Irina Echarry’s Diary

I’m talking about a plague that has infected us with a virus, and I don’t still know if we’ll find a medicine that can counteract it.

I have no doubt that applying this method led to frustrating actions that were being directed against the population, but the fact is that the 1960s is now 50 years behind us.

I was asked by another guard to leave the area with my camera because this was a “strategic zone.” This time I mustered my nerve and asked why this bus stop was strategic?

I was walking with my friend Erasmo down a street in the Reparto Electrico neighborhood when something caught our attention. Something was moving on the ground alongside a dumpster.

A few years ago there appeared a funny looking black and white dog on the first floor of my building; he seemed to be looking for company. Ivet welcomed him into her apartment and gave it an original name: “Oh!,” perhaps owing to the surprise he caused her when she saw how comically cute he was.

It’s no secret that listening to trumpet player Yassek Manzano means enjoying an indescribable pleasure. It’s not only difficult to translate into words what you feel when such good jazz penetrates you, but also the sensation of well-being that floods your mind and body.

It seems that I’m losing ground. Every day I lack a little more comprehension of the situation that surrounds me, and this worries me. Television and other media sources remind us that our leaders call for the people to express themselves, to discuss our nation’s problems and seek solutions. However, concrete practice contradicts those words.

Once I got to Maceo Park was when the flow of people really began, with the mass shifting from one side to the other, as if they were looking for something they couldn’t find, or as if maybe they had found it.

Suddenly, the same State —that has imprisoned people for writing what they think, that doesn’t recognize its political prisoners, that shows itself irreversible in its policy against dissidents— has shown signs of extreme “kindness” and has left everyone speechless.

“We’re talking about $500,000, so any sacrifice is small,” said my uncle’s friend as he involved his family in an odyssey of hope.