I neither have nor need a pretext for my desire to write about the things that weigh on me. It must be something like this when one has cancer. That’s not my case, but I imagine that it’s a constant pain in the affected organ, so that even as you tell your friends that everything is okay, you only do so gritting your teeth.
Read MoreIt turned out that I was the one who bothered a very full-sized woman who, along with her daughter – also obese – was beside the door. When I passed by her, my backpack got tangled up with her purse, and she thought I was trying to steal it.
Read MoreI have etched in my mind an image that I’ve seen a lot on TV and in the movies. It’s one of how people look for work in those countries where those series and movies come from: the job seeker opens up a newspaper full of offers and begins circling those that might suit them.
Read MoreIf we add to all this the corrosive effects of the crisis and the vertical structure of the system (which limits the resources and powers available to local authorities), it is obvious that “rendering accounts” has little meaning and is just seen as a traditional practice.
Read MoreI imagine that a lot of people (who do not live as I do) think that I am making a mountain out of a molehill; or that if I am not married, there is no reason for me to have a child; or that if the rest of humanity had thought like me, we would have become extinct a long time ago.
Read MoreDesiderio Navarro is a legend. I’m not sure how many languages Desiderio speaks, but they’re quite a few. He’s translated Russian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, French…15 different languages in all-making him probably one of the most competent and industrious translators in Cuba.
Read MoreThis rivalry reaches its peak at the end of the national baseball series when the absurd competition between the inhabitants of the two cities becomes a war of insults. People from Havana call those from the eastern region of the country, especially from Santiago, “palestinos” (Palestinians).
Read MoreA few days ago, as I was walking by the Charles Chaplin Movie Theater, one of the cinemas with the best films in Havana, I noticed that they were showing “The Working Class Goes to Heaven” by Elio Petri (Italy, 1970), as part of a screening of the best 50 movies of the 20th century.
Read MoreThe Juanes concert just ended and-feeling excited-I wanted to write “something.” Then I suddenly received an e-mail from a friend in Miami. She’s the same person who called me a “stuck in the mud leftist,” until she understood my activism was far removed from the ploys of the “socialist” bureaucracy.
Read MoreWhat is clear is that while average people on this side of the Florida Strait-especially the youngest-welcomed Juanes with his magical golden flute, the Jurassic generation on the other side responded to him with the dark tones of a tuba. Isolation has many avenues, and opinions like these constitute only one part of the fat that separates them from the bone.
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