Diaries Archives - Page 602 of 642

Trying to Save the World

When I was a child I imagined myself as the world’s savior, a sort of Captain Planet stamping out evil. In my fantasies, I could save a princess, prince or even myself, if I were in danger.

Maria del Carmen has worked for almost 20 years in a warehouse of the Ministry of Education. Over this time she’s had to grapple with weight beyond her true capacity, producing serious spinal problems: a herniated disk and a spina bifida. In addition to causing horrible back pain, this has also forced her walk with a stoop, making her look older than she is.

Freedom, a Divine Treasure

We Cubans have renounced our freedom – that ample concept as broad and deep as the sea – in order to submerge ourselves in an artificial lake of small liberties. We delight in its name, and very few of us notice the injustice that we commit.

Teaching Values & the Value of Freedom

The teaching of values is a wonderful endeavor. I appreciate it as an attempt to educate human beings in a more comprehensive manner, and not to reduce it to the transmission of techno-scientific knowledge to students presumed to be politically neutral.

Neither Caesar, the Bourgeois or God

Soon we will mark 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, an event that signaled the global-scale ideological victory of neo-liberalism in politics and daily life. It is quite conceivable that Cuban media coverage-the same press that ignored the events in Eastern Europe until the final and incontrovertible moment-will focus on highlighting the social costs of the transition to capitalism.

Sunday Outing

Yesterday, during my Sunday walk, I ran into José Eduardo, one of my childhood friends, in the cafeteria that’s across the street from the Tower. He had put on weight. When he saw me, he looked amazed; he had imagined that I too had left Cojimar.

Fanning Frustration

If your fan happens to break down in this wondrous climate, everything becomes more embroiling; you’re forced to decide between not sleeping and paying the exorbitant price quoted by a self-employed electrician. My fan died a week ago, and since I couldn’t get to sleep for two nights in a row, I decided to get it fixed.

Hershey, Cuba

Hershey is the last “model town” in Cuba. It has a twin town in Pennsylvania also founded and conceived by US businessman Milton S. Hershey. It’s as if they transported a piece of the United States to the Municipality of Santa Cruz del Norte in the Province of La Habana.

Hospital Blues

The bathrooms are unisex, not because of progress made by CENESEX (the Cuban Center for Sexual Education), but as a result of the general physical decline that this institution has experienced. In the few toilets that function, men and women carry out their needs around the clock.

Cuba-China: Different Countries, Same Rhetoric

It’s a common belief on this side of the planet that if you were to dig a hole deep enough, you’d come up perhaps in the backyard of a house or the grounds of a temple, or in some stadium in China. In a simplistic way, we might expect China to be our geographical antipode and would also be so in terms of political questions.