This summer, two anniversaries were commemorated: one was the first landing on the Moon by a human (astronaut Neil Armstrong), and the other was the momentous Woodstock rock festival. Both events well recalled on specially-dedicated Cuban television programs.
Read MoreWhen I discovered that the people who were going to take care of life on the beach were – at the same time – going to mistreat it, this seemed so paradoxical and unreal to me that I experienced some really difficult moments.
Read MoreOn a recent Saturday morning I was once again overwhelmed by Leibniz’s “New Essays Concerning Human Understanding.” I was sitting there astonished with how obscure and muddled the great philosophers can be – or perhaps their translations – when my grandmother came in all worked up and flustered about what she had just seen.
Read MoreWhen I lived in London, my neighbor was an attractive young teacher from Ireland. One time we were talking about history and I mentioned to her the victory of the USSR over fascism. “But that’s not true… You’re kidding,” she said, stupefied, “The Americans won the war!”
Read MorePreviously the fares were affordable, but today they’re simply outlandish. It costs 75 pesos to travel to my province from Havana, and the fare shoots up to almost 200 pesos if you want to travel from Havana to eastern Santiago de Cuba.
Read MoreFor over a month now, I have been listening from my house in Cojimar to the penetrating noise of the infamous fumigation apparatus that invade our sound environment every summer, year after year, in hopes of eradicating the dangerous Aedes aegypti mosquito.
Read More“On the one hand, they openly condemn the coup and recognize Zelaya as the president, while very discreetly they supply assistance to the junta. “In this country, there’s been a rehearsal conducted by the American ultra-right, together with those of the rest of the hemisphere,” says labor leader Juan Barahona.
Read MoreMy father is a lovely person: open, supportive, intelligent, sincere, and possessor of countless other human virtues. Nonetheless, he has one defect that overshadows the rest; he gets angry too easily, to the point of verbally attacking anyone who is contradicting him at that moment.
Read MoreUpon Juanes’ return to Miami, the weight of tradition began to bear down on the artist. The Colombian-born singer was immediately accused of acting in complicity with the socialist regime and “changing his black shirt for a red one” – obviously another over-the-top allegation. In addition, he was threatened with a boycott and the destruction of his discography, an experience that others who have dared to cross the circle of ashes have suffered.
Read MoreOther myths began breaking down while I noticed that, yes, I could live in this place in the middle of a country so different from the one in which I had lived for 34 years. Likewise, I could have an Internet connection for the first time and connect with friends outside of Cuba.
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