Diaries Archives - Page 474 of 647

Going from and to Cuba for Xmas

I will be joining the multitudes that have paid about $400 USD for the 35 minute flight between Miami and Havana.

Another Pope’s Visit to Cuba

As part of the “Evangelization” being carried out by the highest office in the Vatican, the island will be visited by the supreme pontiff, which will make him the second pope to do so, following John Paul II’s 1998 visit.

The Damn Housing Mess

My friend “B” has problems with her mother. Basically she has problems living with her. Her mother goes through life with a certain dose of frustration for not having achieved everything that she set out to and makes life impossible for B.

Missing Shakira

The Latin Recording Academy in the USA elected Shakira as the most significant figure in the music industry in 2011. I couldn’t help thinking back to the early songs of that daughter of a country at war.

I’m the Dog

All too frequently I experience moments in which I don’t feel human. Every day I feel like one of those race dogs you occasionally see in American movies.

Poor Tripoli

Racial differences are being felt in Libya. Today bitterness and inequalities between ethnic groups and districts are realities experienced by this people following the demise of Gadhafi. Displaced black groups now wander about the streets of Tripoli.

You’re No Longer My Hero, Rene

That’s a joke of course; the Cuban Five were never my favorites. I felt bad to see them trapped in the teeth of that macabre machinery, as well as ad nauseam over the government’s constant public relations campaign around them.

Cuba, Soccer and Globalization

Though I’m a fervent follower of most sports, soccer — which is one of the greatest and most profitable spectacles in the world today — doesn’t arouse great passion in me.

A Havana Hack Job

Not long ago my neighbor Robin, who has a lot in Havana’s Playa municipality, was cutting the tall grass and taking care of the rubble that had been dumped on his property. He plans to build a house there for his children.

A Cuban Imprint on Cornelius Castoriadis’s Thinking?

He suggested making a critique of capitalism and modernity beyond the classical propositions of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. He included in his analysis a decided questioning of the so-called “real socialism,” bitterly re-interpreting the abbreviation “USSR” as “four letters, four lies.”