Osmel Almaguer’s Diary

The fiftieth edition of the Cuban National Baseball Series has been dubbed the “Golden Season,” evidently in reference to the round figure it will mark since it has nothing to do with the quality of our national sport.

I just had a wonderful New Year’s. Something happened in my house we hadn’t seen in years. No, it didn’t have to do with any inheritance, nor did anyone hit the lottery. I didn’t stumble upon a briefcase full of money, nor did they give my father a trip abroad.

This past Friday I had the opportunity to travel to Pinar del Rio province. I went as a journalist to cover a literary initiative that over the recent period has been dealing with the nation’s cultural life. On what would have been her 100th birthday, homage was paid to Dora Alonso, one of the greatest writers of children’s literature.

The Dog Cemetery disappeared almost totally just at the moment it was beginning to take on scale, and precisely when it was acquiring meaning for the residents in the surrounding area. It no longer exists as such, and all of this was due to human insensitivity.

I felt I was lucky. I’d even passed up piling on the last of the four P-11s with the full faith that the next one would soon be by. Such excessive optimism dealt me a bad hand.

Mayelin is from Cienfuegos, a south-central province of the island. It was there that the first important events of her life occurred. She studied to make it through university. She married her son’s father, and years later she got divorced from him.

When I walk through the historic district I get this strange impression that they’re never going to stop making repairs. They finish renovating one building and the previous one has already fallen into disrepair.

The P-15 bus was stuck on the train track as a locomotive was bearing down on us. I was in the middle part of the articulated vehicle, where there aren’t any windows, which is why I couldn’t see what was going on.

“Let Me Tell You” is not just a comedy show, over the past several years it has become the sole program on Cuban television that has faced up to the most pressing problems confronting our society.

I met Yoilan in one of those brief periods when he wasn’t in in jail. Our relationship wasn’t really what you’d call a friendship; it was more like company, or guys who’d occasionally hang out on the corner together.