Author: Regina Cano

So, caught between his mother’s protests and his body’s need to maintain its edge, he decided that his only way out was to create his own gym in his 9 x 12 foot bedroom.

The existence of garbage-strewn streets — which the great majority of people contribute to while carrying out their daily activities — is the product of an indolent and irresponsible attitude toward our environment.

I could see the stress in the plaintive face of one girl whose mother wouldn’t stop talking. A military woman, the mother wanted to impress upon us with her daughter’s story and get us to sympathize with her plight.

Like with everything we don’t see, we assume nonexistence. In in my neighborhood of Alamar, the issue of environmental pollution is not something that people discuss.

We’re now seeing them turn old, that generation of people who were born or were children when the Cuban Revolution triumphed in 1959.

They say there are people who come into this life with a sign that marks all their acts, but they also say that it’s difficult for them to get out of the vicious circles by themselves.

Protests are heard from time to time over the use of the word “Asere” – presently one in the most popular ways in greeting among ordinary Cubans in informal circumstances.

He lives in Miami but travels to Havana often. He left Cuba with his two brothers on a raft in the 90’s. However the stories of the voyage cooled the desires of more than one person here.

“You lose 20 and win 40,” touted this almost 50-year-old man. Nice looking and well dressed, he was standing at the stop for the “P line” bus, the heaviest trafficked route in the capital city.

According to fishermen who line up along the seawall, the contamination used to build up into a layer that was several inches thick – some even estimate that it was a yard or more deep.