Diaries

Welcome Home Yoani Sanchez the “Tube Worm”

There are many opinions I do not share with Yoani Sanchez (I don’t follow her blog much either), but if her provocations, complaints, brilliant ideas or cyber-gossip helps shake the permafrost, the frozen subsoil of Cuban politics, then, hell, my respects to the tube worm.

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A Cuban Day Care Activity

It has become tradition for the principal of the school to deliver a speech that underscores the importance the school has as a forger of the country’s future workers, professionals and artists. Usually, this speech has some of the political content we insist on finding in all our daily experiences in Cuba, invariably touching on the US blockade, imperialism and the revolution.

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Joseph Blatter and the Future of Soccer in Cuba

FIFA president Joseph Blatter’s meeting with top Cuban officials during a recent visit to Cuba suggests that authorities on the island may seriously be considering investing in the development of soccer on the island. The other side of this mutation is the apparent decline in people’s interest in baseball.

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Miami’s Employment Agencies

Finding a job in Miami is getting harder every day. To make matters worse, employment agencies control a more than significant part of the city’s job market. The unemployed and low-income people watch helpless as employment agencies, which charge a commission for finding them a job somewhere, devalue their labor power even further.

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Why the Cuban Five and not the Four?

I want to begin my post by saying that I am in favor of the release of the four Cubans who continue to serve sentences in US prisons and Alan Gross, currently incarcerated in Cuba. They are, after all, only victims of the poor relations that exist between two States and of their respective forms of terrorism.

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The Pablo Milanes Concert

The concert had not enjoyed much publicity, at least not as much as other performers are usually given, or when the shows are conceived as part of the celebration of a public holiday or other official functions. But Pablo Milanes needs no such strategies. Singing to the public is good enough reason for him, and this is what he proved again.

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Pitching in My Two Cents for Cuba’s CDR Congress

A new congress of Cuba’s Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) is nearing and winds of change seem to be coming with it. Such change would be a positive sign, an indication that Cuban authorities are beginning to acknowledge that something in this organization isn’t working too well.

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Cuban Prisons and the Rights of Those Who Work

I watched a number of reports shown on Cuban television prior to the date when Cuba submitted its official report to the UN Human Rights Council. The series documenting what life is like in Cuba’s prisons was particularly interesting for me. The news emphasized the broad range of occupations that inmates can become involved in.

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There is Nothing Worse than Silence

I’ve heard several people say positive things about Cuba’s new First Vice-Minister Miguel Diaz-Canel. They say that, when he was the Party Secretary for the province of Villa Clara, he would ride around town on a bicycle, in humble sports clothes, just another common, unassuming resident of Matanzas.

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Indalla Is Located in Cuba

Indalla is a shantytown located in the heart of the Cuban capital, whose existence even the president of the municipality where it is situated was unaware of. This marginal neighborhood was discovered a few months ago by the mayor of its own local government, while sanitation units were conducting a health inspection in the area.

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