A while ago, I watched some television at the home of a friend who has a satellite dish. Though I already had some sense of what American television was like, I was surprised by the dizzying and irrational pace of the programming. In the middle of a TV series, I was bombarded with three commercials.
Read MoreI don’t recall the last time I attended a play that inspired me to write a review as much as Goldfish. I saw this highly moving play, co-authored by playwrights William Ruiz and Alejandro Arango, at Havana’s Trianon theatre, skillfully staged by the El Ingenio and De la Luna theatre companies.
Read MoreIn a previous post, I wrote that an economy that grows by a certain, steady percentage over time is experiencing exponential growth. I feel this issue deserves some additional lines, because no one seems to know exactly what this means or what its consequences are. Even the mathematicians seem a bit confused on this issue.
Read MoreYesterday, while walking down a path cutting through a field of grass, I saw a little girl coming towards me and, all of a sudden, I felt my own past and future strike me like an enormous wave. I remembered what I was like when I was that age, recalled how I looked at and what I expected from the world back then.
Read MoreSince acting as the representative of her community in an effort to recover a grove of casuarina trees in Santa Fe that had been felled by authorities, my restless friend Patricia Alonso has continued to insist that autonomous community work is possible and to try and involve her neighbors in the exploration and transformation of their environment.
Read MoreLast weekend, my dear brother traveled to Ecuador on an invitation from his son (who decided to chase his dreams outside of Cuba). Early in the morning, the insistent ring of the telephone woke us up. . When I picked up the receiver, he greeted me and said…
Read MoreCuba dice (“Cuba Says”) is a segment of Cuba’s national news broadcast that has been on the air for some time now. The segment consists of journalistic reports that cover problems or difficulties Cubans face on a daily basis, from the purchase or acquisition of building materials to public transportation and other issues.
Read MoreI could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure the reality show most watched and enjoyed in Cuba is Caso Cerrado (“Case Closed”), a Miami domestic court program hosted by Judge Ana Maria Polo. Many watch the show at home, thanks to illegal satellite dishes. Others, like me, buy or rent weekly packages on discs that include the week’s cases.
Read MoreThough the government boasts of Cuba’s broadened Internet connectivity, I have no access and news about incidents on the island and abroad always reach me rather late. It wasn’t until Wednesday (a week after the fact), when a friend who lives in Brazil wrote to ask me what I thought about the whole Roberto Carcasses affair, that I found out about this incident involving the Cuban musician.
Read MoreMuch is being said about Cuba’s recent yellow-ribbon campaign. What was most striking about the whole process, for me, was seeing how easily people buy into a given product or message. Of course, everything depends on how such a product is advertised.
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