If 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.
Read MoreI 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.
Read MoreAs 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.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read More