Diaries

Peace without Borders

The 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.

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Juanes in Cuba: Quite a Concert

What 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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When Dreams Are Not Enough

I developed a logo, a slogan and a style manual. I came up with a response to each of the barriers that I might encounter. I registered the business in my name and we began to work on a few stories for children in which beauty, creativity and diversity went hand in hand.

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Musings on Why the Party Should Rule

As I leafed through the books in a secondhand bookstore the other day, my eyes stopped on a shelf I always avoid: law. I have always thought that law books are a compilation of pedantries; however, this time I put my prejudices aside and found very interesting things there.

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Taxes in Cuba

The majority of us Cubans work for state-owned companies or institutions and, beginning in the 1960s, the workers have received net salaries. We never see the taxes deducted by the state and so technically, in the legal sense, we are not taxed.

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Cradle Of The Revolution

There is an old popular joke stemming from one of the many epithets by which the “Heroic” City is known. The Revolution was born in the mountains of Eastern Cuba and Santiago was its cradle. It defecated there, and when it grew up, it moved to Havana and left the cradle defecated.

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Believing in (and with) Baby Lores?

They were all taken aback by the instant ideological shift (and exhaustive TV and radio play) of an artist whose career has been based on light pop tunes and tough guy disputes. The video and its author were not rejected for their politics, but for their politicking.

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Oh, Woman

I could write thousands of pages about these amusing anecdotes, but I believe the examples are sufficient. Yet just one sole anecdote is enough for most women to identify with the male-political-official slant in this country.

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My Thesis: Old Heads, New Hearts (end)

These years at the faculty have opened my eyes to a fascinating world of images and sounds, which I already knew were there but never realized were so expansive. It has opened up the doors to the knowledge of history and storytelling, and has added fuel to the flame of research.

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