That time, someone had actually knocked at the door of my fifth-floor apartment. It wasn’t like I imagined it happening every morning, when I woke up, took a trip to the bathroom and returned to bed. It was an official summons instructing me to meet with those responsible for my case at the Council of State.
Read MoreI was tasked with receiving and distributing the magazines and newspapers destined to high-ranking Party members, from Fidel Castro, through the Central Committee to all of the members of the Politburo. I was surprised at the number of sensationalist magazines I had to include in the packages sent to the highest officials.
Read MoreNow that Cuba has decided to definitively (though slyly) change its social model and the structure and foundations of its economy, I am positive we will soon see the novel figure of the Cuban entrepreneur blossom across the island.
Read MoreCuba is looking for “foreign” investors for the construction of a grand, commercial port. As fate would have it, this enclave, which marks one of the pivotal moments of the island’s abandonment of Marxism-Leninism in all its ideological dimensions, is situated in El Mariel, renowned for having been the point of departure for one of the most massive of human exoduses of the 20th century.
Read MoreI am a pacifist to the last consequences. I believe killing is immoral, cruel, anachronistic and always counterproductive as a means of deterring crime. Massive wars are for me the most criminal actions imaginable. They are followed by torture and repression, and then by violent, individual murders in general. As I see it, no one has the right to kill anyone.
Read MoreThe report showed an ad for a high-class tourist resort located near Cuba’s Guanahacabibes peninsula, in the province of Pinar del Rio, designed for the use and enjoyment of multimillionaires. This is probably less believable for members of the opposition, dissidents or those who are simply disillusioned with the Cuban revolution than for the architects of this cruel and enormous lie.
Read MoreAnyone who’d lived in Cuba – or any of the countries that once made up the inaptly-called Socialist Bloc – long enough to see, up close, how those who called themselves “communists” behaved, would have known that these people were bound to leave the island in the blink of an eye as soon as there was nothing to gain out of this lofty title.
Read MoreI think that the timid but significant changes that Raul Castro has been implementing – with a number of variations that any sound analyst would make – are the best thing that could happen to Cuba. The general-turned president, however, doesn’t exactly have the moral authority to advance these changes as his own, as he was never a dissident,
Read MoreToday, I remembered how Uruguayan poet Mario Benedetti would walk down the streets of Alamar, a proletarian neighborhood in Havana conceived to harbor the socialist New Man, with his mustachioed face, his short temper and his immense dignity.
Read MoreMayte, the head of the Young Communist League (UJC) committee at my high school, was the girl who presided over those summary trials we would hold in the classroom after school hours. The meetings, then referred to as “Communist Moral Code Reviews”, were assemblies in which each student was publicly evaluated and judged…
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