Diaries

Cuba’s Cartoon Legend Elpidio Valdes and Me

I step out onto the balcony and see a group of children playing on the street. One of them runs around, astride a stick, yelling “Up and at ‘em, Palmiche.” It was pleasant to see this, because, nowadays, children tend to spend hours in front of the PlayStation or the computer, and their idols are galactic superheroes, mutants and who knows what else.

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The Significance of April 9 for Cuban History

The history of Cuba is loaded with heroic deeds, episodes in which Cubans have risked their lives to defend the freedom and dignity of their people. The path stretching from the Spanish conquest to our day has been paved with the blood of martyrs. (23 photos)

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The Melodrama of Buying Potatoes in Havana

The reason I write this now is not precisely because some farmers markets around Havana are selling potatoes again, but the fact this product has been made available again in such a surreptitious manner. It’s taken so long – has it been months, years? – that people have been caught off guard.

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Democracy in the Times of the Energy Crisis

Democracy could well be within hand’s reach in a future marked by the energy crisis, the only “inconvenience” is that we will have to fight for it old-school: wielding a machete, in exile or prison with a quill and some ink, through guerrilla warfare up in the mountains or clandestine cells in the city.

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Cuba Updates its Health Care System

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.

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My Normal Day in Cuba

The 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.

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The Cuban Passion for Baseball

Good 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.

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Cuba and the End of Things

Today, 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.

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Repression in Cuba during Times of Peace and Transition

I 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.

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Some Thoughts on How Cuba Can Undo the Disaster

While 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…

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