“The Cuban population is falling in absolute terms and this intensifies its aging process,” demographer Juan Carlos Alfonso Fraga, explained. Emigration, especially of young adults, is the main reason for this population decline, which accentuates the low number of child-bearing age inhabitants.
A song by Cuban pop duo Buena Fe goes: “And that woman with bruises will say she slipped in the wind, I fell in the sea, goes back to the kitchen to hide tears behind onions.” There are updated stats in Cuba about physical and psychological violence not only against women and girls, but also against boys and men, although to a lesser degree.
Cuba’s results at the 23rd Central American and Caribbean Games in Barranquilla, 2018, should make the Cuban people swell with pride because seeing their athletes’ win is one of their greatest sources of joy. However, comments in our media mentioned a “bitter pill to swallow”…
In June 2018, the list of available essential medicines in Cuba was short by 45 drugs, according to Public Health authorities. However official sources say that shortages today aren’t as serious as they were last year,
The main stones along the island’s rocky path towards sustainable development are chaos and corruption, evils which brought about more than $8 billion USD in losses to the national economy last year.
Experts in these money issues have argued that our future prosperity will only come about when there is a single currency. However accomplishing this has proven a long drawn out process, thus far without an ending.
Nearly 60 years after the Cuban Revolution, this higher educated and more healthy people are asking that the principle of “change whatever needs to be changed” be applied in this life and not in the life that believers hope will come after death.
Mafalda, this precocious and intelligent girl who appears in cartoons, already said it: “the future today isn’t what it used to be.” The future is something that worries everyone: young people and the elderly, rich and poor people.
A recent medical event in Havana and particular indicators I picked up on in TV programs and social projects, stirred my curiosity about the impact of depression in Cuba. In Latin America, Brazil is the country with the highest level of depression, followed by Cuba, Paraguay, Chile and Uruguay.
Within the internal and external setbacks which the Cuban people have experienced in the last 60 years, physical and mental changes are being seen in language and daily tasks which make the most optimistic of us see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.