English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
There are two Cubas, one in which nothing ever happens, and another in revolt, boiling over, which never stops sending me signals of change. My life moves from one to the other and I can never be sure which of the two is real. In any case, the dome over our heads is shaking. And … Continue reading “Preludes / Claudia Cadelo”
The village graveyards are picturesque and sad: whitewashed tombs with the sun beating down all day on their stones, and the dirt roads packed hard by the feet of the mourners. But there is a graveyard in the town of Banes that has hosted unusual cries in the last twelve months. Crosses around which intolerance … Continue reading “The Graveyard Police / Yoani Sánchez”
The Cuban regime “freed” two more political prisoners from the Black Spring Group: Héctor Maseda, husband of the Lady in White Laura Pollan, and Ángel Moya, husband of Berta Soler, also a Lady in White. All this has been made possible by the efforts of the Ladies in White, the sacrifice of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, … Continue reading “Hector Maseda and Angel Moya Released From Prison / Pedazos de la Isla”
The newspaper Granma, official organ of the Communist Party of Cuba, which also controls the rest of the official media as is common in totalitarian regimes, announces that demonstrations against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak are a response to his thirty years in power. The news seems to mock Cubans. The Castro government is already threatening … Continue reading “The Reflection in the Mirror: Castro and Mubarak / Angel Santiesteban”
I’ve lost count of the number of phone calls, text messages and remarks passed on by others, from friends wishing they could have taken part in last Friday’s march. Why didn’t you let us know? Hey, man, we missed it! Tell us next time? These are some of the words and messages I’m hearing over … Continue reading “Healthy and Patriotic Regrets / Antunez”
For several months now the forces of repression have suffered the daily nightmare of having to face a new phantom, the “National Civic Resistance and Civil Disobedience Front Orlando Zapata Tamayo”, an initiative born inside Cuba as a result of the need to join forces and take action on a national scale. Inspired by the … Continue reading “The Front: A New Nightmare for the General-in-Chief / Antunez”
Left behind was the romantic stage, when a notable majority of leftist intellectuals pinned their hopes on the Revolutionary hurricane of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. A Cuba that clouded the reason of heavyweights in the world of letters such as Jean Paul Sartre, Julio Cortázar and José Saramago has lost its steam. The “snob … Continue reading “The Cuban Revolution No Longer Enchants / Iván García”
When the high creole hierarchy enjoyed the arrival of the 51st anniversary of the insurrection which elevated them to power on 1 January 1959, a violent cold front was ravaging the west of the country. In Mazorra, a psychiatric hospital located on the highway that leads to the principal airport, a major scandal was uncorking … Continue reading “In 2010, Bad News Abounded in Cuba / Iván García”
The Orlando Zapata Tamayo National Civic Resistance and Civil Disobedience Front marches on September 28th, 2010. October 2 2010
The exile to Spain of fifty Cuban former political prisoners and their families has been a well organized maneuver, calculated and premeditated by the dictatorship in Havana. It is difficult to know when they started making plans for this operation, but I imagine it had its roots in the death of political prisoner Orlando Zapata … Continue reading “Premeditated Revenge / Pablo Pacheco”
Dark night, a blackout in the vicinity of the Buena Vista neighborhood in Playa. The dilapidated shared taxi I’m taking stalls, and with an exhausted snort refuses to start again. A passenger and the driver are trying to fix it, while on both sides of the street we see people are sitting outside their houses, … Continue reading “Cubacel, In Bed With The Censorship / Yoani Sánchez”
Appeal: The Orlando Zapata Tamayo National Civic Resistance and Disobedience Front, in the framework of the “The System Doesn’t Work” Day and in coordination with the Frank País 30th of November Democratic Party*, members of this front, invite the rest of the opposition and dissident organizations in the country to meet this November 30th at 8:30 … Continue reading “This Tuesday, At 8:30 PM Sharp / Antunez”
Despite the fence and police surveillance that I’ve won by being a disobedient Twitterer, I was able to go to Guantánamo on November 8. I knew that Rolando Rodríguez Lobaina, José Cano Fuentes and Yober Sevila were already back home after their arrests and beatings from October 31 in Banes, and their confinement in the … Continue reading “Making Them Value Citizen’s Rights / Luis Felipe Rojas”
Introduction The exhaustion of the “model”, united with the interaction of a mixture of internal and external factors, has formed a box which — paraphrasing Lenin — is a result that those from below don’t want and those from above can’t follow indefinitely. In that context, the death of the political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo, … Continue reading “The Challenges of the New Cuban Scenario / Dimas Castellanos”
Photo/Luis Felipe Rojas I Martha Díaz Rondón tells me, “There were more than thirty of us. We took flowers to honor Orlando Zapata Tamayo and the word to pray for him and to say ‘Zapata Lives’ as we were leaving the cemetery as we have done in spite of acts of repudiation and other provocations … Continue reading “Pieces of an Assault / Luis Felipe Roja”
