English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
Exciting atmosphere. It’s 2:10 in the afternoon and outside the Yara cinema, right in the heart of the central 23rd Avenue, there are hundreds of people with T-shirts, caps, flags and scarves for the Spanish and other countries. Most of the fans are young students from the nearby University of Havana, who wait, biting their … Continue reading “The Cinema, Soccer and Vuvuzelas”
Exciting atmosphere. It’s 2:10 in the afternoon and outside the Yara cinema, right in the heart of the central 23rd Avenue, there are hundreds of people with T-shirts, caps, flags and scarves for the Spanish and other countries. Most of the fans are young students from the nearby University of Havana, who wait, biting their … Continue reading “The Cinema, Soccer and Vuvuzelas”
Perhaps I’m not the right person to write this chronicle. Or maybe I am. I know colleagues who personally knew Silvio Rodríguez in that first stage of the revolution, ingenuous and difficult, crude and contradictory, where children magically became men. Further, I’m going to talk about the spell that Silvio provoked in my generation, by … Continue reading “Chronicle with First Quarter Moon”
He doesn’t look quite the same as English footballer David Beckham, or the Spanish actor Antonio Banderas. He’s Cuban, his name is Carlos and he was born 24 years ago in a village in the middle of the Venezulea sugar-growing region, in the province of Ciego de Avila, about 375 miles from Havana. He likes … Continue reading “Armani, Take Note”
Julia Romero, a 20-year-old university student, will never forget the day she lost her virginity. Forget the fairy tale of a magical night, surrounded by a pleasant environment. “My first night of love was terrible. It was in the middle of spring, we left a mediocre disco and had sex in a pitch-black park, surrounded … Continue reading “Love in the Time of the Special Period”
Josefina Miranda, a 67-year-old housewife, has worked her whole life like an animal. Her moments of happiness can be counted on the fingers of one hand. She is a fat, soft, black woman with a weary gait, who lives in the marginalized, mostly black neighborhood called Diezmero, in the municipality of San Miguel del Padrón, … Continue reading “Josefina’s beans”
Perhaps I’m not the right person to write this chronicle. Or perhaps I am. I know of colleagues who personally knew Silvio Rodriguez in that first stage of the revolution, ingenuous and difficult, crude and contradictory, where children, as if by magic, were converted into men. Again I am going to talk about the spell … Continue reading “Chronicle with a First Quarter Moon”
There are things you never forget, even though they may seem insignificant. There are words that, like the tea of Proust, provoke the same memory, with the precision of a reflex mechanism. The word substitute, for example; I refer to the start of Bulgakov’s novel, The Master and Margarita. At first reading, the word stumped … Continue reading “The three faces of Soy”
Maybe I’m turning into an old man and I believe that (as a generation) I am the most qualified for the race and these youngsters have a lot to learn… Maybe at the time for fixing the disaster we have to say as we said at the beginning (and said later, and continue saying): “with … Continue reading “On youth and change”
During the long weeks prior to general elections which concluded recently, we have been the target of a media campaign in favor of the united vote. In its various stages of development we have seen frequent messages, exhortations and appeals which have involved public figures, artists, sportsmen and Cubans on the street. The image of … Continue reading “Ghosts from the past”