On November 2, Cuba’s Granma newspaper published a press note regarding the self-employed, demanding that 3D home theaters and computer game rooms be shut down immediately and claiming such businesses were never authorized (they cut people some slack, a lot of slack, and now they’re pulling in the reins).
Read MoreCuba is looking for “foreign” investors for the construction of a grand, commercial port. As fate would have it, this enclave, which marks one of the pivotal moments of the island’s abandonment of Marxism-Leninism in all its ideological dimensions, is situated in El Mariel, renowned for having been the point of departure for one of the most massive of human exoduses of the 20th century.
Read MoreA few days ago, I rifled through several local newspapers in search of a topic I could debate with my students.After going through a number of copies of Granma and Juventud Rebelde, I came upon a rather unusual story. Laughter and horror don’t usually go hand in hand, but that was exactly what the article in Juventud Rebelde, titled The Fugitive Monkeys, provoked in me.
Read More“I’m on medical leave for three months. I’m being treated at my neighborhood’s mental health center,” a good friend of mine who has just gotten a divorce tells me. This immediately raised my curiosity and I managed to go into the facility with her. What I ran into was the interior of a gigantic, colonial house in Old Havana, recently restored by the Office of the Historian, where a group of psychiatrists, psychologists, medical doctors, occupational therapists and social workers endeavor to prevent and cure the mental illnesses of community members.
Read MoreWe’re constantly seeing announcements on Cuban TV and other media preaching about the need to take care of nature, telling us not to damage the environment. A few days ago, I witnessed a very unpleasant incident, near the entrance to my building (where, as I explained in a previous post, there is a parking lot belonging to the Cuban company CIMEX).
Read MoreThe announcement that the Cuban government plans on eliminating Cuba’s two-currency monetary system has awakened numerous concerns among common citizens and analysts. This was to be expected, for, even if we assume the simplest and most vulgar point of view on Cuban reality, it is clear that this is a serious issue that is going to change many of the rules of the game on the island’s playing field.
Read MoreOctober is coming to an end and, with it, people should start to leave behind their memories of Sandy, the devastating hurricane which affected thousands of people in Cuba’s easternmost region exactly one year ago, leaving the beautiful province of Santiago de Cuba with the most damages.
Read MoreThe recent decision of Cuba’s Council of Ministers to re-establish a single currency system in the country has, first of all, a psychological aim with a clear political motivation: getting us used to the high retail prices we will be seeing when this one currency, most likely the Cuban Peso (the “CUP”, in bank jargon), becomes generalized.
Read MoreOn October 29, the resolution titled “The Need to Put an End to the Economic, Commercial and Financial Blockade Imposed on Cuba by the USA” will be subjected to a voting process at the UN General Assembly. Though Cuba has submitted this resolution on 21 previous occasions and has secured nearly unanimous support from the Assembly’s member states, the blockade remains in place and as intransigent as ever.
Read MoreAs a kid, I used to sympathize with two types of criminals: those who ripped off banks without violence and smugglers. I saw them as Robin Hoods that stole from the rich and powerful, that is to say, from bankers and the State. Though I maintained a degree of sympathy towards certain characters as I grew up, I learned that those who rob banks aren’t financiers committed to the redistribution of wealth and that smugglers aren’t entrepreneurs seeking to protect small, informal businesses.
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