Postcards from a Horizontal World
For the past ten years I have been travelling the world and talking with people like Ana, who are creating new social movements that challenge our conceptions of collective action.
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Opinion
Raul Castro’s Questionable Optimism
The Cuban president closed the last legislative assembly on Dec. 21st with the mandatory New Year’s greetings. His assessment of the country’s economic performance, however, could be described with a phrase I learned at home: “gray with black backstitches.”
Read MoreInterracial Love in Cuba
The first words out of her mouth were: “I slept with a black man.” That direct phrase left me speechless. After all, it wasn’t like my friend to say such things. I wanted to know more, but I noticed she wasn’t comfortable talking about it.
Read MoreThe Cuban State: Protecting the Youth or Protecting its Interests?
The main argument used was that the licenses which had been granted the owners of private establishments did not afford them the right to operate the locales for such purposes and that said places (videogame centers in particular) led to an atmosphere of frivolity and bad habits.
Read MoreThe Significance of the Raul Castro-Obama Handshake
Though Raul Castro and Barack Obama’s recent greeting at Nelson Mandela’s funeral was merely a handshake – there was really no time for anything more elaborate – the gesture was no accident. That is, they meant it.
Read MoreLooking at Chile’s Present to Imagine Cuba’s Future
Chile’s economy is characterized by levels of inequality greater than those found in Cuba, whose problem (for the time being) isn’t inequality but forms of stagnation and mediocrity that are stifling the social energies of the population.
Read MoreNo to Silicone Implants: The Struggle for Individuality
A friend of mine who left the country recently told me that, after he’d earned a lot of money, he would treat me to silicone breast implants. When he told me of this “great gift”, I burst out laughing. Then, I asked myself: why would I want breast implants? Don’t I have my own breasts?
Read MoreA Country Run by Women
There are people who nourish their worldview by reading the international press and absorbing and analyzing a patchwork of ideas, forces, events, and the people who exemplify them. Others go to literature to understand their time and place. These latter especially, will appreciate El país de las mujeres, for the reality as well as the dreams it contemplates. Book review by Margaret Randall.
Read MoreRadio City Music Hall & Conservative White America
My expectations were not high when I accepted the invitation of an old out-of-town friend to see the Rockettes’ Christmas show. But once there, the cultural shock made my critical faculties go on overdrive as if they had been put on steroids.
Read MoreThe Cuban Communist Party and its Opponents
We have been witnessing an unusual increase in the number of dissidents who are temporarily detained in Cuba, sometimes as part of violent arrests that the authorities cannot conceal. For the most part, the victims of these actions are returned home, so that something we could well define as a vicious circle can begin anew.
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