The point is that, today, finding a bit of milk in Venezuela can turn into a veritable adventure. In the past few months, I’ve traveled through several states in the country and have seen long, sweaty lines of people in front of State or private markets offering the product.
Read MoreYou open the door to Havana’s Café Fortuna – nestled beyond a steep set of steps – to the chimes of little bronze bells shaped like pagodas. If it weren’t for the glass counter before you, you’d think you had mistakenly stumbled into the living room of some extravagant collector.
Read MoreI titled my first book of poetry La Pendiente (“The Slope”), in reference to the place where I live, located at the foot of a hill to the south of Havana’s peripheral neighborhood of Alamar. In La Pendiente, I get a number of things about the place and its people off my chest.
Read MoreFaced with the more common or urgent questions of the population in Cuba, the authorities – or the officials responsible for this or that area – rely on a ready-made formula to answer. They say: “the problem is being studied” or “we’re looking into it.”
Read MoreA few days ago, Cuba’s Round Table TV program addressed the issue of what young people – and the Cuban people in general – wear these days. It’s true that the way some young people dress today is a bit curious, but this is not a question of right or wrong: it’s simply a way of dressing different from what was in style in earlier decades.
Read MoreCuba’s ongoing reform process is widening the gap between the individuals and groups favored by the structural changes and those who, caught between a market that turns its back on them and a State that continues to manage and curtail their rights, have ended up at the bottom.
Read MoreAll writers dream with launching a book without having people yawn out of boredom. If capturing the attention and earning the admiration of an audience is a success in and of itself, then poet Antonio Salvador (born in Puerto Rico, but every bit as Cuban as the rest of us) should no doubt feel very satisfied.
Read MoreI swear everything is slower in the Caribbean. However, my Cubana Airlines wall calendar affirms that time continues its steady countdown to the 2015 due-date of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Cuba will be one of the few countries not asking for extensions on the majority of the UN’s homework assignments to the world.
Read MoreCiego de Avila is a province experiencing vigorous development. Created relatively recently, as part of the political and administrative restructuring of 1976, most of its infrastructure is of recent creation. This is a piece about my visit there not that long ago.
Read MoreAs in all totalitarian regimes, all political parties, groups of activists and any organization that gathered individuals with dissenting ideologies, philosophies or thoughts were abolished in Cuba shortly after the island’s current leadership took power.
Read More