English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
REFLECTIONS, WAVES, INTERFACES Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo Like at the border, in vintage films. The guard asks us for our documents as is routine and we follow the rules, but something doesn’t work. Everything confuses us, even the language. And we know it in advance. Instinct or intuition. We drown at the last minute. We … Continue reading “SMALL TALK / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
Circulating in the media these days is a United Nations report on Latin American women. In it concerns are expressed about domestic violence, equality with regards to work opportunities, and the liberation of the gender. To my way of thinking, little has been achieved in this regard in my country since the forties, when Cuban … Continue reading “Liberated Women / Rebeca Monzo”
When I say metaphorically to my friends that my mouth is dry, they think that probably I have diabetes – because of my weight gain since I quit smoking – or a thirst to drink the vital liquid. They don’t understand that fifty-two years of the same party (the only one legally approved) ruling Cuba … Continue reading “Choking it Down / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado”
When I say metaphorically to my friends that my mouth is dry, they think that probably I have diabetes – because of my weight gain since I quit smoking – or a thirst to drink the vital liquid. They don’t understand that fifty-two years of the same party (the only one legally approved) ruling Cuba … Continue reading “Choking it Down”
It should be done with wheat flour, but is often reinvented with sweet potato starch, is supposed to have grease, but it’s missing in the recipe, and salt, but because it causes the modified dough to collapse nobody uses it: the result is the anti-bread — one a day — which is the quota assigned … Continue reading “The Anti-Bread / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado”
It should be done with wheat flour, but is often reinvented with sweet potato starch, is supposed to have grease, but it’s missing in the recipe, and salt, but because it causes the modified dough to collapse nobody uses it: the result is the anti-bread — one a day — which is the quota assigned … Continue reading “The Anti-Bread”
The saga filling space on the news–note that I do not call it “information”–this season is the discovery of the mortal nature of that other Latin American caudillo, Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, as a result of what constituted a surgical conspiracy led by his decrepit mentor, Fidel Castro. The brief chapters offered by Cuban and … Continue reading “Collateral Effects / Miriam Celaya”
Dear Friends, I took the month of June off on vacation, and now I am going to add a few days until Monday the 11th. On Saturday the 7th we will have a party at home to celebrate three events: Claudia Cadelo’s birthday (with is the 8th); mine (the 10th); and the 18th anniversary of … Continue reading “End of Vacation / Reinaldo Escobar”
To return repeatedly to the past is not healthy because it presupposes nostalgia and idealizes something that like it or not, is blurred in the collective and individual memory in accordance with the passing of the years. But to forget it …. of course, is an equally bad idea. The present anguish and distress that … Continue reading “An Essential Document / Fernando Dámaso”
(Published in Laborem. The Voice of the Christian Workers’ Movement / Cuba. Vol. 9, No. 36, July-September, 2010) Work and migration are closely linked. If the former radiates the riches that sustain the material and spiritual life of man, the second serves to rearrange things when work is incapable of guaranteeing the preservation and development … Continue reading “Work and Migration / Dimas Castellanos”
The creators of Revolico define it as “a small and functional team of programmers who one day felt the urge of a more simple way, organized and efficient to advertise and review what other people were already advertising”. It was born in 2007 and nobody knows for sure who manages a web in which you … Continue reading “Revolico.com, a Cuban virtual store / Iván García”
(Published Friday May 27, 2011 on the site: http:www.vocescubanas.com) The common characteristics that identify the human race also have important differences that cannot be ignored. The social character–the most defining and essential peculiarity of man–manifests itself in the diversity of associations that he creates for collaboration, promotion and the defense of his interests; reality that … Continue reading “Cuba: the Illogic of the Single Party / Dimas Castellanos”
RIDING MISTER ROJAS, originally uploaded by Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo In art, like in politics, the speeches of epigones, now free of the original guilt of the Messiah, start attempting a liberal rereading of the revolutionary scripture and end up being pure fascism. The Cuban intellectual Fernando Rojas, beyond his high governmental charge (every now … Continue reading “RIDING MISTER ROJAS / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
Like two boxers who stare each other in the eye, before beginning their attack, came TwittHab, the first encounter between official and alternative ‘twitterers’. If the proposition was to fraternize and build bridges, this first exploratory round between virtual gladiators who’ve made blogs, Facebook and Twitter a tool for spreading their ideas, was below expectations. … Continue reading “Official and Alternative Twitterers Launch a Truce / Iván García”
The times are propitious for the unveiling of the proverbial national fickleness. The blurring of the mythical figure of the supposedly invincible commander within the Cuban panorama–his disappearance from the Roundtable talk show and from the public eye in general–has unleashed a wave of criticism of the earlier period of this same process called the … Continue reading “The Age of Reptiles / Miriam Celaya”