A recent medical event in Havana and particular indicators I picked up on in TV programs and social projects, stirred my curiosity about the impact of depression in Cuba. In Latin America, Brazil is the country with the highest level of depression, followed by Cuba, Paraguay, Chile and Uruguay.
Read MoreNot using the market properly has been – and still is – one of the country’s economic failures; not to mention the fact that it has also functioned without recognizing its mechanisms. Professor Fernandez Estrada notes, “we have to create conditions so that its the producers or suppliers who are competing against each other to sell their products, instead of what we have today in almost every sector of the economy, where its consumers competing against one another to buy what they need.”
Read MoreNot too long ago, I was watching a friend do a deep clean of his house and was witness to the conflict that arose between him and his father when it came to deciding what to throw away. That experience led me to write this post.
Read MoreIn a country often with considerable food shortages, dozens of tons of tomatoes are rotting in Guantanamo because nobody is collecting them. In the face of situations like this one, which affects the national and local economy, you can’t divide the blame up between everyone.
Read MoreVenezuela is experiencing a crisis which has forced its inhabitants to rethink the way they spend money in their own country in recent years. Amid new conditions, having access to basic goods which used to form part of their daily lives before, such as food, sports events and even safe sex, has become a luxury and among the less fortunate, a distant memory.
Read MoreCuban natives captured their vision of the world in caves, even the stamp of the Spanish conquest, passing on hundreds of paintings called “cave paintings” to us. These are drawings which were made over a thousand years ago. Interesting analogies transport us from the past to the present.
Read MoreDioney Martin shouldn’t have been on the train that covered the route between Siguaney and Sancti Spiritus at midday on February 27, 2017. If she had got on at Zaza del Medio it was only to do somebody a favor, a routine errand like taking a bag of food to the provincial hospital.
Read MoreAnything to do with funding, supplies and taxes has to be a headache today for Cuba’s self-employed. [In the case of taxes, they were once demonized here as an evil of only capitalist systems.] The other obstacles on the road to success are huge.
Read MoreCuban authorities have launched a new set of measures to benefit Cuban mothers so as to increase the country’s birth rate and to stop society from aging at the rapid rate it is today. These are steps in the right direction, but are they enough?
Read MoreTomatoes are rotting in the Caujeri Valley, a man tells me, which has had a good harvest this year, with a yield that doubles what was expected and has a modern factory to process them but, right now, its productive capacity isn’t enough to deal with all of the tomatoes that are coming in from the fields.
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