English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
News has several lives on this Island. First they hint at something but don’t publish it, then they announce it tersely in some national media, and later its echo repeatedly feeds popular fantasy. This has happened with the recent information about the new flexibility in buying and selling homes. For months–perhaps years–we spun the rumor … Continue reading “Sell and Leave / Yoani Sánchez”
The complaints cost me points with the commander. by Pablo Pacheco Avila It has been 92 days since my last meeting with my wife and son. I was impatiently looking forward to the officer on duty calling my name for the visit, and being able to hug my family and talk with them, even though … Continue reading “Notes from Captivity XVI / Pablo Pacheco”
I have received an unexpected gift: a ship’s log with my name on it. Marco A. Pérez López and Liu Santiesteban, administrators of Tania Quintero’s blog, opened it for me. The blog of Iván García and his friends, is in no way affecting Desde La Habana, founded 28 January 2009 and since January of 2010 … Continue reading “To Keep the Cuban Blogosphere Excited / Iván García”
On Tuesday the 28th, at three in the afternoon, the first LGTB (Lesbians, Gays, Transsexuals and Bisexuals) Observatory Walk took place in Havana, along the middle of the central street of the Prado, starting from the corner of Neptune and continuing to the sea. The date selected recalls the massive gay pride march celebrated in … Continue reading “A Sui Generis Walk / Miriam Celaya”
Hugo Chavez’s announcement that Cuban doctors had found and removed a cancerous tumor, coming after weeks of speculation about the Venezuelan president’s absence from public life, touches a particular chord for Cubans. For decades, the health of the Cuban president was information cloaked in secrecy. It was the least transparent topic in our national life, … Continue reading “Hugo Chavez’s Secret / Yoani Sánchez”
I’m so accustomed to the lack of information in our media that when I hear a story, not just of current national or international importance — as one can’t ask for so much — but of something as simple and useful as the repairs that occasion power outages, or about water shortages in certain areas … Continue reading “Gimme Light / Claudia Cadelo”
For several days, millions of people tried to decipher what happened in the hospital room where Hugo Chavez is resting. Because beyond the resilience of an individual, in that room is defined a part of the road map of this Island and an entire regional project involving several nations. This issue transcends the gravity of … Continue reading “Under the Sign of Cancer / Yoani Sánchez”
MY POST FOR 2025… Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo The future is so distant. Such a lie that we are going to live it. Such a panic. Such a coward. That. It’s better to inhabit it a bit in writing just now, when no one can see or hear us at the level of the Cuban … Continue reading “#TWITTHELP / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
Ciro Diaz, 33, guitar player for the group Porno for Ricardo and musical producer, had all the ingredients to be a jet setter of the Revolution. He was born and raised in the heart of a family who listened to Fidel Castro’s long speeches and went to the Revolutionary celebrations cyclically generated by the olive … Continue reading “Ciro Diaz, Guitar Player for Porno Para Ricardo / Iván García”
Recently a fellow Cuban living abroad and I exchanged views on the advisability of hunger strikes as a way to confront the dictatorship. The subject, of course, was motivated by the strike initiated by Jorge Luis Artiles (Bebo) last May 9, in the city of Santa Clara, and that was assumed on Friday, June 3, … Continue reading “Of Strikes and Causes: Reflections on a Conflict / Miriam Celaya”
I know when it was because it was after that May Sunday I’d watched, from home, the TV broadcast of the Mother’s Day celebration where Ramoncito Veloz (the son) sang in front of the cameras wearing his Conrado Benítez Brigade uniform. I know when it was because it was before my fourteenth birthday, which I … Continue reading “A Particular Anniversary / Reinaldo Escobar”
In the struggle for land ownership and against eviction in Cuba, many farmers and farm workers lost their lives. Among them is Niceto Perez, who was killed May 17, 1946. In tribute to him and the rest of the martyrs of the field that day, the Law of Agrarian Reform was promulgated in 1959 and … Continue reading “The Agrarian Problem / Dimas Castellanos”
Indubitably most of these testimonies will be about the spiritual liberation of many Cubans. I will join them, but I would like to take the opportunity of this brief space to also thank God for the physical liberation of an elevated number of prisoners that before the celebration of the last three campaigns, and mainly … Continue reading “THE TESTIMONY THAT WILL NOT BE PUBLISHED / Mario Barosso”
In these April days while the communists of the government party met for four days in the Palace of Conventions, to the west of Havana, newspaper vendors had a party. Bartolo, a nearly blind old man, doubled sales of Granma that he offers every morning in the dirty doorways of the Calzada 10 de Octubre. … Continue reading “Cuban Newspaper Vendors Party / Iván García”
One morning in 1958, in intricate landscapes of the Sierra Maestra, after a heavy bombardment by dictator Fulgencio Batista’s air force on defenseless villages, the guerrilla leader Fidel Castro wrote a note to his secretary and friend Celia Sánchez. He vowed to her that after the air raid and verification that the bombs used were … Continue reading “The United States, the Intimate Enemy of Fidel Castro / Iván García”
