The Romans weren’t the ones who invented municipalities as local institutions, but they understood the need to develop political structures capable of maintaining the unity of their empire. The Cuban model, to the contrary, is so centralized that almost nothing is done without authorization from Havana.
Read MoreRaul Castro has stated that one of his main priorities is to restore the country’s international economic credibility, something I find quite reasonable.
Read MoreAccording to unofficial media here, yesterday a trial began — behind closed doors — in which 14 people (among them three Italian citizens) are implicated in the death of a Cuban junior high school student.
Read MoreAround 9 o’clock last night, while I was passionately reading an autobiography, my youngest daughter interrupted me. With the face of a good little girl, she announced: “Mummy, I’m hungry.”
Read MoreIt takes some effort to believe that Washington is seriously thinking they’ll succeed at securing a pardon for Alan Gross by simply saying that if Havana wants “warmer relations with the United States” they should free him. It’s as if they’ve tried to sow hopes using the strategy of the invisible carrot.
Read MoreSeveral days ago I read a comment online saying that, except for people who receive family remittances from overseas, all Cubans are starving, with young people appearing to have come out of concentration camps and it being rare to find an obese person on the island.
Read MoreThe Cuban government’s position — which implies a greater degree of tolerance than before — could be explained by synthetically paraphrasing the words of Fidel Castro to the intellectuals in 1961: within the private realm, everything; outside of the private realm, nothing.
Read MoreIf Cuba doesn’t have today a better connection to the Internet, it’s not because of the “blockade by the Americans” or because “the communists limit freedom of information.” The true reason lies with a much more powerful enemy: A corrupt bureaucratic class.
Read MoreFor Cubans, anything that comes from abroad is well received. It doesn’t matter if it’s an elastic band for one’s hair, a plastic shaving razor, cheap costume jewelry or second hand clothes. The worst part is that when a relative comes on a visit to the island with these kinds of things, then the problems begin.
Read MoreFollowing the speech by President Raul Castro before the National Assembly on August 1, Granma newspaper (the official organ of the Communist Party of Cuba, or PCC) began publishing a series of incisive articles against the bureaucracy, in support of workers participation in decision-making (even in the allocation of earnings), and in support of cooperativism.
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