Veronica Vega’s diary

On August 9th, I stared at a summons from the Ministry of Interior on my fridge for my husband Yasser Castellanos, a visual and Hip-Hop artist as well as a Havana Times’ illustrator. Ever since we had joined the “Cuban Artists against Decree-Law 349” campaign, we guessed that this could imply “crossing the line”.

The new law’s legal enforcement will impose fines that state wages can’t pay, punishments to keep violations in check, crimes of Cuban artistic talent. Unprincipled inspectors will whisper proposals into their victims’ ears to defer fines or the seizure of their equipment and/or other assets.

When I watch movies that are set in first world countries, the thing that shocks me the most is the self confidence that people have in excess. Not a confidence that stems from financial superiority, but from a system where citizens can complain about officials, the State, the Government.

The graffiti movement hasn’t had the same strength here in Cuba as it has in the United States or Europe. There are very few remains of aboriginal pictographs and there are some signs that texts mixed with images were stamped onto walls in Old Havana’s trading areas during colonial times. (9 photos)

When I was a student, teachers used to tell us that the socialism sweeping through Cuba was a preparatory phase for the real objective: Communism. In this forthcoming period of our history, money would no longer exist and people would be working totally out of consciousness.

This second Sunday of May, Mother’s Day, a national pretext for congratulations, visits, gifts paid with what you don’t have and fulfillment of a ritual full of insincerity, I find myself trying to save a newborn kitten that was thrown into the trash.

As a result of Cuba’s recent “presidential transition”, the subject comes up wherever you go and comments were in this tone…

When I was a little girl, I would accompany my mother to go and visit my uncle, at a unit where he was doing his military service. The inhospitable environment, the crowd of bodies in uniform, hair shaven so they were almost bald, seeing my uncle thinner and with a somber expression, all had a huge impact on me.

I have always said it would be a good start to start knocking down all of those gypsum busts that are up, not only in schools, but in parks, companies, even bakeries and all over the country, in order to really start honoring Jose Marti.

A friend told me how his father went off on one when he told him: “The Cuban government killed Oswaldo Paya.” The violence that followed prevented any dialogue from taking place.