I love Havana, the city I live in, and there are moments when I get pleasure from talking and writing about her. There are others, though, in which that enthusiasm deserts me, and I refuse to even look out the window of my apartment.
Read MoreI could fill several pages with names of institutions of all types being managed or run by officers or former officers of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) put there by the respective higher ups. There is no doubt: Whatever happens in Cuba today, in any sphere, is decided by the military.
Read MoreEmma Scopes has asked to share her experience of being robbed in Cuba with HT readers. The potentially dangerous event and loss of personal belongings had a happy ending.
Read MoreNearly 20 percent of Cubans are over 60 years old and, in the very near future, a third of the island’s inhabitants will be senior citizens. The last population census has laid one of Cuba’s most complex problems on the table.
Read MoreI don’t know whether the transition many are waiting for in Cuba is coming or whether it’s already going on right under our noses, without us noticing. What’s clear to me is that people’s socialist mentality, if it ever actually existed, is disappearing.
Read MoreI won’t mention his name (he doesn’t want me to). I don’t need to, anyway. It could be replaced with any other name. I’ll say only that he is an editor, one of the best in Cuba, perhaps. He is sixty-five years old and has spent more than half his life publishing books of every kind.
Read MoreThe contradiction between formal popular sovereignty, inherent to a duly institutionalized political system, and a single Party and its core of leaders, a select minority standing over and above the State, persists to this day.
Read MoreA year ends and another one begins – such is the circle of life. I often wonder why people congratulate one another on the street. Is it to celebrate the fact we are still alive? If that’s the reason, I can understand that.
Read MoreWhen looking at Raul Castro’s “reform process”, you get the sense that it is slow and limited. At times, however, one cannot help but feel it is advancing in the direction that Cuba’s political elite wants it to, be it because this elite seeks to preserve stability in the short term (the only term most people can lay their bets on) or because they want to guarantee the prosperity of their families in the long run.
Read MoreJanuary 1, 1959 marked the glorious triumph of the Cuban people over a dictatorship. What came afterwards was steered away from the democratization and socialization of political and economic power demanded by a socialist revolution, which has been spoken about but never materialized, not to this day.
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