Opinion

One of the Daily Problems of Cuba’s Disabled

Cuba’s Association for the Physically Impaired (ACLIFIM) recently held an important congress. According to the association’s leaders, one of the main issues debated on during the gathering was the social integration and quality of life of disabled persons.

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Playing in the Hands of the Enemy

A lot has been said about the Cuban press and its journalists on social networks. Those employed by Cuba’s media have criticized the press they themselves work for, where they feel they are denied a true, active role.

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Children Never Cease to Surprise Me

An old proverb says that, when God denies you children, the devil comes along and gives you nephews – and this so that one may experience the joy of children, human beings who, many a time, see things more clearly than adults, plagued as we are by fears and the traumas of our education.

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The Decline of the Havana Carnivals

The carnival area has been reduced considerably because half of the broad ocean drive has been blocked off and fitted with grand stands, where, for a price, you can watch the floats, masquerades or any other artistic attraction, enjoying the show away from the boisterous crowds that populate Cuba’s carnivals.

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Discussing the New Labor Law: Cuban Democracy in Action

The review and discussion of Cuba’s draft labor bill began in July and will continue until the month of October at all workplaces around the country. Organized by the union sections, these discussions are aimed at gathering the opinions, suggestions, and all items which the workers feel should be added or removed from the document, before it is debated and approved by the National Assembly.

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Are the Spanish Returning to Cuba?

“Every time I’d defend the Cuban revolution, people would retort: if you like it so much, why don’t you go live in Cuba?” Spanish actor Willy Toledo tells me, adding: “now that I’ve actually moved to Cuba, they’re going crazy, because there’s nothing they can say to me anymore.”

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A Story that Could Be Yours

I don’t have any personal experience with what it means to have a disability, nor would I ever want to. I’ve been sick a few times and I’ve had surgery more than once, requiring the care and attention of my family members, but these were all situations that I knew wouldn’t last for more than a couple months, nothing like being incapacitated permanently.

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Globalization: New Trends, New Mindsets

In one of the scenes of Coriolanus, a film based on Shakespeare’s tragedy of the same name, a Roman general chastises the people for being devoid of honor and for having opinions that change with the winds.

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Osvaldo Dorticos, Cuba’s Last President

Osvaldo Dorticos Torrado was the last president of the Republic of Cuba, the title for the nation’s highest authority used in the five constitutions Cubans ratified up to 1976, when the sixth constitution – the first openly declaring the country’s socialist system – was approved. We know nothing of how Dortico’s conscience fared in the legal limbo Cuba fell into, and has yet to come out of, since the triumph of the revolution.

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Cuba’s Daily Soap Opera Stories (Part III)

One of my neighbors is a fan of horror flicks (and doesn’t really like or watch any other kinds of films). She is married to a man who works in construction, the father of her three and seven-year-old girls. She lives so close to my apartment that, when she yells at her kids, I can hear everything she says clearly, as though she were inside my room.

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