The demand is huge and it’s not so strange. Cuba must be the sole country in the world where aesthetic surgery is free. They can trim your eyelids, take off some of the belly, improve your profile with a beautiful nose or remodel women’s breasts. It’s not necessary to be very observant to see the changes on the street. It began as something exclusive to people in entertainment, but the fashion has now extended across the board.
Read MoreAfter 50 years of a socialist government and highly personalized leadership, lots of people on and off the island are wondering what’s next for Cuba when Fidel Castro and his brother Raul are gone. If you browse through the Juventud Rebelde newspaper website, you can find several articles referring to recently held meetings of top Communist Party officials with the Young Communist League (UJC). In most of those meetings an often used phrase was heard: “The future of the Revolution is guaranteed.”
What’s your opinion?
Read MoreBeyond the facts, those who are accustomed to following the course of events from within begin to sense the presence of a pattern that has been repeated over and over during the history of Cuba in the last decades: the vicious and seemingly inevitable circle of relaxing – tightening and/or crisis – hardening.
Read MoreA few years ago the minister of Culture, Abel Prieto, told me in a conversation that technological development would very soon make it impossible to block satellite signals, and added that the failure to prepare people to receive information from other sources would be suicidal.
Read MoreIt occurred today, March 18, at about 11 in the morning. I was near Obispo and Compostela Streets, in Old Havana, when by chance I heard the uproar and decided to get closer, as did several other onlookers. Coming down the street was a group of some 20 women dressed in civilian clothing and chanting slogans.
Read MoreLast week the US Treasury Department announced it would allow exports to Cuba of software and Internet services such as instant messaging, e-mail, Web browsing and social networks. In response, the Cuban government lashed back saying this measure is part of a plan to destabilize the country and not one of loosening the economic blockade.
What do you think?
Read MoreA friend, who works in a farm cooperative making her money honestly and living decently, told me she was concerned about constant pejorative criticisms alluding to “farmers who make money speculating with the people’s food.”
Read MoreCuban dissident Guillermo Fariñas has become a public figure thanks to a hunger strike he is waging over the demand for the release of a group of political prisoners the government describes as mercenaries. Havana Times invites our readers to share their opinions on the legitimacy of the hunger strike .
Read MoreMany of the people who had the good luck of seeing the documentary and who greatly enjoyed it, don’t like rap, in fact can’t even stand to listen to it for more than half an hour. Many of the people who pass CDs of Los Aldeanos from hand to hand, or from flash memory to flash memory – because these recordings aren’t produced by the State’s EGREM or by Colibri Studios or any of the other official studios in the country, nor are they sold in the stores – don’t even know what Hip Hop culture is. But you have to hear Los Aldeanos.
Read MoreWith people pushing me from behind, suddenly I was on the bus and pressed against a sweaty man, in fact my entire body was against his. There was no space to move and my hands were full, plus I couldn’t ask the man to move aside because he didn’t have any room either, and it was I who was standing pressed against him.
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