Diaries Archives - Havana Times

Life in the Dark: How Blackouts Fracture Daily Life in Cuba

At 9:00 PM in Havana, the fan stops turning, the television switches off in the middle of a soap opera, and the lamp’s dim glow disappears.

As a people who have lived under 66 years of brainwashing, now any mediocre politician can manipulate us as they wish.

In Cuba, turning fifteen is a kind of rite of passage: the waltz, princess dresses, retouched photos, & a party that leaves parents proud…

The day in a Havana tenement building doesn’t begin; it emerges. The first ray of sunlight slips between the bars of a balcony…

News has reached me of the death of one of our professors at the Evangelical Theology Seminary in Matanzas.

I just finished reading “Kat of Nine” [nine short stories set in different moments of Cuban history], by Canadian author Jenny Cressman.

I always have the feeling that we are in a state of war, one in which no bombs were dropped, or they exploded while we were unconscious.

I confess that writing about my country has become an agony; my hands refuse to put into words all the bad things that are happening.

In every corner of the island, daily life unfolds under an alert triggered by the buzz of the mosquito — no longer just a nuisance…

Walking past the House of the Green Tiles is, for the curious an invitation to imagine the conversations that once took place there.