Irina Pino’s Diary

My Father’s Good Life

When my father died just before the age of 86, a friend said to me: “At least he had a good life. He had children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who loved him.” What she said left me thinking and made me look back at certain episodes in his life.

Read More

Of Love and its Surprises

It’s often been said that relationships between people of different ages lead to generational clashes. While this is true and this is what ensues most of the time, it is also true young women are often attracted by men over 40 and vice-versa.

Read More

Watching the Rolling Stones Live in Havana

The longest performing rock and roll band, the Rolling Stones, played their long-awaited first concert in Cuba on the evening of Good Friday, March 25. It was a free event and held on a sprawling outdoor grass area of what is known as Havana’s Sports City. The happening was amazing after decades of cultural repression.

Read More

Our Dear President Obama

What many had hoped for didn’t happen: there were no people at either side of the street, cordoned off and holding the flags of both countries, cheering and screaming with joy.

Read More

No Appetite for Culture

It is both humorous and sad to see that many young Cuban university students have trouble taking in or developing an interest in culture. Their minds are elsewhere, they seem fed up with the world and they do not seem to care about history, literature, cinema or music.

Read More

Public Spaces

It’s nice to be invited to dine out, not to have to cook something at home and skirt all of the stress that this cursed task involves. That’s why I was happy to receive an invitation to eat out at a restaurant from some friends who had recently arrived from abroad.

Read More

My Father’s Death in Cuba

After spending eleven days at the hospital, my father’s body is now locked up in a box, inside a horrible coffin. It’s strange and hard to accept, but real. Perhaps death is but another moment in existence. I believe in this possibility, I cling to it.

Read More

Cuba’s Inept Police

Years ago, someone broke into my home in Vedado. I’ll give you a short version of the story. It was the early morning and the entire family was sleeping. I recall it was a very hot summer and that we used to sleep with the windows open – the mistake we would later regret.

Read More

The Human Thing

La cosa humana (“The Human Thing”), a film by Gerardo Chijona, has just been released in Havana’s theaters. This comedy seeks to pay tribute to such mafia films as Coppola’s The Godfather and the US television series The Sopranos, where violence is the best means people find to solve conflicts.

Read More