We’re now more than accustomed to losing many of the luminaries of our decimated baseball teams. Before and until recently, we were taught to label these players traitors. We would never find out what had become of them, in their careers abroad or personal lives.
Read MoreI often ask myself how far the stupidity of Cuban leaders can go, but I can never quite predict those limits – they always end up surprising me. One case in point is the recent measures taken against street vendors to try and control the price of farm products. As is customary, their solution was to restrict and limit…rather than socialize.
Read MoreThe news that the Gourriel brothers would not be returning to Cuba has led to all manner of controversies. As I see it, this is without a doubt the most significant – albeit erroneously called – “desertion” in Cuban baseball history.
Read MoreThe owner of a fantasy milk churn imagines an entire fortune ahead of him, heading to the market. Sadly, reality places a pot-hole in his way and the jug that should have brought him such wonders spills. Cuba periodically offers us a new version of this well-known fable.
Read MoreYesterday, all that mattered was democracy in Cuba and fundamental human rights that were being trampled on. Today, none of that matters, only that “which unites us” does (i.e. business opportunities). I am put off by all extremes, I prefer a balanced and just position.
Read MoreThough defined as the revolutionary vanguard of Cuban society, the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) has never played such a role. For decades, Fidel Castro was the main obstacle to the normal functioning of the PCC. When he had no choice but to hand power over to his brother, there was the possibility that Raul Castro would choose to change this situation, albeit gradually and without endangering the country’s power structure through such changes.
Read MoreFor many years, the dance-like maneuvers of Fidel and Raul Castro’s international politics were studied as closely as the works of Machiavelli. This is not unfounded in the case of Raul, who gets much more for far less, having given others lessons in pragmatism since his days at the helm of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR).
Read More“El Pueblo,” part five of the web documentary “Rafael” from an extensive interview conducted with Cuban poet Rafael Alcides on numerous topics. Director: Miguel Coyula (2015). English Subtitles
Read MoreOn the night of Friday, January 29, Cuba’s Educational Channel aired an episode of the police series Tras la huella (“Chasing Clues”) titled “Tarara.” Not two minutes had gone by before my mother and I realized it was a dramatization of an incident that shook the country in 1992.
Read MoreAs a citizen of the United States and a resident of metropolitan New Orleans, Louisiana, I am excited about the easement of restrictions and the thawing of relations between the U.S. and Cuba, two estranged neighbors. New Orleans has several Cuban restaurants and many Havana-styled cigar bars, as both cities are sister-cities in that they share busy seaports, grow sugarcane, have humid weather, endure mosquitos, and are regularly threatened by hurricanes in the Caribbean. (8 photos)
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