Boasting health statistics above all other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (and even the United States), Cuba’s healthcare system has achieved world recognition and been endorsed by the World and Pan-American Health Organizations and the United Nations.
Read MoreThe alarm goes off at a quarter past six. I get up and fix breakfast. Then starts the battle of getting my son out of bed and sending him off to school. When I finally manage to wake him up, I help him get ready for his classes. After he’s left, I sit down in front of the computer and write for an hour or two.
Read MoreGood or bad, Cuban baseball continues to awaken the heated passions of sport fans. This is especially true during a post-season involving Havana’s Industriales team, the “emblem of Cuban baseball”, as people have become used to saying.
Read MoreToday, I sat down to think about all of the people I have met in the course of my life in one way or another, people who are no longer around – not because they’ve left the country (there’s plenty of those), but because they’re now pushing up daisies.
Read MoreI first saw footage of an official act of reprisal (mitín de repudio) in Cuba in the Cuban film Memories of development. The footage showed a group of people beating up a person. The images were from the eighties, during the Mariel exodus. Seeing those images was painful.
Read MoreWhile often I have heard that Cuba’s gradual moraI regeneration is unlikely in the short run, I began to reflect on what we could do if a legitimate will to change things existed (not only among the people, of course, but also within the government). These are the points I came up with…
Read MoreSome Saturdays or Sundays, when I have a little bit of money and want to dance to some rock music, I get ready to go out. First, I choose a simple outfit (jeans, a blouse and a pair of comfortable sneakers). I pick up my purse and daub some perfume on my chest.
Read MoreAt the end of March, I had the immense fortune of finding a well-paying job with a construction brigade (the kind that does restoration work in historic sites around Old Havana), with a nice guy for a boss. The first day, I hammered away energetically, eager to get to the end of the month and to collect my 60 CUC.
Read MoreCuba’s Granma newspaper website recently changed their look and several features including the new possibility of posting comments. We should pay attention to these shy steps and what they could mean for the future: a move towards an acceptable model of free press, or a mere disguise used to conceal the censorship mechanism we know so well.
Read MoreIt was ten to 8 pm, the time the second screening begins at Havana’s La Rampa theater. We were waiting to go in and see the Turkish film Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, winner of the Grand Jury Award at Cannes. Ready to take in the 157-minute movie, we were waiting for the ticket booth to open.
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