Diaries

A Guantanamera Cheering for Villa Clara

I’m a faithful follower of Cuban baseball. Ever since I was little, going to the stadium has constituted one of my most enjoyable pleasures – with the music, the shouting before each home team hit, the songs mocking our opponents, and those ever-friendly disputes with the referees.

Read More

Havaneurope?

Several days ago, while walking through Havana with a London photographer, he told me he didn’t like the restored part of the city because it appeared too much like just another European city. For this friend, what was different was capturing the municipality of Centro Havana in his lens, an area where the restoration work of the Office of the City Historian has yet to arrive.

Read More

My First Trip Abroad

I had never flown abroad, at least not physically. This first trip took me by surprise; I didn’t even have time to say goodbye to all my friends and family – that was the bad part. Nor do I like the fact I’ll have to go several months without seeing them. But I can’t complain; thousands of Cubans would love to be in my place.

Read More

Entering the Work World

I began the process for the validation of the medical degree I received in Cuba, which will take a minimum of five months. At the moment I’m looking for any kind of work.

Read More

Dispute over Human Rights in Cuba

For Cuban citizens it is virtually impossible (and punishable) to formally testify against, monitor or criticize any alleged human rights violation committed by officials or state institutions —on occasion contrary to its own 1992 socialist constitution— given the capacity for social control by the State and the subordination of the mass media to government directives.

Read More

My Neighbor’s Wake

My neighbor died this afternoon. What a shame! I want to go to the funeral home for a while. It’s ten o’clock at night right now, so I suppose I’ll stay there until around three in the morning, since I have to work tomorrow. On the way, I ran into other neighbors who were engaged in a lively conversation.

Read More

A Wanna Be a Bongo Player

We’re living in interesting moments today here in Havana. You can feel a kind of volatility characteristic of times of change, although it’s subtle and probably wouldn’t be noticed by an unobservant foreign visitor.

Read More

‘Revolution’ & Regime in Cuba

To differentiate “Revolution” from “Regime” is not a capricious or pejorative classification, but instead offers the possibility of constructing a critique from the left. This can assist in delineating a new socialist project and in reclaiming the emancipatory content threatened in our country by bureaucratic immobility, the conservative pressures of daily life and the forces of neo-liberal restoration.

Read More

Who Gave Us the Power to Imprison?

“Why is he hitting it?” I asked myself as I watched from far as a young guy beat a pig. To its added misfortune, the animal had been condemned to live without seeing the sun in a thrown-together pen made of metal sheeting and rebar.

Read More