Opinion

Cuba: Postponing the Crux of the Matter

This is the moment in which one wonders, if this is the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning. But above all, how much will have to paid by us — ourselves, our families, our friends — for this belated capitalist restoration, like Cuesta Morua said, for casinos and gangs.

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Roots of Homophobia in Cuba during the Revolution

The widespread sexism that has existed in revolutionary Cuba, particularly against gays, has long been an uncomfortable issue for supporters of the Cuban regime, particularly in countries such as the United States where vital and influential women’s and gay liberation movements developed in the wake of the 1960s.

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Cuba’s Flourishing Private Capitalism

Under the reforms being instituted in Cuba we are witnessing a broad flowering of private capitalism. This is taking place with the systematic increase in the exploitation of wage labor by business operations that are being protected by a law that allows for “self-employed contracted labor.”

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Cuba’s Media and the “Spokespersons”

“I’m not very interested in numbers,” is an acceptable phrase from the mouth of a poet or a painter, but when spoken by an official linked to foreign trade in the middle of a press conference, the matter becomes worrisome. That conference was a real shame because there was a great deal of interesting information that could have been released on the sale of Cuban services on the five continents, which has now become the main source of income for the island.

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What the New Left in Cuba Isn’t Telling Us

One of the political facts that has surprised me most in the recent period is the number of people, networks and organizations on the left that have adopted critical positions towards Raul Castro’s “updating” of the Cuban economic model.

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Moringa Plant Catches on in Cuba

The use of so-called “green medicine” has always been important to my family, therefore every new property or application that was discovered and announced — either by the official Cuban media or word on the street — was immediately felt at home.

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Cuba’s Horizontal Gravity (Part II)

It’s impossible to know exactly when you break the umbilical cord with Cuba. When you’re saying goodbye from the door through which so many others have left, leaving many teary-eyed people on the other side, one finds that the laceration started many years earlier. (11 photos)

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Being Left in 21st Century Cuba

The revolutionary experience of the twentieth century showed, once again, the failure of trying to fit revolution or socialism into a narrow box, beyond the dialectical and classical generalizations of the socialization and democratization of economic and political power. Presently, given the political experience of the Cuban Revolution and the evolution that this process is now suffering, for a wide revolutionary sector in Cuba today, to be left entails supporting and fighting for…

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Gays in Cuba after the Revolution

Cuban gays have suffered greatly, particularly during the first thirty years of the revolutionary period. For reasons that will be elucidated later on, the Cuban government forced gays out of the closet and politicized their situation to significantly increase their oppression. Excerpt from the book “Cuba Since the 1959 Revolution.”

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Citizenship and Power in Today’s Cuba

While reading a scientific analysis of the institutions of political power in Cuba, I was reminded of a phrase by Tomas Gutierrez Alea, who — from his perspective as a filmmaker — defined socialism as a “good script with bad staging.”

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