Author: Veronica Vega

I’ve recently had a special guest at home. Her owner named her Princesa, however, she practically lives out on the street. Her beauty and charisma have suffered the hardships of time, abuse from male cats, repetitive pregnancies and births. Her litters are now on the street and are at risk of suffering the abuse of children, parasites, malnourishment…

Every December that draws to an end seems to be another opportunity for us to shake off everything that is dragging us behind. Even if it is just something symbolic and the numbers of months and years that try to organize this mysterious thing we call Time is also symbolic.

A response I gave in an interview has inspired me to write this late reflection, which I couldn’t include at the time. At one point, I said that independent artists protesting against Decree 349 have been repressed and treated like political dissidents. I would have liked to have added that no peaceful political dissident deserves to be treated in the same way a criminal is…

On Thursday November 22nd, I woke up to a phone call from my aunt who lives in Miami. “Today, is Thanksgiving,” she told me. I thought about the group meditation that had been scheduled that afternoon in the park on G and 23rd streets in Vedado. Coincidence? Who knows.

A friend who is leaving asked my husband and I to meet at the National Museum of Fine Art to say goodbye. In front of the entrance, of huge glass windows, what should have been a hug became an unexpected greeting: “Nobody outside of Havana knows what Law 349…

A lawyer told me, very seriously, that Decree-Law 349 is one of the measures that has been conceived to respond to demands of including regulation in the new Constitution, which guarantees that Cuban women’s rights are respected. Her remark left me speechless.

After the shock we received from the combination of numbers 3-4-9 (which I have written more than one article about), a recent conversation about the draft Constitution which is being discussed (?) nationwide, led me to examine the other numbers that hold our fate as Cubans.

Discrediting those who question official policies is a common strategy in Cuba. Voiding these individuals or groups who react against economic paralysis or a lack of freedom, slandering them with total immunity and twisting their legitimate complaints.

“A country’s achievements shouldn’t be defined by how many hotels are being built, but by the quality of a meal,” I heard a man say in line at the bakery. (He was referring to statistics that official media publish everywhere, which are so optimistic, biased, cynical).