Rosa Martinez’s Diary

A few years ago (too many ago for my liking), I was invited to spend a whole day with my daughters at Los Corales Hotel, one of the hotels on the beach in the beautiful city of Santiago de Cuba.

December didn’t bring many surprises for the Cuban people, just another end of the year, which wasn’t very different to previous year ends, which everyone celebrates as best they can and people aren’t expecting much from this new year, not even with a new president.

Like many women who are abused, Tamara felt she was to blame for what had happened: that she should have gone straight home after work, that she didn’t tell her partner she was going to go to the market, that she really did take a long time, that something else or another…

Conner Gorry’s article, Me too: Gender Violence in Havana, took me back to an incident that happened a long time ago, which I still remember, even when, let’s just say, my memory isn’t the best.

According to the announcement published by Granma newspaper, the Cuban Communist Party’s official press, Pelayo Terry Cuervo, the director of this newspaper, the country’s main one, was “released” from his position because of mistakes he had made.

Danay and Juan are two regular young people out of the many here in Cuba who have been wanting to emigrate for a long time. They were born and raised during the cumbersome Special Period crisis of the 1990s and they became adults in the middle of the transformation period of Cuban Socialism.

A friend who knows me well, who knows that I collaborate with Havana Times and knows that I am more inspired by personal experiences than any interesting news item, says: “Rosa, write something about Irma’s passage through Guantanamo.

Being a millionaire is the dream of many, I can’t say that it hasn’t been my own too. Some children fantasize about having a lot of money to take water and food to starving children in exploited Africa; others thought about helping those most in need on the planet…

It was just about 7 AM when I walked to the bus stop and the sun was already burning bodies; many people, especially women, were protecting themselves from the sun with parasols and sunglasses, but their light clothing seemed to do nothing.

I don’t know whether this has ever happened to you too, but I haven’t gone to see a loved one in the first few days of their sickness because my financial situation hasn’t allowed me to buy a juice, malanga or something else we normally take to the afflicted on the island.