Author: Yenisel Rodriguez

The study program in Cuba for a degree in medicine includes little or nothing of philosophy, social sciences or the arts. Consequently, doctors graduate grossly ignorant of those socio-cultural, political and economic matters that are indispensable for carrying out their future profession.

We need to avoid oversimplifications. For example, discipline is not always born from order and starkness; disorder and crowds also generate discipline. Everything is a question of context and need.

Miguel Barnet, a prominent Cuban anthropologist, suffers lapses in memory from time to time. These are brief instants when he forgets important things.

Supposedly for purposes of promoting tourism, the official image of Cuban provinces is perpetuated, in great measure, through the old mansions and productive infrastructure of the former wealthy classes that inhabited and managed them.

In the central Cuban province of Sancti Spiritus, like across the rest of the country, facilities have proliferated providing private lodging to national and foreign tourists alike.

In many parts of the country where they have carnivals, people are accustomed to dancing behind floats that parade through squares and streets carrying “live music” and beautiful dancers. This peculiar form of trailing behind floats is known in Cuba as “arroyar” (streaming).

“Brother, what happened to the fishing village that used to be near this beach! A few years ago I bought some fish at a house close by to cook them here on this very spot. I also remember that lots of people would come from town to swim and sell things.”

Each of the provincial capitals in Cuba possesses its own “boulevard,” a pedestrian zone. It’s something that has come into fashion lately as even the poorest municipalities work miracles in investing part of their meager budgets in the construction of these urban esplanades.

A friend had this conversation while enduring the hardship of the metallic coldness of one of the unbearable post-operative tables at the Workers Maternity Hospital (Maternidad Obrera) in Marianao.

Before an audience of millions of Cuban children, the little main character of the movie “Daniel el Travieso” (Daniel the mischievous one) demonstrated that all those adults who don’t celebrate Christmas will suffer from spiritual bitterness and ideological angst.