To be a regular blood donor is now a quite remarkable task, keeping in mind the difficulties of securing sufficient food, the unpleasantness of having a needle stuck in your body and the almost totally free character of the donation.
His lyrics are sharp and fearless. Vivanco is clearly not detached from his reality; instead he uses it, as he says in one refrain, like “a bell at the tip of the whip.”
On occasions I’ve heard people say — half-jokingly, and half seriously — that fewer Havanans live in Havana than immigrants.
For the majority of us artists who were born and grew up in the inner provinces of the country, Havana presents itself as a city of great opportunities for one to realize ourselves.
Although it sometimes seems unbelievable to us, still today, in the Cuba of the 21st century, there occur events fitting of medieval life, an age when scientists and women with uncommon features — under the suspicion of heresy — were persecuted and burned at the stake.
Thirty years ago the cultural life in Cuba was sustained by an institutional framework designed by the revolutionary government. This wasn’t perfect, but at least it worked at that time.
Havana Times interviewed 20-year-old Angel Raicel Merencio Llanes, from Ciego de Avila province. This freshman English student at the University of Havana is a former member of the Tony Menendez Dance Company, and he’s homosexual.
When I got there I found him conversing peacefully with my father in his front room. At first I didn’t recognize him, so I said hi somewhat indifferently.
This Cuban singer-songwriter, a native of the country town of Mines de Matahambre in Pinar del Rio province, belongs to the Nueva Trova movement. Among his followers are several generations of Cubans, not only for his songs that are pleasing to the ear, but for his intelligent compositions and because he is — as he says — a “committed singer.”
It seems that with all this self-employed work that has taken hold here in Cuba, someone has been carrying out Cupid’s job – and very efficiently.