When I was a kid, in the neighborhood in Uruguay where I grew up, we’d call anyone who didn’t show enough courage to climb a tree, make someone trip during a soccer match or trade blows with any adversary a “faggot.”
Read MoreOne of the questions that most people ask me when they learn of my interest in Caribbean issues is the main cause behind Haiti’s economic backwardness. Our neighbor has become one of the world’s poorest countries, despite the well-known devotion, industriousness and zeal of its inhabitants.
Read MoreRecently, I read an article about the nostalgia that canned Russian meat awakens in many Cubans living in Florida. If we recall the long decades when Russian canned meats were a part of our daily diet in Cuba – when having such meat in one’s pantry was like storing a treasure – this paradoxical nostalgia begins to make sense.
Read MoreHad Antonio Maceo been a white hero, his nickname would merely have been “The Titan”, just as Ignacio Agramonte’s was simply “The Major”, Carlos Manuel de Cespedes’ “The Father of the Homeland” and Jose Marti’s the “Master” or the “Apostle.”
Read MoreSpanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo’s visit to Cuba has given the Popular Party’s policy of isolating Havana, impelled by former President Jose Maria Aznar, (who also promoted Europe’s Common Position on Cuba in 2003), a 180-degree turn.
Read More“A Cuban Brain Drain, Courtesy of the US”. This shocking revelation by the New York Times was unknown to the majority of its readership, accustomed to a hostile rhetoric about defecting baseball players, stagnated economy and a lack of basic goods.
Read MoreMexico’s terribly critical situation – corruption, impunity, de facto powers, a spiral of criminal activities perpetrated by government agencies, repression – speaks to us an economic and political model that has set its sights on the US market with excessive enthusiasm.
Read MoreThe wage system under State monopoly capitalism, imposed on Cuba in the name of socialism, has always stood in the way and will continue to be an obstacle to free associated or individual labor – the authentically socialist forms of production.
Read MoreDuring my first years in Havana, I lived in the Habana Libre hotel (the Havana Hilton before the revolution). Every morning, I would head down to the mezzanine to have breakfast at a posh restaurant. I would order a pair of fried eggs that came with thick slices of warm ham beneath, and ask for a serving of fresh cheese on the side.
Read MoreI knew about the Los Van Van from the very beginning since the orchestra was formed in December 1969, when their songs started to become part of the daily life of Cubans on the island. Back then, I was a skinny little kid, all head and teeth and nothing more. The name of the group came out of the popular enthusiasm generated by the challenge of harvesting 10 million tons of sugarcane in 1970.
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