Erasmo Calzadilla’s Diary

I’ve been worked up these days. What got me into this rather unusual state isn’t the collapse of the Pekin stock market or the rising cost of living in Cuba. It’s the book How Night Fell (Como llego la noche). If you’re Cuban and don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t be too shocked.

Cubans welcomed 2016 startled by food prices. The price of a pound of tomatoes, onions or beans went up to as high as a day’s salary. During the last session of Cuba’s National Assembly, President Raul Castro asked that urgent measures be taken.

As the end of 2015 neared, our winter felt like summer and Venezuela’s Bolivarian project seemed to collapse. Back home, things aren’t looking so well. State produce and livestock markets, chronically understocked, face crises as the prices of crops grown on the island skyrocket once again.

In November, I spent a couple weeks in San Diego, my first trip abroad. I’m still drooling over the city, I admit it, but this has not blinded me to its uglier sides. (10 photos)

A university in San Diego – UCSD – invited me to take part in an investigative journalism workshop. This is how I was able to make the dream of many Cubans – myself included – come true, at least for a few days. My body is back in Cuba, but my mind refuses to accept this fact.

It’s very stressful to head out in the morning, not knowing whether you’ll end up in a cell that day. I like to confront life’s challenges with realism but, on several occasions, I caught myself fantasizing about…

Cuba needs many things. If I had to mention one, I would say we need to rediscover our dignity and self-confidence. It seems like a pipe-dream right now, but the storm is coming, and storms tend to bring surprises along with them.

In October of 2014, Cuba’s official newspaper Juventud Rebelde published an article dealing with the state of Cuba’s produce and livestock markets. The author, journalist Rene Tamayo, appeared overjoyed at the deceleration of price trends and predicted a brighter future all around.

I’ve been writing about the need and benefits of returning to the countryside for some years now, but, how persuasive could my arguments be if I didn’t preach by example? Luckily, I have friends in other parts of the world who have set out on this adventure…