English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
It took five minutes of broadcast television for his brief resurrection to send a shudder to Havana. In January 2007, the first broadcast of Impronta (Imprint), a space that sought to the highlight relevant names of Cuban culture, generated amazement and protests. Those who saw this very short program couldn’t get over their shock or … Continue reading “Luis Pavon Tamayo: Symphony in Grey Minor / Norge Espinosa”
It’s not that Luis Pavón died without fanfare, it’s that he died officially forgotten. No one mentioned his death in the official Cuban press, no brief note, not even a moment on the cable news agency to record the fact. Another of the ironies of fate, history and politics — rhetoric doesn’t matter here — … Continue reading “Luis Pavón, the Forgotten Official / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate, Alejandro Armengol”
He chaired the National Council of Culture in the ‘70s, which marginalized hundreds of intellectuals and artists. He reappeared on TV in 2007 and caused the “little war of emails.” —- The political commissar Luis Pavón Tamayo, one of the executors of censorship in the ‘70s, died Saturday in Havana, according to the writer Norberto … Continue reading “Luis Pavon Tamayo Dies, One of the Executors of Castro Censorship / Diario de Cuba”
For more information about this series of posts, please click here. From Jorge A. Pomar Are the intellectuals waking up? Everything in Cuba is as rotten as in Hamlet’s Denmark. It all stinks. Even the Horaces of the UNEAC (Cuban Writers and Artists Union) stink. Yet another proof of this is the electronic call to … Continue reading “Concern About the Media Comeback of Luis Pavón / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate”
That dark, inquisitorial period lasted much more than five years. It did not, as some would like to pretend, end in 1976. Cubanet, Luis Cino, Havana, 7 June 2025 – It was the late essayist Ambrosio Fornet who coined the term, “The Five Grey Years,” to refer to the repression of artists and intellectuals during … Continue reading “The ‘Five Grey Years’ Kept Going Much Longer Than a Decade, Primarily Because of Fidel Castro / Cubanet, Luis Cino”
14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 15 December 221 — For the first time, the Cintas Foundation has recognized with its annual scholarship, endowed with $20,000, a Cuban resident on the Island, Adrián López González. Founder and leader of the Grupo Matiz de restauradores (Matiz Restoration Group0 in Matanzas, he was the recipient of the award in the architecture … Continue reading “Cubans Adrian Lopez Gonzalez, Geandy Pavon, Waldo Perez Cino and David Virelles Win the Cintas Scholarship”
This debate seems far more serious and interesting than the candles feeding the shadows of a study, in this I agree with Arturo Arango. I have no time to sit and watch TV, I saw the little program. And I doubted, for when the pavonato took place, I was a child and didn’t suffer it directly. It touched others, more recent, in the eighties. But this man of the seventies, I hadn’t seen his face. It drew my attention that whomever make the report skirted around, olympically, the fact that Pavón was the President of the … Continue reading “Message from Jorge Luis Sanchez / Polemica, 2007 Intellectual Debate”
The images of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero covered the façade of Cuba’s diplomatic mission at New York City Read OLPL in English in Sampsonia Way here. Rosa María Payá is visiting the United States from April 3 to 16. She lives in Havana and is the daughter of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, the Cuban dissident … Continue reading “Light and Liberty / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo from Sampsonia Way”
Speaking: Raudel Collazo, from Patriot Squadron. Sadly… the situation is a little complicated… my voice… my poetry… it is not permitted to hear it… it’s a word like censorship… STATEMENT OF COOPERATIVE PRODUCTIONS To Whom It May Concern: The reason for this letter is an event that happened on March 6, 2012, Year 53 of … Continue reading “AWAKENING / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
Joven interceptado tras performance en Plaza 1ro Mayo 2011, originally uploaded by orlandoluispardolazo. A young man is stopped and subjected to a check after his performance at the end of the parade on May Day in the Plaza of the Revolution, Havana, Cuba. The boy looked very embarrassed, almost hysterical and crying as he overreacted … Continue reading “Young Man Intercepted After Performance in the Plaza on May 1, 2011 / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
The recent events triggered in Cuba after the resurrection of Pavón-Quesada-Serguera, to wit, the many outcries of various kinds by email, articulating a common domestic front to protest the raulista attempt to clean their old repressive instruments, to whitewash historical memory, and, incidentally, to humiliate their victims once again, and in general, all intellectuals, if … Continue reading “Message from Jorge Luis Arcos / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate”
Masochism is the “sexual perversion of someone who enjoys being humiliated or mistreated by someone else,” says the dictionary. Did the writers who now rightly denounce the official television revival of Luis Pavón, Serguera and Quesada actually enjoy it? “Pick little fights, don’t try to be a hero,” the current director of the Cuban Academy … Continue reading “The Masochistic Left is “Pavonating” Itself / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate”
Last week I participated in an exceptional experience. For two days I spoke on camera for the fictionalized documentary Trocadero 162, Bajos, by director Tomas Piard, about the last years of Jose Lezama Lima: his final ostracism when the doors on the island were closed to him; his resistance to the Cuban vacuum, until he … Continue reading “Open Letter to the World (Excepting Abel Prieto, Cuban Minister of Culture) / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
Photo: Luis Felipe Rojas When I dictated this post this morning to a friend who has always been aware of my aspirations and having and maintaining my blog from Holguin, she told me, and here I want to record it in writing, “You never thought you were going to face, from your writing, a ‘reality’ … Continue reading “Reports I Would Prefer Not to Write / Luis Felipe Rojas”