Havana’s Ameijeiras Hospital looks like an enormous wholesale yard selling building materials. The employees of the company repairing the building offer to sell just about anything, from cement to wash basins – all new and top quality, claim the would-be vendors.
Read MoreOne day in 1980, my mother told me she hadn’t received any letters from my father in a long time and that she didn’t know where he was, that she thought he was already in the prison he was to be transferred to, but that she had no certainty of this.
Read MoreCuba has entered a new and encouraging stage in the building of a new kind of socialism, a system notably different from that “real socialism” it once tried to force into the relaxed and festive Caribbean spirit of Cubans. What will the Party’s Central Committee do to change the whole range of tastes that are deeply rooted in the revolutionary, austere and nearly ascetic spirit they claim took hold of Cubans’ collective desires after the revolution?
Read MoreOfficially, no strikes have been staged in Cuba since the Central Trade Union established a commitment with the government in the 1960s. As of that date, the word “strike” became something of a taboo on the island, an exotic concept applicable to other countries, and invoking it here entailed serious consequences.
Read MoreWatching the congresses held by different Cuban grassroots organizations made me recall an experience I had at Havana’s Lenin Vocational School. It had to do with leadership, natural born leaders and those leaders appointed on the basis of single lists that had been drawn up by “the powers that be.”
Read MoreThe imminent lifting of restrictions on trade between the United States and Cuba is making me dream about Cuban products of excellence being sold around the world, and the island’s innovative medications, cigars and rum becoming available at US pharmacies and markets.
Read MoreTwo paths are becoming clear to Cuba after the failure of “State socialism”: the authoritarian-capitalist one offered by the current “reform process”, sustained by an alliance between State monopoly capitalism (dressed up as socialism) and foreign capital, under the control of the same old government-State-Party, and the all-inclusive democratic one, which I will try to summarize here, while also exploring how we can reach it and what obstacles lie in the way.
Read MoreNow that the US and Cuba have reestablished diplomatic relations, should the Cuban Adjustment Act get the axe? The issue is a hot potato in US politics.
Read MoreTo openly acknowledge that these new relations between the United States and Cuba aim to “reach the objectives that those who supported the embargo had” (AKA regime change), is rather arrogant and continues to underestimate Cuba.
Read MoreThe latest Pan-American Games came to an end and Cuban sports authorities are very much distressed. The local predictions made prior to the competition suffered from an excess of optimism. Cuba’s delegation came out in fourth place. The official aim of retaining the island’s second place was not reached.
Read More
