Diaries Archives - Page 584 of 646

The Return of the Boat

To get to school we had to cross the bridge that joins Cojimar with Alamar, two towns on the outskirts of Havana divided by a river.

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.

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.

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.

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.

‘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.

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.

‘What a Scare’: Quake in Eastern Cuba

Though several days have now gone by since the earth tremor that shook Santiago and Guantanamo residents, I still feel a bit nervous even recalling the event, one of the two most intense earthquakes on our island in more than 50 years.

Whatever You’re Going to Do, Do It Soon

To make it more theatrical, so the lesson serves as example, they often put on a show before other colleagues, who at that moment drop their jaws in the shock of discovering how seditious you really were and that they hadn’t realized it.

100 Years of Working Women’s Day (Part 3)

I think that if I’m going to discuss women’s day, I cannot forget speaking about Cuba. The experiences I lived these past seven years in Havana demonstrated to me that its social revolution has erased many of the difficulties suffered in capitalist countries.