English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
We are experiencing another turn of the screw of intolerance. Just when individual daring is gaining ground here and there, the times of admonishment come along. The first signs appeared with the TV serial called “Cuba’s Reasons,” whose script seems to have been written in Stalin’s Russia rather than on this 21st Century Caribbean island. … Continue reading “Correctives / Yoani Sánchez”
ADIÓS, AMÉRICA Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo Dear friends of Cuba and the world, in any order: I’m a bit tired. The climate in this country is horrible from May to September, and I don’t even feel like going out into the street. The vertical light scorches and distorts everything, making any attempt at a nuanced … Continue reading “BYE, BROTHERS… / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
THERE’S AN EXIT…? Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo My girlfriend had a strange dream. She dreamt of people she’d never seen. She dreamt of Rolando Pulido, in New York, a teenager, almost prepubescent, fine pear skin, finishing the Mariel exile, but in the middle of 2011, with long straight hair like porn movie Chinese superstar. And … Continue reading “THERE’S AN EXIT…! / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
It’s beautiful to sit in front of the TV and contemplate the end of the Revolution. “Cuba’s Reasons,” they call it on Monday nights, this material clearly anonymous. My blog, which appeared for the first time on the small screen, is also called Monday. Post-Revolution Mondays. A slightly obsolete title. The Revolution is no longer … Continue reading “WEBDITORIAL / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
The Florida media commented on the details of the flow of musicians and writers that travel from Havana to Miami or New York, where they perform in clubs and theaters or speak in universities and conference rooms. Among the literary figures the writer Miguel Barnet, the President of the Union of Writers and Artists of … Continue reading “Barnet and His Alter Ego / Miguel Iturria Savón”
On February 10 the Havana International Book Fair began in the La Cabaña fortress, extended to March 6 in the capital’s bookshops and in the provincial centers of books and literature, which sold more than 2,000 titles of publishers from Cuba and abroad, among them the Bicentennial Alba collection with a score of works from … Continue reading “Of Absences and Other Troubles / Miguel Iturria Savon”
Respected colleagues: I have learned, by email, about part of the exchange of opinions stirred up by the appearance on the Cuban TV program “Imprint” about Luis Pavón and Jorge Serguera, interviewed in “The Difference.” I don’t know the contents, and now I’m actually in Spain invited by the Ateneo “Jovellanos” de Gijón. I confess … Continue reading “Message from Loly Estévez / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate”
When the 32nd edition of the Havana International New Latin American Film Festival opened, I commented on the event’s programme and the expectations by genres, nations and other details of interest, based on the preliminary information offered by the organizers. Now that the party is over, we need to recap the Cuban film industry, whose … Continue reading “The Cuban Films at the Festival / Miguel Iturria Savón”
– From Josefina de Diego – I confess that I didn’t remember the full text known as “Words to the Intellectuals,” delivered by Fidel Castro on June 30, 1961, at the National Library to a group of intellectuals. I think that, like many people, the only thing I remembered from the text was his famous … Continue reading “Thoughts on Fidel’s “Words to the Intellectuals” and other texts / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate”
The recent events triggered in Cuba after the resurrection of Pavón-Quesada-Serguera, to wit, the many outcries of various kinds by email, articulating a common domestic front to protest the raulista attempt to clean their old repressive instruments, to whitewash historical memory, and, incidentally, to humiliate their victims once again, and in general, all intellectuals, if … Continue reading “Message from Jorge Luis Arcos / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate”
FROM “THE FLIGHT OF THE CAT”* TO YOUR MOTHER’S TWAT** Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo There’s the lyrical Lezama Lima, of unintelligible flight, before whose spirals we bow because to read them would be in vain, and a pain. And good for us. That Lezamian lyricism never had much success, except for quoting and thus accumulating … Continue reading “A LEZAMA FOR MOPPING (DUPING) / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
About the text “A little ashamed of ourselves” by Luis Manuel Pérez Boitel, in response to “The crisis of low culture” of Francis Sánchez. My friend Riverón, Although I consider friendship one of the gifts that should be defended at all costs, I also think that standards about things that happen in life, art and … Continue reading “Message from Jorge Ángel Hernández / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate”
I suspect that somewhere from the island firmament, the writer José Lezama Lima (Havana, 1910-1976) is smiling at his supporters, or winking at the editor who introduced the latest edition of his Collected Works. Our literary rhino should be happy with so many celebrations. “Seeing is believing”, he would say at one of the gatherings … Continue reading “Of Ostracism and Sanctification / Miguel Iturria Savón”
The Cuban filmmaker Tomás Piard now faces ideological pressure in his work for having interviewed me in his most recent documentary “TROCADERO 162, LOWER,” filmed last November for UNEAC, its producer. The debut of the film planned for 19 December 2010 (the 100th birthday of the Cuban writer José Lezama Lima, the subject of the … Continue reading “SOLIDARITY WITH TOMAS PIARD / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
For more information about this series of posts, please click here. From Jorge A. Pomar Are the intellectuals waking up? Everything in Cuba is as rotten as in Hamlet’s Denmark. It all stinks. Even the Horaces of the UNEAC (Cuban Writers and Artists Union) stink. Yet another proof of this is the electronic call to … Continue reading “Concern About the Media Comeback of Luis Pavón / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate”