Osmel Almaguer’s Diary

The rooster is one of the most common creatures in Cuba. Within the world of the visual arts, this bird was the preferred theme of a 20th century Cuban painter: Mariano Rodriguez. In our national sport —baseball— the Sancti Spiritus team has the rooster as its mascot.

Joshua is my youngest and most recent friend. He’s 22 and has worked for eleven months at the same place I do, the Cuban Book Institute. It turns out he has an apartment in Old Havana, the oldest area of the city, one where many colonial structures still remain.

When I’m at the bus stop, I almost always see a number of buses fly by that don’t pick anyone up. These aren’t the vehicles that make up the public transit system, but ones that belong to certain State-run rental agencies.

As we entered the city of Matanzas, for me it was a completely new sensation and utterly different from what I’d imagined. I only knew that this province was a major producer of citrus fruit and henequen fiber, that it had a very intense cultural life, and that a large number of Cuban baseball stars had been born here…ah, and that it’s known as the “City of Bridges.”

“In the Footsteps of Che Guevara” is an annual chess tournament held between different ministries and agencies of the State. We are now holding the competition for the second time.

Everyone in Cuba must be a member of a number of the mass organizations. Although most are “voluntary,” this is only window dressing, because rejecting participation or membership in one or several of these organizations means declaring oneself to be tacitly against the revolutionary process.

My friend Jorge invited me to lunch at a restaurant; it opened recently near where we work. He said it was supposed to be pretty good and fairly inexpensive.

At my job, they’ve created an activity by that name to encourage young people to interact. Its aim is to inculcate ethical and aesthetic values, and to create a closer relationship between the participants and the world of books. It also seeks to develop a sort of reconciliation between the managers -whose prestige is fairly deteriorated.

This year is almost over; and people are commenting that during the next one, the Cuban State will make changes having major social and economic repercussions.

If I’d only left work at the usual time, I wouldn’t have run into my ex on the P-11. But I suppose living in the same city means our paths had to cross at some time. I hadn’t seen her in a year and half.