Cuban singer-composer Alexander Diaz was raised in one of those Cuban households where playing music was as common as sitting down to eat. His professional career began in the cabaret at Havana’s Riviera Hotel.
Read MoreThe Ministry of Agriculture (MINAGRI) occupies an enormous building near Havana’s Revolution Square, the island’s center of power. It has 1.2 million employees across the country, a third of whom are officials not directly connected with production.
Read MoreThe president of the “Cinema Plaza” film festival, Aries Morales, spoke with HT about this year’s event set for October 20-23. This woman of diverse responsibilities within Cuban culture noted that, “Only with debate and reflection will we be able to constantly improve; in this way we’ll someday succeed at making this the country that we dream of.”
Read MoreCuban actress Claudia Alvariño, who plays an important supporting role in the new Cuban film “Habanastation” was interviewed recently by HT. Commenting on the film, she noted that, “It reflects today’s Cuba, how human qualities get lost when money appears.”
Read MoreWe interviewed the Cuban singer Evelyn Garcia Marquez, who comes from a family of recognized musicians, among them her mother, the outstanding songstress Beatriz Marquez. “I didn’t think I’d go far in classical piano, that’s why I decided to sing,” she told HT.
Read MoreIn Cuba, there have been abundant explanations regarding how malicious agents of the empire have provoked youth “revolutions” in peaceful countries, where dissenters using Facebook and Twitter have managed overnight to assemble huge “critical masses” of human beings in the principal squares and streets of their respective capitals.
Read MoreWe interview the young musician Janio Abreu, a clarinetist and the leader of the Cuban jazz group “Aire de Concierto.” As Janio noted, “Let’s hope that tomorrow they’ll keep us in mind in those venues where they truly should be featuring the art form that we consider ourselves to be championing.”
Read MoreOne of the solutions found by the Cuban government to confront the “Special Period” economic crisis at the beginning of the 1990s was to open the country to international tourism. That happened during my adolescence and up until that moment I’d never even met a Russian.
Read MoreMariela Castro, daughter of President Raul Castro, has achieved important advances in making homophobia socially visible, authorizing free sex-change operations and bringing the LGBT community out of its marginalization by organizing its members in the defense of their rights.
Read MoreYenisey now has a two-year-old boy and has also stopped working for the government. She showed me the table where she displays crafts that she makes and sells, now as a self-employed worker.
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