Diaries

Venezuela, Politics and Time

A long time ago the people, in their diversity, cherished the hope of a better life with justice and freedom, and they did their best to achieve this. Today in Venezuela, like in the rest of the world, there persists that need to preserve this hope and the urgency to fight to defend it.

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Street Vendors in Havana’s Alamar Neighborhood

The guy felt insulted. He told me that his brother had been given a 750 peso fine — “despite how hard that is to come by” — and that the authorities had taken away his vendor’s license. This is a story about one of those crazy things that makes Cubans throw up their hands.

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Volunteering, But Under Duress

From an early age students go through the process of recommendation, being selected from the classroom as being those who according to “certain rules” comply with the requirements to be members. But on reaching the age of 32, the young associates are expected to move on to the ranks of the PCC.

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Adapting to One’s Country

Whenever I ride or walk through the central areas of Havana, I have a funny feeling. It’s as if I don’t recognize the places even though I can identify every building, every park and every corner. There’s something new in the rhythm of the city, though it doesn’t involve trains that speed along at 180 miles per hour, new skyscrapers, or enormous malls.

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This Trail Begins in the Shade and Ends in the Shadow

I was born in Cuba, and from when I was very young, I felt like I was blind. My childhood wasn’t particularly unhappy, but I felt lost. I wanted something that wasn’t in front of me, yet it seemed like the horizon was too imposing to believe something was behind it.

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How I Spent New Year’s

During these holiday seasons, I usually pick myself up and hide. I don’t like all the celebrating, and I find it exasperating to hear the squealing cries of pain made by pigs when they’re stabbed. The environment of joyfulness ends up making me sad.

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Happy Birthday in Today’s Cuba

Cesar was turning six, so he wanted a birthday party with clowns to make him feel special. As for Cesar’s parents they had a compelling reason to feel stressed out: their pockets were emptying little by little as they had to keep buying things for the celebration.

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Lights and Shadows on a Hospital Bed

The achievements of Cuban medicine — which are more than a few — are tarnished by cases that are not as isolated as one might think. Just a few weeks ago my cousin gave birth to a baby, during which time her life was threatened because of a series of bad decisions by staff attending her.

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Unemployed at 25 in Cuba

I’ll turn 25 on January 7, but I’m not going to stop here to list my achievements or my frustrations. I was born in 1988, so I belong to neither the generation that enjoyed the benefits of the Soviet bloc nor the one that grew up breathing the fresh air of change in the ‘90s.

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