In Cuba, there is a very popular saying that says that whoever is born a sardine, never becomes a codfish. This is a very Cuban way (there are many more) to explain the global phenomenon of 90% of people who are born rich end up dying rich and that very few people who are born poor, ever become rich.
Read MoreLike the feeling you have when a baby you’ve been longing to have finally arrives, I was overcome by the same emotion after Patriotismo 36-77 made its debut. More than half a year went past until it could finally hit the stage.
Read MoreThe absence of truth, and going one step further, repeating lies so as to change attitudes of the masses, isn’t only used in warfare. Lies are also used in politics (I’m referring to Capitalism’s dirty politics) as a powerful weapon to morally discredit the adversary and to reap the resulting political returns.
Read MoreErnestico is a 14-year-old boy, he’s very expressive and studies hard. We care a great deal for him at home. Whenever he can, when he comes home from school in the afternoon, he changes his clothes and visits our apartment to tell us, among other things, about how things are going at school and about the small family he still has here in Cuba.
Read MoreEven though there are household chores that I don’t enjoy (like ironing, for example), I have never been able to give myself the luxury of paying someone else to do it for me, as the two incomes that come into our house just about cover food expenses for the entire family, let alone pay for a bit of help that would give me some more time for myself.
Read MoreA lawyer told me, very seriously, that Decree-Law 349 is one of the measures that has been conceived to respond to demands of including regulation in the new Constitution, which guarantees that Cuban women’s rights are respected. Her remark left me speechless.
Read MoreDifferent analyses and testimonies about Cuba’s new constitutional reform have recently been published on official and alternative media platforms throughout the country. I would like to write about what is likely to happen with this process, instead of what I wish for.
Read MoreOn the evening of October 23rd, after a month and a half of waiting, news finally came from ETECSA (Cuba’s state-owned telecommunications company) about my stolen credit in September. The response made me extremely angry but it didn’t surprise me.
Read MoreLast weekend while looking for a new place to study and trying to come up for a topic to write about I stumbled upon a group of three people dressed in white. They were standing at the beginning of a small ledger. One was singing and hitting a little drum, the other was what to the uneducated eye looked like performing a cleanse on the third. As I looked at them I realized this was the first time I had seen Santeria being performed.
Read MoreA few years ago, you could see people playing bottle caps secretly on certain streets in Havana. Like every game of chance in Cuba, it is illegal and involves three bottle caps on top of a board and a small ball, which a person passes from one cap to another with a lot of skill and dexterity.
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