Osmel Ramirez Alvarez

It was Friday afternoon. My three children, aged 2, 8 and 9 years old, were playing in the living room. Somebody knocked on the door and interrupted my quiet siesta next to my wife. Four cars were outside my house and a dozen counterintelligence and crime agents and policemen too. One of these vehicles was an ambulance, expecting my sick mother’s possible heart attack. Luckily, that didn’t happen in spite of her grief.

Any act of blocking is wrong and can even be a crime depending on the circumstances. Whether that’s between countries, ethnicities or even between people from the same country. Cuba, poor Cuba, who has suffered so many blockades!

For Tony, a young self-employed worker from Mayari, it’s normal to have a hard time with the bureaucracy. He doesn’t understand why but it’s normal. He’s been setting up his Weekly Package recording “business” for a whole month and he still can’t start working.

In the provinces, Havana is idealized. “The best things are there”, “the most beautiful”, “the most sophisticated”. There is even a discriminatory phrase: “Havana is Cuba and the rest is just fields.” But how dirty and poorly maintained Havana is!

For the vast majority of Venezuelans, it’s a fact that there are two huge problems in their country: a breakdown in democracy and a breakdown in the economy. Both of these ingredients together make the perfect coctail for corruption, tyranny and increased violence.

Even though many people claim that we aren’t important to the US, the truth is that we are much more important than we seem. It isn’t simple chauvinism, it’s the absolute truth.

Between October 14th and 22nd, the 19th edition of the World Festival of Youth and Students will be held in the Russian city of Sochi. Cuba can’t miss such an important meeting of reaffirming the global Left and will send quite a large delegation of over 250 delegates and officials.

Up until a few days ago, the vast majority of the Cuban people didn’t know about the sonic attacks that had taken place in our capital. In spite of the serious implications and even grave political consequences this has created and could create for Cuba.

The rules of chess don’t work the same when it comes to the Cuban government. They seem to be in another dimension. Hurricane Irma came to be its project-country’s “checkmate”, and even so, they still aren’t throwing in the towel.

It’s dangerous to read Jose Marti on your own in Cuba, without the Marxist “editing” that the Jose Marti Studies Center apply to his writings. Adopting his ethics, his moral and political values, his love for Cuba and his passion for freedom and democracy can bring us great problems with the system.