Veronica Vega’s diary

Alfredo Fernandez’ post, Cuba and The Price of Being Worthless, took me back to the get-togethers we’d organize at the apartment he used to live in Vedado, Havana. I remembered the reading of literature, invariably sprinkled with political comments – the complaints, speculations and dreams.

I’ve always believed that the simplest things are the hardest to explain – precisely because one feels that they require no explanation, that they are as intrinsic to us as the act of breathing.

Unofficial news about cases of sexual assault have been circulating around Alamar with vigor these past few days. It is estimated that according to the number of victims, there are at least four rapists are suspected, and that both men and women have been affected.

After reading the most recent edition of a selection of stories by Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, I came to the conclusion that there are good reasons we live in the world that we do.

A recent debate among friends stirred up something of a thorny issue: did the crusade against illiteracy and the founding of free schools and hospitals justify the sacrifices involved in the Cuban revolution?

Some say all thoughts travel through space as vibrations and produce a reaction somewhere – like prayers with or without words that are somehow heard by a thinking universe.

Watching a film whose plot unfolds in Nazi Germany, I noticed how similar all autocracies are, how they are all grounded in a (distorted) sense of the good and, in order to establish themselves and manipulate the common substance of human dreams.

It is said that Jose Marti once declared that “poetry is more important than industry, for it can prop up or take down souls.” Being exposed to Cuban poet Francis Sanchez’ exhibition Cicatrices (“Scars”) made me understand two things…

A French journalist who was shooting a documentary here told me he was surprised I could speak of hope when referring to Cuba – not because he doesn’t want to be hopeful, but because the impressions he gathered during his visit to the island.

Whenever I see a self-employed person suffer the misfortune of Cuba’s legal system, I ask myself what would have become of people like Rockefeller or Carnegie had they been born on this island after 1959.