Cuba’s Draft Labor Bill, drawn up in December of last year, is now being distributed to workers at all workplaces around the country. The consultation beginning is hailed as an “expression of our revolutionary democracy”.
What makes this crafts fair different aren’t the beautiful and prohibitively expensive items on sale (such as the reproductions of Sosabravo paintings, at 100 CUC, or furniture sets, with 2,000 CUC price-tags). What makes it different is the way in which it manages to bring a measure of cultural diversity to Havana’s Vedado neighborhood. (27 photos)
With respect to Cuban police officers, my Spanish friends and acquaintances more or less unanimously agree on one thing: compared to cops in Spain, all of them look like nice guys. After hearing several anecdotes about the Spanish police, I couldn’t help but agree with this impression.
The first electrical appliances I ever used were the Orbita fan which afforded me a cool night’s sleep the few nights without power cuts, the iron that smoothed out all of the uniforms I ever had to wear and a green Aurika washing machine which always looked on the verge of falling apart when tumbling clothes dry – and always, incidentally, remained in one piece.
To put an end to the dysfunctional workings of the FEU we would need to stop treating “autonomy” as a bad word, “academic freedom” as a dangerous possibility and the co-management of student affairs (by professors and students) as an unthinkable option.
I want to begin my post by saying that I am in favor of the release of the four Cubans who continue to serve sentences in US prisons and Alan Gross, currently incarcerated in Cuba. They are, after all, only victims of the poor relations that exist between two States and of their respective forms of terrorism.
Today, one has less trouble finding a public bathroom, not because a network of such lavatories has been set up around the city’s more frequented places but because these restrooms, be them at a restaurant, a cafeteria or a movie theatre, have become something akin to small businesses.
Cuba’s ninth mother’s day crafts fair, expanded in 2012 to display works from across the country, is currently underway at Havana’s PABEXPO fairgrounds. Named “Art for Mom” (“Arte para Mamá”), the fair will be held until May 11. Three exhibition areas were needed to accommodate the increased number of artisans, who hail from 12 different provinces. (35 photos)
I’m waiting for a friend on the steps of the Yara cinema. A man with a mustache and cigarette sits in front me and the game begins. The rules are basic: he will persistently try to make eye contact and I will employ all my talents to evade it. What’s a pretty girl like you doing on her own? is one of the pat lines.
I left Sancti Spiritus when I was 17. Back then, Chinese buses had not yet invaded Cuba’s interprovincial roads, and a ticket to Havana cost a mere 23 pesos. (37 photos)