He has preserved his thin body and tender face of twenty years ago. We met each other at the Movement of Amateur Theatre Artists, where it took me little time to realize my lack of talent for acting. For Andres Enrique Perez Viciedo, though, it seems he still hasn’t given up on his dream.
Hopefully the authorities won’t interpret this article as an exhortation to violate rights in the name of national identity. It wouldn’t be the first time. And, besides, they would do it with the argument of responding to a complaint from the people.
I got to know Wollette Tsehay Gabriel Tafari (Marbys Guzmán Palomo) in 2010. We were both trying to sign up on a diploma course on Humanism and Society being given at the San Juan de Letrand Convent in Havana.
I started asking myself this question three years ago. I was in Central Park in Old Havana, seated a few yards from the place where many people, mostly men, gather to argue about baseball, soccer and volleyball – or about Michael Jackson’s death at that particular time.
Excuse me but the problem is that throughout my life, since I was in grade school, I was taught to associate patriotic values with love of the revolution, socialism, the leader and the Communist Party… which is to say the Party and the idea of a single party.
I’m not a great admirer of Fidel Castro, I doubt that his strengths outweigh the many mistakes he committed and that we still suffer. This feeling (my lack of admiration for him) sometimes gives me a deep sense of guilt.
Mario Roman Reyes (Mario Maraca or Quijá) was a member of Fiesta Campesino and used to play traditional music in Jaguey Grande, Matanzas. One day a commission from Havana came to evaluate the group and then disbanded it.
Her response was politically correct. This woman didn’t know me or my intentions, nor did she know the consequences of what she was saying to me. Just in case, it was better to make her position crystal clear.
The world will lose a generation if youth unemployment is not reversed. That was the title of an article published in the official Granma newspaper. “But what about our young generation here in Cuba?” I thought. Why do I feel as if we too are becoming lost?
I should explain that I don’t take the writers on the Internet as prophets of absolute truth – not even my own colleagues. But I want to at least have the opportunity to assess information for myself and not have others do it for me.