Francisco Castro’s Diary

Throughout my life, I’ve been able to confirm those details we see in movies or read in books, things that seem to step beyond reality while certainly having a real basis in it. Take the moon that’s out there in front of me, right now, as I’m writing. It’s huge, enormous, round, and red.

I’m not referring to street lighting (which, by the way, is very efficient here – at least in those places where I walk at night). Rather, I’m talking about those lights that should illuminate the way to development and opening, especially in certain centers of cultural power.

At the beginning it made me laugh when people — thinking I was a tourist — would come up to me offering all kinds of goods and services.

It’s not by chance that the little informational blurbs inserted in plastic CD cases read: “All rights Reserved. Duplication, public execution and radio-television broadcasting prohibited.”

Today I received another letter from my mother in Santiago de Cuba. I didn’t read it until after lunch, and I was surprised with how much it paralleled a situation I just experienced with my aunt here in Havana.

My mother is witnessing a city that is falling apart everywhere around her. She remarked the following in one of her delicious letters…

When a bus I was on today stopped at a traffic light, outside the window was an older man who looked like a bum. He was stretched out on the sidewalk under one of the large porticos that run down Infanta Avenue.

It’s similar to the case of my neighbor. His sister, the woman who takes care of him, is also elderly but she’s completely independent, meaning she has the capacity to take care of herself on her own.

One of the great punishments that Cubans have to suffer is our having to deal with any type of legal matter. I have no doubt that in other countries the legal systems are also intricate, but ours is beyond belief.

Today I’m writing because I feel an overpowering need —one that has turned into frustration— to proclaim to the world my passion for Cuba.