English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
The death of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero, occurred according to the official version by accident while traveling in a rental car, driven by a Spanish citizen with a tourist visa, and it could take as many years as the regime endures to know the reality of what happened. According to the authorities the accident … Continue reading “Time Will Have the Last Word / Alberto Mendez Castelló”
By Alberto Méndez Castelló Some days ago, some 400 employees of the General Prosecutor Office of the Republic across the country signed a code of ethics. The notice was published on the front page of the daily Rebel Youth on Saturday, June 9th, under the title “Ethics Are Our Prosecutor”. According to the article, the … Continue reading “Prosecutorial Ethics / Cuban Law Association, Alberto Méndez Castelló”
By Miriam Leiva, Havana 06/07/2012 Extracted from www.cubaencuentro.com Cuban authorities for more than nine years avoided the analysis of their violations of human rights in the United Nations Committee on Torture; a period that coincides with the uprising of March 2003, when it subjected 75 peaceful protesters to summary trials and shot three young boat … Continue reading “The Cuban Government Before the Committee Against Torture / Dora Leonor Mesa”
Reggaeton: a love story; Better bayuti[1] than dictatuti In real time, it’s illegible but the Cuban press has come to be very creative if it is read with a five year lag time, “chabacaneria”[2], luxury, lechery, lamentation, vice, consumption of toxicity, banality, corny-ness, trinket shops, flamboyant attires, cheesy bargains, and an ecetera half ethical and … Continue reading “A 2nd Colloquium on Reggaeton and Problematic Social Situations in Cuba / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
Let’s talk about Steve Jobs, Freedom, and how an official from Cuban Intelligence can’t turn off an iPod. Like the Cuban language itself (impossible), like the poverty into which the imagination here has fallen, like the remains of the island culture (fortunately now Balkanized without origins or teleologies of chastity), like our insulting ignorance of … Continue reading “I WAS IMPRISONED, COMPAÑEROS / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
For many, black is a color, in spite of the definition that contends that it is the absence of visible light energy, that absorbs the light and that’s precisely why it isn’t it. Whether from the light emitting groups or the pigments, black has been linked historically and obscurely with the negative, perhaps because of … Continue reading “The Color of Humanity / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado”
For many, black is a color, in spite of the definition that contends that it is the absence of visible light energy, that absorbs the light and that’s precisely why it isn’t it. Whether from the light emitting groups or the pigments, black has been linked historically and obscurely with the negative, perhaps because of … Continue reading “The Color of Humanity”
Once again Cuban society darkens from the avoidable death of another of its members. The peaceful protestor Wilman Villar Mendoza was detained in a police offensive carried out in Contramaestre, a province of Santiago of Cuba, unjustly and quickly condemned to 4 years in jail for working with a free conscience, in a trial behind … Continue reading “Another Irreplaceable Loss / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado”
Once again Cuban society darkens from the avoidable death of another of its members. The peaceful protestor Wilman Villar Mendoza was detained in a police offensive carried out in Contramaestre, a province of Santiago of Cuba, unjustly and quickly condemned to 4 years in jail for working with a free conscience, in a trial behind … Continue reading “Another Irreplaceable Loss”
The punishment cell is narrow, is five feet wide by two long, cold and there is not even a blanket for cover. From the hole in the floor that serves as a toilet, a rat occasionally emerges and looks curiously at the curled up man lying there. Outside shouts are heard, metal banging, and the … Continue reading “Wilman Villar Mendoza: The Death of a Dissident / Yoani Sánchez”
Thousands of eyes were glued to national television screens this last Friday. The social networks and text messages also vibrated nervously. A strong rumor had been growing all week, feeding the hopes of Cubans on and off the island, killing sleep. Initiated and fed by official voices, the speculations centered on the possibility of the … Continue reading “The General’s Pardons / Yoani Sánchez”
From Havana, Cuba, where he lives and is subjected to systematic police and legal abuse by the island’s military regime, because of his determination to be a free writer, especially in his blog “The Children Nobody Wanted,” Angel Santiesteban answered, bravely it must be said, the following interview questions from Armando de Armas for Marti … Continue reading “Santiesteban, Padura, Milanes and the Repression of Intellectuals in Cuba / Angel Santiesteban”
The oldest of the three, Dylan McFarlane, is 18 and is the only one who didn’t fire that night. Eric Ronald Ellington, the first to be arrested and the author of the most amazing confession the police interrogators of Miami-Dade had ever heard in all their years in their posts, is 16, the same age … Continue reading “Death Penalty and Respect for Life / Ernesto Morales Licea”
LOVE AT FIRST STAGE Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo The homeland’s Sunday devastates you, ravages you, tears you to shreds of a Cuban without illusions. Then you take your Canon and rush into a theater. In the Trianón theater, for example, where Carlos Díaz has been dazzlingly undressing his crew of actors for decades. You never … Continue reading “(No Title) / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
Chapter 3: Dissident Muralist* The procedure was simple. Very simple. You looked for a piece of cardboard and painted it with a phrase against the Government. You hung it around your neck and went out into the street. Like in the reality shows where a naked man comes out into the light of day starkers, … Continue reading “Instructions for an Escape / Ernesto Morales Licea”
