When I got back home, after nearly two weeks in Havana and having recovered from the tortuous journey from the Cuban capital to my neck of the woods, I decided to find out what had been going on around here in my absence.
El Mariel is a typical bay on Cuba’s northern coast. Its point of entry is a considerably wide canal that can be crossed by large vessels. Today, the Cuban government has laid its bets on this place and the island looks to it as the hope of a more prosperous future.
Today, May 31, is the date declared by the United Nations as World No Tobacco Day, and I think this deserves a comment. It will be a kind of testimony from my own experience, to encourage all smokers to give up the pernicious vice.
Several months ago, the Cuban government officially announced that the gradual process of reestablishing a single currency system in the country would begin. People have had many expectations and made numerous conjectures since.
The United States soldier, who gained international renown for filtering thousands of classified documents on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the Wikileaks website and was condemned to 35 years in prison for his actions, undoubtedly shares the salmon’s affinity for swimming against the current.
When, just a few days ago, Mexico, Colombia and the whole of Latin America was saddened over the death of novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Puerto Rico was mourning the departure of Cheo Feliciano no one in Cuba imagined death was hovering about the Caribbean and would also make a stop on the island to take singer Juan Formell.
The new Latin American Left claims to lay its bets on changes that involve a reduction of poverty and the gradual elimination of social inequality. There are even those who speak of a new, Christian socialism that respects democracy, can co-exist with the opposition and supports private enterprise.
It’s true: nearly all of us Cubans are music lovers. It’s as though we carried a sense of harmony in our blood. We unconsciously tap our feet if we hear a drum and clap, snap our fingers or tap any nearby object rhythmically to follow the beat of any music we hear.
We’re definitely living in an era in which technology has become an essential part of people’s lives everywhere. The devices, techniques and processes employed in any field and directed towards progress and development, such as portable computers and state-of-the-art cell phones have become something like a fifth appendage for people.
I step out onto the balcony and see a group of children playing on the street. One of them runs around, astride a stick, yelling “Up and at ‘em, Palmiche.” It was pleasant to see this, because, nowadays, children tend to spend hours in front of the PlayStation or the computer, and their idols are galactic superheroes, mutants and who knows what else.