Author: Regina Cano

This past Saturday, Estudiantes Sin Semilla (“Seedless Students”), a reggae band from Havana, threw a concert at the Parque Almendares amphitheater. Though I’d gotten the flyers announcing the concert only the night before, I was, luckily, able to attend.

Crazy people, those who have lost all touch with reality or their “marbles” (as it is said colloquially), the “mentally insane”, as they are also called, abound in all countries around the world. Well, folks, Cuba has had no shortage of crazies either.

I still remember that, throughout my childhood and until the onslaught of the Special Period in the early 90s, the “Ice Cream Carts”, small trucks that sold ice-cream in the currency one’s salary was paid in (when one could make ends meet with these), would drive around Havana, announcing themselves with Johann Strauss’ “Blue Danube”, and that these were extremely popular in those happier times.

Over the years, preparing a child’s birthday party in Cuba has become as elaborate and involved a process as those which people living in industrialized and “developed” nations often undertake to fulfill certain fantasies.

“People are hiring housemaids again. My health isn’t what it used to be, but, if it were, mark my word, that’s what I’d be doing right now. I have no money,” a woman over 60, who lives in Havana’s neighborhood of Guanabacoa, told me at a bus stop.

It’s been tied up since it was 35 days old. “Burnet” is what we call it – among other names. It’s a Siamese cat that lives in a small space under the wooden staircase that accesses the barbacoa* of a very small room in a house with many similar rooms on Zanja Street, in Havana.

Cuba is an ideal environment for exchanges between people committed to the earth, said Madeleine Porr, the executive director of the German NGO “In Good Hands.” Her group sponsored a recent symposium in Havana titled, “Making the Future with Local Strengths,” which dealt with recycling, renewable energy and healthy food. 11 photos)

For the entire month of March, Havana’s Rita Montaner Theatre Co. is presenting an adaptation of “Two Sides of the Coin”), “We invite you to sit down on this ‘wall on the Malecon’ — the great character on this stage production — and from it, look out at the horizon. Seeing the sun? …as well as its spots?”

Images (which are fundamental elements of our lives), together with spirit and the necessary sensitivity, are the best tools novice photographers have for participating in the exhibition “Punto de Partida” (Starting Point), at the Riviera Cultural Center.