Opinion

The Cuban Film “A Girlfriend for David”

The film “A Girlfriend for David” ends with a backlit atmosphere and the masterful voice of the great Elena Burke performing the song “Love Me as I Am”. by Pablo Milanes. This is one of the most popular Cuban films of all time…and one of my favorites.

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Cuba: A Poet, a Power Outage and a Taxi

Hoy, algunos amigos y yo seremos testigos de un evento trascendental. Nuestro amigo Sinecio Verdecia Díaz y otro poeta cubano están realizando una lectura en una librería en La Habana Vieja (la parte más antigua de la ciudad).

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Do Your Parents Hit You?

Over the past end of the year school break that children typically enjoy, I witnessed a sad experience. While playing with my children at a Recreational Park, the one most liked by the hordes of kids in my city of Guantanamo, a too-young mother was beating her daughter, who couldn’t have been more than two years old.

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We, the Cuban Viewers

We love to remember the part in which so and so is discovered or what’s his name escapes. These are shows where we jump for joy, bite our nails (over what we already know will or won’t happen), or stomp on the floor in frustration over the bad guy’s victory (temporary, of course). In some ways we act like well-trained dogs.

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The Wrong Path on Cuba

This week marks the 50th year since President John F. Kennedy authorized the economic embargo against Cuba. From London I was asked to interview ordinary Cubans for them to tell us how this has impacted on their daily lives.

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A Special Concordat: The Price for Cuba

The Catholic Church is usually conservative, undemocratic, elitist and exclusionary. But ours (here in Cuba) — that’s to say, its leaders — have acted this way in such a blatantly arrogant fashion, and whenever presented with an opportunity to place themselves on the wrong side of history, they’ve always done it.

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The Simplest of Freedoms, Like Not Eating

One of the greatest examples of dignity I’ve ever seen in my life was shown to me by a little sparrow, that bird that’s so common in cities, the ones that search for crumbs on sidewalks and streets to the indifference of passersby.

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Cuba Is all about Coffee and Conversation

Curiosity has gotten the better of me and I’ve started to buy treats on the street, especially from vendors who sing what they’re selling. The other day, a friend and I bought something like a granola bar, made of peanuts fused together with honey (mani en grano).

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