News

Cuban Critics Award Short on Press

The Cuban Association of Cinema Press awarded the short Brainstorm, by writer Eduardo del Llano, one of the prizes to the best national productions in 2009, it was reported by the accredited media in the island. The film, which has circulated from hand to hand among the population but has not been premiered in movie theatres, nor on Cuban TV. Brainstorm questions how the Caribbean country’s state-run press functions.

Read More

Varadero Reaches a Million Tourists in 2009

Varadero beach resort, 120 kilometers east of the Cuban capital, today received its millionth tourist for 2009, a figure that confirms it as one of the country’s principal tourist destinations, reported IPS. The peninsula located in Matanzas Province welcomes 40 per cent of the tourists who come to the island; today there are 48 hotels.

Read More

US–Cuba Relations Stuck at a Standstill

Relations between Cuba and the United States are still bogged down in longstanding political and ideological differences, in spite of the signals of greater openness and opportunities for dialogue when Democratic U.S. President Barack Obama arrived at the White House.

Read More

J. Garcia: The Truth, Even Though It Hurts

For Jorge Garcia, being a trova musician meant much more than singing accompanied by a guitar. “It is an attitude before the world. It’s to put up with them calling you crazy in the most basic sense. It’s to have no fear of saying what you feel, even though it hurts.”

Read More

Cuba Duet Buena Fé Concert in Miami

Except for such tragicomic incidents, my young Cuban friend summarized the emotion of the encounter in a single phase. “They spoke about the divided family, the nostalgia… and I was happy to be able to rekindle that, to see new people and rediscover old faces… singing, shouting and standing up for a better future for our generation…”

Read More

“Intelligent Power” of Obama & Cuba

It will not be some imperialistic policy that reverses this revolution. If this occurs, as Fidel Castro expressed (in Nov. 2005), it would be by its own revolutionaries, whose inabilities offer the fuel that feeds the anti-socialist fire. The main danger is from within, from those “revolutionaries” suffering from blindness, authoritarianism and bureaucratic sclerosis.

Read More

Cuba Gov. Allows Visit to US Agent

The Cuban authorities allowed representatives of the U.S. Interests Section in the island to visit a U.S. contractor detained since last December 4, announced Virginia Staab, spokesperson for the Western Affairs Section of the Department of State. In his speech during the recent parliament sessions, President Raul Castro said the official had supplied equipment to opposition groups.

Read More

Cuba-China Develop Irrigation Systems

Cuba plans to rehabilitate agricultural production in the Valley of Caujerí, in the eastern province of Guantánamo, thanks to a joint project with China that will make it possible to recover the irrigation infrastructure and organization, valued at 1.1 billion US dollars

Read More

“Control” over cultural projects questioned

A group of Cuban intellectuals and civil society initiatives questioned the “increase of the bureaucratic-authoritarian control and obstruction of social initiatives” in a letter released in the island’s capital, reported IPS. The letter said they were in favour of a socialism “that socializes – shares – all its resources, where we all have equal access to the exercise of power,” contrary to another that “is the power of a bureaucracy against the rest of society.”

Read More

Perceiving the Flaws As Well As the Luster

I am not nor do I pretend to be an intellectual, much less a specialist in racial issues. I’m simply a person who lives and works in this country. Nor do I believe the fact that I’m a black person is relevant, because the debate on the racial question in our country is a matter that has to do with everyone; what happens is that this question is almost immediately associated with black people.

Read More