the articles I’ve written. The cashier said the signature was invalid.

In a rigid but also chaotic system in which there are too many people experiencing unmet needs, things that begin as curious can turn into the pitiful.

“In Jesus Christ is the truth” – at least according to a sign on a door I pass by daily on the way from work. That message is written in brown crayon on the deteriorating entryway wall. Its strokes seem impetuous, giving the idea of having been scrawled out in a moment of passion.

Yesterday — during the half hour I had free between my machine in a cybercafé and a meeting set up with a friend — I used it to go sit on the malecon seawall.