Cuba: Young Blood for Change / El Sexto – Danilo Maldonado

Danilo Maldonado - El Sexto. Photo: Claudio Fuentes
Danilo Maldonado – El Sexto. Photo: Claudio Fuentes

HAVANA. – Raul Castro speaks in the Communist Party conclave. “Comrades, we can see a better Cuba coming on the horizon.” A guajiro (peasant) is listening to him on TV, and as he doesn’t understand the meaning of the word “horizon” he looks it up in the dictionary: visual boundary of the earth’s surface that never arrives. “Ah, chico,” the guajiro boasts, “Now I understand what the president wanted to say!”

Cuban jokes are starkly ironic about themselves. But thanks to these little social x-rays, life goes better. Even now, with the Castro brothers’ Revolution proposing a battery of economic changes to try to save Cuba from bankruptcy. LNR [La Nacion magazine] traveled to the new Cuban labyrinth alongside ten personalities who form a part of this brand new society trying to rise from the economic ashes. They are the faces of change.

Daniel Lozano for La Nacion

Part of the Dossier of El Sexto, which will appear here piece by piece.

22 May 2013