Diaries

Cuba’s Indirect Users

“Indirect users” are no more than those people without Internet access, or even email, who construct social networks based on friends who have access to the Web through their jobs or, in rare cases, those who are allowed to have email at home for a few hours a month.

Read More

Poetry or Something More Concrete?

At the House of Poetry, I was listening to verses being recited by a Cuban author of some standing when suddenly I noticed a young woman sitting next to me. A “who-knows-what” diverted my attention from the reading long enough for us to exchange looks.

Read More

Debate and Consensus in Cuba

The last time my brother came to Cuba with his family from Russia, we went to see some friends of the family out here in Santa Cruz. Once at their home, my little Russian niece saw a turkey for the first time in her life.

Read More

Nothing at All

With the fall of the socialist camp and our entry into the “Special Period,” events occurred that eroded the main task of this organization — CDR guard duty — in a society where that organization suffered a loss of credibility and confidence.

Read More

The Pravda We Live in Cuba

In my last post I dealt with art that’s critical yet committed to expressing the realities of today’s Cuba. At that time I discussed the hip hop duo Los Aldeanos, while this time we turn our gaze to the work of filmmaker Eduardo del Llano.

Read More

Bolivian Reserve Spared…for the Time Being

Now that I have a computer, and sometimes even a few odd moments connected to the Internet thanks to a borrowed account, I take advantage of every resonating political occurrence to learn about the hot spots and topics in this convulsed world.

Read More

Eroticism and STD Prevention in Cuba

Sexual education programs implemented against STDs-HIV/AIDS by the National Prevention Center (NPC, the official institution that leads the fight against those evils in Cuba) have not transcended the logic of illness prevention.

Read More

Nothing Human Should Be Alien to Us

The situation in Palestine has made me reflect a little. We believe that our problems are the biggest and most important. It’s to the point of ignoring everything that’s happening in the rest of the world.

Read More

Cuba’s Yellow Submarine

A few steps from the park where every year a memorial concert marks the murder of John Lennon, and where there’s also situated a brass statue of him that’s well-known here in Havana, one can now find the “Yellow Submarine.”

Read More

Luismi Is My Favorite

Of all the people who send in comments to Havana Times, “Luismi” is my favorite. His enjoyable presentations — with self-dubbed nicknames ranging from “Luismi the Rat” to “Luismi the lover,” and even the denigrating “Luismi the dictator”.

Read More