I consider this award of recognition proper and commendable. However it would be good that starting from now nothing else were given to Cuban residents in Cuba or to nonresidents who reaffirm not only their patriotism but their identification with the system on the island.
I found a disk by Bicer Kirov in the CD collection of a friend. Among those present (we were all contemporaries) this triggered an explosion of laughter, and a good part of the night became devoted to that Cuban habit of asking “Do you remember…?”
The overwhelming majority of the places here are not private. Social property makes things everyone’s but ultimately nobody’s. This can be verified easily in the difference of how private and public properties are maintained.
These days a certain enthusiasm can be noted among the residents of Santiago de Cuba because of the urban revival the city’s experiencing. What we’re seeing are restored parks, street fairs, bars, restaurants, pastry shops, markets, etc.
Habanastation gives a faithful reflection of today’s Cuban society. Its plot that travels from the up-scale life of one boy whose parents belong to a favored social group and is contrasted to the precarious living conditions of another classmate.
The spectacular cavalcades of choreographed dance troupes and conga bands and floats pack the streets and avenues – while in the lights of the fireworks, the people of Santiago de Cuba looked happy for more than a week.
What’s remarkable about this is that people are displaying their gratification over the fact that their personal property rights are now being recognized, ending an extended period of these rights being denied them for no logical reason.
I don’t believe that we write out of some cathartic necessity. I think that it’s a form of sincerely demonstrating the other faces of Cuba, neither those displayed in the official press nor those in the anti-Castro media.
In this celebration there are no semblances of any “cult of the personality,” nor any exaltation of the personal values of this person who was that nation’s president several years ago. I admire such will, where people show the spirit to pay tribute to such an important figure in the social history of the world.
As Granma is a publication that for so many years has flirted with silence, censorship and taboos regarding the truth, it struck me as strange that all of a sudden this new license was being granted.