With respect to Cuban police officers, my Spanish friends and acquaintances more or less unanimously agree on one thing: compared to cops in Spain, all of them look like nice guys. After hearing several anecdotes about the Spanish police, I couldn’t help but agree with this impression.
Read MoreThough some refer to my province as “Cuba’s Cinderella”, my city of Guantanamo is really not much different from other provincial capitals around the country, with the possible exception of Havana, Santiago de Cuba, the second most important city on the island, or, say, Matanzas.
Read MoreI was waiting at the busy intersection of Prado and Neptuno streets for a cab headed for Vedado, in the direction of the theatre. An old American car that was practically falling apart came to a stop beside me. “I’m going down Linea Street,” the driver said to me. I got in.
Read MoreIf someone had come to me three months ago (when I moved to Ecuador’s Amazon region) and told me I would get to see Venezuelan singer Oscar de Leon perform for free, I would probably not have believed them.
Read MoreThe events recently witnessed in Brazil constitute a rare phenomenon indeed: a wave of protests without ringleaders or defined political slogans which, though causing some material damage and regrettably leaving behind two dead, was, for the most part, non-violent.
Read MoreCuban workers do not enjoy the right to strike. This right, which is elementary in any country which considers itself democratic, is nowhere mentioned in the current (and out-of-date) Constitution of the Republic of Cuba. The Constitution, however, doesn’t explicitly deny workers this right either.
Read MoreThe air has been filled with strange vibrations these past days, there’s a murmur among people who live on the ground floors of tenement buildings in the neighborhood of Alamar, people who have expanded their homes into the common areas surrounding these buildings.
Read MoreCanasi is a brilliant Cuba overnight primitive camping experience that will get you away from smog belching cars, people trying to sell you stuff you don’t want, and maybe even reggaeton music. What makes Canasi so grand is that to get there you have to ford a river where it meets the Caribbean Sea and parts the coastal mountains. (9 photos)
Read MoreThe stage of Havana’s Trianon Theatre was recently taken up by acting students from Cuba’s National Institute for the Arts (ENA), who performed the play The Cherry Tree Garden (El jardin de los cerezos) as a graduation project.
Read MoreThese days, it seems as though Cuban janitors can conceive of no better time to get to their duties than when you come into work or, worse, during the busiest working hours.Today was one of those days when my arrival at a certain government office coincided with the janitor’s unavoidable maintenance duties.
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