In true Spartan style, Emilio Morales*, president and CEO of The Havana Consulting Group, claims that Cuba is experiencing “one of the most serious crises in its history”, while he also predicts that Diaz-Canel’s “second presidential year will be a lot worse”.
July 25th marks the beginning of the annual Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE) conference, with dozens of professionals, representatives from universities and other organizations based in the US, other Latin American countries and Europe, guaranteed to attend.
Ever since 1959, the Cuban Revolution is celebrated every January 1st, by decree and out of people’s sympathy for it; yet, the final move to begin with the reforms that would change the largest country in the Caribbean forever, came 38 days later.
Growing popular demand to lower Internet access prices exposes a new reality: Cubans are taking advantage of digital platforms, which are hard to control, to express themselves freely, far from the compulsory cheering and applause we see in traditional media, which is under the Communist Party/State’s firm control.
Valery Legasov, Chernobyl’s leading scientist, faced death with these words: “What is the cost of lies? It’s not that we’ll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all.” Cuba had its own nuclear miscarriage.
Trump’s administration has fully implemented the Helms-Burton Act and in doing so, has added fuel to the bonfire of contradictions between the US and European Union, that was never completely put out. With the attempt to tighten the noose, the Cuban Revolution has once again run into the savior of Europe and its economic opportunism.
This action of toughening down on the US’ embargo received the same response it always has from the Cuban government: we continue the struggle; nothing has changed here.
In 1995 I was walking in Cayo Largo del Sur, a paradise reserved for tourists, a resort in the heart of an economy trying to rise out of the ashes of Soviet socialism. Stephen Hawking locked eyes with me from the cover of a book…
Last Saturday, journalist Eduardo Cedeno Milan gave a news report on Cuban TV about Cuba’s Musical Editions and Recording Company (EGREM), calling it “Cuba’s longest-living recording company”. Stated as an absolute, this phrase enshrines a historic mistake and also testifies to the Party/State’s manipulative campaign, which has spread to most of our national past.
In the 1950s, it was common for people who lived in the city’s outskirts to say “let’s go shopping in Havana!” whenever they went to Central Havana or Old Havana. They would head to an impressive congregation of stores selling everything you could possibly imagine back then. Today, only the buildings remain…