English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
For a Secret Literature Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo There where everything is law, everything is light, everything is readable. There I could never live. Photophobia, logophobia, or whatever way anyone esteems worse. Maybe civilised spaces become as intolerable as deserts. The civilising process as an overflower of memory, as a compression of the lucid that … Continue reading “Tanatarja / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
“One accused is presumed innocent, as long as he has not been convicted.” The principle is regulated internationally in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but for the Cuban state it is irrelevant, despite having pledged in 1948 to respect the rights contained in it. When it comes time to legislate, ignoring the most basic … Continue reading “Cuban Laws Destroy the Principle of Innocence / Laritza Diversent”
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”
Well-deservedly, my friends and I have been calling each other since last Thursday to congratulate ourselves. Some cheer from a distance, while others of us reach out our hands. Friends from different eras and generations: classmates from my university days; acquaintances I may have met on the streets with whom I’ve shared literary ideas at … Continue reading “Our Nobel of So Many Days / Ernesto Morales Licea”
I KENT GET NO SATISFACTION Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo Sunday after Sunday the Kent dinosaurs occupy the stage of the National Theater, on one side of the deserted Plaza of the Revolution, in the already classic Cafe Cantante. Thirty Cuban pesos a person. The place is cheap. It’s dark and air-conditioned: two more reasons than … Continue reading “CRITIC OF THE PURE REPRESSION, ACCORDING TO KENTS / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
THE OLD HOUSE OF THE CUBAN BOOK Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo I knew this was going to happen. His name was Roberto Casanueva and he was a real curmudgeon. I met him in the last years of our lives (there is no future anymore for anyone in the Cuban publishing industry). He was in the … Continue reading “CASANUEVA IN MEMORIAM / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
CHUCHO AND THE END OF THE WORKING CLASS Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo He was not fired from his job by Fidel or Raul. He was fired from life, the life he worked for himself. Chucho died today. For months he urinated too much. He had anemia. Little appetite. He got skinny. The doctors felt a … Continue reading “Jesus in Memorium / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
Haroldo Dilla, Cuban historian and sociologist. Photograph from the internet. A few days ago, a friend of mine gave me an interesting opinion piece by Haroldo Dilla Alfonso, entitled “From Loyalty to Complicity.” I can’t tell the readers where it was published, because I don’t know, though it is dated Tuesday, September 14th, 2010, but … Continue reading “Intellectuals: Between Loyalty and Complicit Silence / Miriam Celaya”
By: Frank El Primo This text was written by Carlos T. Trujillo, who was born in Cienfuegos in 1869 and died in the same city in 1937. At the end of the war in 1898 he had the rank of Colonel of the Army of Liberation. A friend has provided me with a book of … Continue reading “The image of the Republic”