Osmel Ramirez Alvarez

A Cuban Dissident’s Tragic Story

Nieper de la Pena’s situation is quite common among former dissidents. They have dreams, go against the system and believe that they can bring about change; then the frustration comes followed by their impotence because the struggle is extremely hard, because of shortages, discrimination, social exclusion; which joins the lack of unity among opposition groups, sincerity a lot of the time and trust because of undercover State agents.

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Fidel and Cuba’s Fate

A couple months ago, in a brief encounter with an intellectual friend of mine that took place in the middle of the street, we exchanged opinions, ideas and discussed all kinds of things. It was in the time leading up to Fidel’s birthday and we were swamped with celebrations and compliment everywhere. It was an inevitable topic.

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Redeeming the Cuban people

In Rogelio Manuel Diaz Moreno’s article, “Is there a crisis of values in Cuba?” published on Havana Times on October 11th, he deals with a very complex and inevitable issue. Our respected colleague surely didn’t mean to be derogatory in his analysis; however, without wanting to, he could be contributing to negatively stigmatizing a people like our own, as brave and virtuoso as any other.

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Cuba: Marxism-Leninism vs. Hypocrisy

It’s a well-known fact that the Cuban Revolution’s official ideology is, and has always been, Marxism-Leninism. Up until the ‘90s, there was an ironclad commitment to this doctrine, which was extremely widespread in all aspects of Cuban life; however, the situation has changed gradually over time since then, for different reasons.

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The Cuban Revolution and Hurricanes

Civil Defense troops are very efficient and proactive in our country, who can deny that? They form part of the national military apparatus and a hurricane is viewed as if it were a war. It’s a good thing that the government is worried about protecting the civil population.

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Is Venezuela Heading for a Coup?

Cuban government media and Telesur out of Venezuela are always alluding to a new kind of coup d’etat against the Left’s empowerment on the global political stage: “the soft coup”. They promote the time worn “conspiracy theory.” It’s repeated over and over again; its objective being to get it inside our heads so we accept it as a proven reality.

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