On August 25, the residents of Havana’s Antonio Guiteras neighborhood of the capital were delighted by a performance staged at the La Cascada recreational society by the Yoruba Andabo Afro-Cuban folkloric music ensemble that is well-known both in Cuba and abroad.
Read MoreOld Havana’s Center for the Development of the Visual Arts hosted an interesting exhibition titled Drapetomania: A Homage to Cuba’s Grupo Antillano. When I told a friend I wanted to go see the exhibition, I was surprised by her reply: “Yes, more of the same. I’m a little bit tired of African culture, to be honest.” (19 photos)
Read MoreCuba’s culinary traditions are also reflected in our music. Allusions to food can be found in many popular songs (recall such catchy refrains as “quimbombo sliding o’er dry cassava”, “Olga’s tamales are sure spicy”, “stay outta the kitchen, my man’s cookin’”, “bread and codfish” and “put some sauce on it”).
Read MoreThe type of missing person announcement you see here can be found at practically any bus stop or busy street in Quito. Friends from Cuba often ask me what has struck me the most about Ecuador so far. Well, there you go: its missing persons.
Read MoreWalking around Old Havana just to see crumbling buildings is not something you necessarily need a guide for. However, to interpret the important colonial decay from the less important colonial decay the Havana City Historian’s Office has been hosting a series of annual summertime walking tour called “Rutas y Andares”.
Read MoreWe speak so much about the moral degradation of Cuban society that sometimes it feels we are deep in a quagmire that can’t get any worse. This isn’t exactly true, and we should not deceive ourselves that it is. This trend continues to grow and the “decent” appear to have become immune to it.
Read MoreI arrived at Puerto la Cruz, a city located in Venezuela’s east, to attend the first Youth Tour (Tour del Juventud) concert held in the country. What concert, you ask? It’s a music tour which included three of Venezuela’s major (most heavily populated) cities: Puerto la Cruz (Anzoategui), Maracaibo (Zulia) and Caracas. (42 photos)
Read MoreThe residents of Havana’s Antonio Guiteras district (more popularly known as “Bahia”), a neighborhood located a few kilometers from the Havana Bay tunnel, were pleasantly surprised to see a performance by Los Papines, staged at a lot located to the side of their local polyclinic.
Read MoreIn the dystopian novel I wrote about in my previous post, The Planet of the Apes, society stagnated for thousands of years because the orangutans – the planet’s teachers and custodians of the official truth – would pass down the same dogmas to their students, again and again. After giving the Cuban History high-school syllabus a quick glance, I’ve come to the conclusion that Cuba’s educational system – at least as far as its ideological aspects are concerned – is run by orangutans.
Read MoreA group of my friends and I recently got together with a former classmate of ours visiting Havana. During this get-together, we decided to spend a few days in the town of Remedios, which she is where she currently lives. We had to plan the trip so that it would coincide with our vacation time at work. We also had to plan it for a date after getting paid our puny salary.
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