Diaries Archives - Page 518 of 647

Fined for Eating in Your Own Cafe

After the inspector has marched off, everyone is left dismayed. A lone thought occupies their minds: how far is this control going to go?

My First Encounter with the Crisis

The bitter years of the “Special Period” crisis will never pass for those who experienced them. I almost dare to assure that all Cubans born and yet to be born will never be able to rid themselves of the memory of those times.

The Battle of the Tube

Stuck against the back of a seat and leaning against a tube, I found a relatively comfortable spot. It was far from the activity in the passageway and had a certain advantage in the struggle for a seat, if someone in front were to get off.

My New Friend Alaa

Although I admit that for some hidden reason or maybe because of my sensitivity toward children, I noticed something about her: she’s always attentive to the street from her high and barred-in balcony, she was always gazing out and always alone.

Internationalism and Me

Among those who survived, many returned with personality disorders, transformed, torn. Some came back with missing limbs, others without the desire to live. Some of them now sit around on whatever corner recounting their heroic feats while hawking cigarettes just to survive.

A Speed Limit for Pedestrians?

If you walk any time after midnight in an outlying neighborhood of Havana, you have to move at a certain speed. The new Highway and Traffic Act went into effect this year.

The Laundromat Is Closed

A few days ago I was talking with a friend and colleague, who also writes for this website, and we discussed whether a more intellectual or a more popular approach would have greater effectiveness in communicating our ideas.

Two Plastic Bottles

What astonishment I felt when I got home to find two plastic water bottles, one sitting on each side of the entrance! I wondered, what reason could there be for those bottles, which for the first time I had seen between the two columns out front.

The Total Suspicion Syndrome

In the first days of March the ammunition dump located at the military outpost in Santiago de las Vegas, Boyeros municipality, blew up. For more than 5 hours explosions from projectiles of different calibers rocked the surrounding area.

A River, a Book and a Lynching Attempt

Although it sometimes seems unbelievable to us, still today, in the Cuba of the 21st century, there occur events fitting of medieval life, an age when scientists and women with uncommon features — under the suspicion of heresy — were persecuted and burned at the stake.