Osmel Almaguer’s Diary

Speaking of grandchildren, her youngest has just gone through an experience worthy of the wildest action movie.

The fact that I loaned my arm to my cousin so that he could begin his career in the art of tattooing could seem like madness, but the true madness was that I found it all amusing.

After my thesis was approved, I began to become concerned with the issue of dress. Few Cubans have a suit or tie. This type of clothing is very not very functional on the island due to the heat here. In addition, it’s quite expensive.

My dream was finally realized. I now have a computer. Yet the funniest thing was how I went about getting it.

Yesterday I convinced myself that I shouldn’t take verse and rhyming too seriously. I say that because of the experience I had at this year’s Havana International Festival of Poetry.

The people who surround me are increasingly serious. Their faces contract increasingly. They spend increasingly more time with unfriendly looks. They remain increasingly silent. Their silence is interrupted only by laconic comments in whispers.

“Equality, I don’t know who the lunatic was who invented that idea!” I heard that statement while on my way to a friend’s house. It managed to shake me completely out of my thoughts. It came from the back of a mechanic’s workshop, whose front I was happening by.

May is the month of rain in Cuba, and also the month in which the temperature begins to go up. It’s when the habits of Cubans begin to change; we substitute hot water for cold showers, lukewarm milk for ice-cold juice, and the evenings at the cinema for trips to the beach.

When I recently heard the lyrics of Son de la loma (They’re from the Hills), that classic of Cuban son, I begin to think about migration – about how people leave their native homes in search of better opportunities.

Though over the last several years there have been major changes in terms of how homosexuals are treated in Cuba, still present are elements of the backward ancestral machismo that we have cultivated along the course of our history. This is visible in homes as well as in the street, as much among everyday people as in the offices of State institutions.