Diaries

The Dead and Living

Dead people don’t say what they feel, and they don’t allow others to. They’re the people who don’t grasp that we can be dead by inaction, by disillusionment. A person who expresses themselves out loud is alive. Nor do they fear death; to the contrary, they cling to life and fight for its betterment.

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Revolutionary Paralysis (Part 2)

Ideas are won on the field of debate, not by gagging people. The conclusions of debate are settled by raised hands, not by isolating or punishing those who think differently. Social conscience evolves slowly, not with “sticks.”

You cannot combat bureaucracy with people’s mouths shut; everyone has their opinions and it’s necessary to respect them.

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Revolutionary Paralysis (1)

Unfortunately, the younger generation has not acquired political experience in daily struggles, since they’ve almost always remained under the guardianship of their mass organization’s leaders, who provide them with little information about the economic, social and political aspects of Cuba or the world.

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My Religious Journey

I can’t remember exactly when I had my first encounter with religion. I can say with certainty however that the first religion I had contact with was the Catholic faith, through visits to the church in the town of Manati, Las Tunas, during one of my summer vacations.

When I returned to the city of Santiago I wanted to continue visiting the Catholic churches and to receive Catechism instruction.

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Still in Shock

I have now been back in the United States for two weeks. Some days I wake up and am still shocked to be in my bed at home and other days it feels like a dream that I went at all. I have never been in a country for so long and understood so little of what happens there.

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A Spot for Selling

At first I thought that they had trapped a pickpocket; then it seemed to me that perhaps the woman was shrieking at one of those people who take advantage of any uproar to touch us where they enjoy it most. I found my spot at the end of the line, and for lack of anything better to do while waiting for the bus to arrive, I searched out an advantageous spot to find out why the woman was screaming.

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Why I No Longer Eat Meat (II)

Traditionally, in philosophy classes in Cuba, those taught to all undergraduates in the course Philosophy and Society, very little emphasis is put on trying to elucidate what is the individual. Certainly this is a topic that can lead us far. It can guide us to deep self-examination of our lives and actions, but bureaucratic instruction is quite distant from these aims.

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Tossing Out Ideas

Coming to Cuba fulfilled one of my greatest aspirations. Getting to know one of the countries that calls itself “socialist” represented an opportunity that I could not pass up; there would be no better way of understanding that reality than to live it.

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A Place to Live

Here, like in the rest of the world, the law of the jungle exerts itself, and never did we feel as close to being its victims as when we lost our apartment. Is it impossible, too expensive, or unimaginable for there to exist apartments rented out by the government?

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The Message from Hollywood

It’s counterproductive that we flood our own television with this virus of senseless violence, crass selfishness and a slew of other banalities. This produces a tension within our people’s collective psyche, a dual tendency of acceptance and rejection.

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