Julio Antonio Fernandez Estrada

What’s the Deal with Raisins in Cuba?

This article could also have the sub-heading: Ten items that you don’t need to live but make life worth living. In Cuba, the idea or philosophy that enjoying the small things in life is detrimental to our spirit’s prestige and willingness to resist, has become widespread.

December in Cuba: Dedicated to Bread (?) and Wine…

Oh Ceres, hear our prayers, those of us who can’t cultivate wheat, we who need to look out at the horizon and wait for a boat to bring it to us from lands where it grows happily and golden! Ceres, our rice isn’t enough to feed the population, we have forgotten the technique of grating yucca, children don’t know what cassava bread is, both in the countryside and cities.

How Cubans Come Second… in Cuba

A few days ago, a Cuban friend of mine living in Ecuador told me that on a quick trip to Havana, it was easier for his young daughter, born in Cuba, to become an Ecuadorian citizen, than it was for a girl who was born in Havana, with her mother registered as residing in Santiago de Cuba, to become a legal resident of Havana.