Cuban Kaleidoscope
Looking at them reminds me of moments when images like these accompanied our doubt, anger, choices and hopes. I think of their reactions to the messages that these materials transmit, be they humdrum or suggestive.
Read More
Diaries
Cuban Mothers
In today’s Cuba, mothers have been the unquestionable navigators of the crisis. In the kitchen and at the table, they have performed the miracle of bread and fish come true, very often while also attending to their social and work obligations.
Read MorePhotographs
At the moment the camera flashed, she didn’t complain about what she’d never had, though maybe she should have complained about what she wasn’t going to get, what she was losing by marrying a man she didn’t love.
Read MoreThe Pravda of Reggaeton
Reggaeton has polarized Cuban society: on one side, the illustrious opinion of the defenders of tradition, public morals and good taste; on the other side, the persistent clueless -those who play it and listen to it, and who blast it from their cars and stores.
Read MoreIntellectuals Seek To Open a Path
That is precisely what I think Cuba needs, a revolutionary culture of intellectuality – one that involves the participation of people, respects ideas from all over the world and is willing take discussions about problems to all the country’s workers.
Read MoreA Prodigious Event
The testimonies published in Escobar’s assemblage are those of people who had actually met Marti during his passage through those backwater areas. Despite having been brief, it was enough time to leave them with lifelong impressions.
Read MoreConfinement
A neighbor cut up an old bra that she had in storage and used one cup for a homemade surgical mask; she forced her nephew to put on the other one. Apparently the kid got upset with her dimwitted behavior. “Adolescents don’t understand epidemics,” I told her when she recounted the incident to me.
Read MoreEpidemics, Politics & the Media
Cubans exemplary performance under crisis becomes negated by the lack of grassroots participation in the follow-up. Many people climb down into trenches to clean drainage systems in their neighborhood, but only a select few can monitor the progress of the recovery effort from above.
Read MoreA Problem of Change
Firstly, though the price of the bus is 40 centavos, passengers usually pay one peso every time they board; this is due to the recent installation of collection boxes and a lack of change. Prior to these, fares were paid directly to a collector, though one would often run into the same problem, “Sorry brother, I don’t have any change.”
Read MoreAn Incredible Phoenix Story
“The Russian” (as he is known, due to his maternal lineage) was one of the most promising figures on the Cuban men’s volleyball team until he suffered a back injury during the Pan-American Games in Río de Janeiro in 2007.
Read More