Diaries Archives - Page 457 of 633

Cuba Reggaeton-Free Zones?

A solution occurred to me concerning the abundance of a certain spirituality that’s dealt us in industrial quantities in the form of reggaeton.

Cuba and Immoral/Unpatriotic Drugs (part II)

One of the most widely used devices for those who debate without solid arguments is lump all the varying cases into one category: those that excite as well as those that calm, the strong ones with the subtle, those that are dangerous to people’s health together with the relatively innocuous ones.

Cuba Confronts Gender Violence

Odalis is a cute black woman, young and full of life, who lives in a comfortable house with her 15-year-old daughter who adores her. It could be said that this Cuban woman has everything to be happy, or almost everything – even a husband who says he loves her. If it weren’t for the screams and slaps that he frequently gives her, one might believe in his love.

A Cuba Woman Finally Reaches Retirement

Ana Marta is 63 and feels tired. Tired of so many years of “working for nothing,” tired of so much “struggling without seeing the future,” she told me two days ago.

The Abakua Sect in Cuba

More often than even he himself would have liked, he would repeat a phrase that always prompted the curiosity of anyone who heard it. He would say, “My neighbor, the master of the ritual,” which sounded as cryptic and mysterious to many Cubans as the secret Abakua sect to which he associated.

Cuba and the Law of Retaliation

Currently many people here in Santiago de Cuba are calling for the application of the “Law of Retaliation.” What has caused the highest degree outrage among people of all ages and both sexes was a heartbreaking and horrendous act.

The Culture of the Poor Isn’t Their Poverty

In his films, Charles Chaplin offered a look at the daily lives of the poor, but not merely to discover their material restrictions. In his work, poverty is a constructive force of dissimilar circumstances where the poor express a rich cultural world. “That’s poverty!”

Elena, a Poet from Cuba

Like many poets of her generation, Elena lived in exile, where she continued a work begun in Cuba. Yet she never lost a connection with her country of birth; that she always wore on her back.

In Jesus Christ Is the Truth?

“In Jesus Christ is the truth” – at least according to a sign on a door I pass by daily on the way from work. That message is written in brown crayon on the deteriorating entryway wall. Its strokes seem impetuous, giving the idea of having been scrawled out in a moment of passion.

Thinking Coats as Havana Winter Approaches

The wind has started kicking up and pounding on the windows of my interim apartment here in Alamar, on Havana’s far east side. These gusts of cool air always suggest that winter’s on the way, anxiously anticipated but always timid here in the tropics.