Francisco Castro’s Diary

After 54 years of Cuba’s revolutionary government being in power — during which time the most radical changes in all of the nation’s history took place, both positive and negative — we’ve begun to take a critical and constructive look at the mistakes made by the government that Fidel Castro turned over to his brother Raul.

In the History of Cuba one character keeps popping up between the silence and the whispers. It catches its breath and then slips back behind the scenes of an adverse scenario. From the shadows, it has added its grain of sand to the formation of the Cuban nationality. This character is the homosexual.

The Pope’s resigning came as a shock, especially since it’s been more than five centuries that something like this has happened. The end of a Pope’s reign is usually decided by their death, though this isn’t law. These individuals have every right to make this decision, and I would go so far as to argue that it’s their duty.

One of the qualities I most admire in people is their willingness to teach. I’ve always seen it as an art, for which you have to be gifted. Educating other people is also one of the noblest professions.

Cuba today, that building, the future, a child going in circles upstairs. It’s the future on the brink of an abyss. Downstairs is the present. The present that’s only about chasing an elusive ball, an evasive one, bouncing from side to side, up and down, always chased but never caught.

I have the sensation that everything I’ve written or said in the last few months has been methodically misinterpreted. What’s most troublesome is that those “misinterpretations” have been made by a few individuals who at one point or another played very important educational roles in my life.

In a couple of minutes we can come up with reasons why these people are in these situations, why they stay stuck like this, immovable, from all appearances without any prospects for change.

Coming out of the theater, my friend informed me of his dissatisfaction with the play. He was unable to capture the essence of what was being represented in the hall, blinded by the nasty, sickening, outrageous, disgusting and pornographic episodes that unfolded before the frightened eyes of the spectators.

I ran into her as she was trying to flag down a taxi. Speaking with her, I noted the weary expression on her face, it revealed fatigue and something else, something that wasn’t normal for her. What then came to my mind was that she must have been angry.

I never knew his nationality, and I don’t remember his name. But none of that is important. It’s only that he was on-call at the hospital that day; and from among all the doctors, he was the one called on to attend to me.