14ymedio, Havana, 5 April 2022 — The Cuban film writer and screenwriter Ambrosio Fornet Frutos died this Tuesday at the age of 90, the Casa de las Américas reported on its social networks. “His work constitutes a fundamental part of the nation’s culture, which he always defended,” the institution wrote, recalling that the intellectual was “one of its … Continue reading “Cuban Intellectual Ambrosio Fornet, Who Baptized the’Five-Year Gray Years’, Dies”
14ymedio, Havana, 16 July 2019 — Cuban authorities denied entry to Cuba to the poet and essayist Jorge Luis Arcos. The academic was not allowed to board a flight in Santiago de Chile because airline employees informed him that he could not enter the island, according to a press release from the Betania publishing house. … Continue reading “Cuba Denies Entry to Cuban Poet Jorge Luis Arcos / 14yMedio”
14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 23 November 2016 — The film Santa and Andrés will not be screened at the 38th edition of the Havana Film Festival, to be held between 8 and 18 December. Sources from the industry guild commented to 14ymedio that the exclusion of the independent film, directed by Carlos Lechuga, could be motivated by its theme, focusing … Continue reading “The Film ‘Santa and Andrés’ is Excluded From Havana Festival / 14ymedio, Luz Escobar”
Regina Anavy, Reykjavic, June 27, 2016 — Crossing paths with Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo in Reykjavic, Iceland, on June 27, 2016, I had the opportunity to have a conversation with him. Iceland And Future Plans Regina Anavy: I understand you are here on a special two-year grant from ICORN [International Cities of Refuge Network]. Orlando Luis … Continue reading “A Conversation with Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo / Regina Anavy”
Augusto César San Martín Born 20th of April 1967 in the City of Havana. He was attracted by the Ministry of the Interior and studied Criminal Sciences at the Herman Martinez Institute from which he graduated. Because of differences with the military, he requested permanent removal from that agency, which petition was denied him for … Continue reading “Augusto César San Martín”
Investment in Cuba? What for? ASCE XXIV / 2014 Annual Conference, Miami Hilton Downtown Hotel, Florida, USA Panel 12. Concerto Ballrom B – Friday, August 1st, 2:45-4:15pm 1. In Cuba during the 1970s, historian Manuel Moreno Fraginals challenged poet Jose Lezama Lima with his trendy scientific notions about the laws of objectivity and the transition … Continue reading “Investment in Cuba? What for? / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
The writer and Nobel Prize Winner for Literature, Mario Vargas Llosa, talks about Cuba in the first part of an interview with 14ymedio Yoani Sánchez, Madrid, 14 July 2014 — Mario Vargas Llosa, writer, politician, excellent analyst and even better conversationalist, received me at his home in Madrid for this interview. The minutes flew by … Continue reading ““The myth of Cuba has been cut to shreds for the most part” / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Mario Varga Llosa”
Havana, Cuba, 19 August 2013, Augusto César San Martín Albistur/ www.cubanet.org.- On a phone call this morning, from the Combinado del Este prison, political prisoner Ramón Alejandro Muñoz González declared that as of August 26 he would restart his hunger strike. Ramón says that after writing letters to different government departments about his undefined legal … Continue reading “Sonia Garro’s Husband to Restart Hunger Strike / Augusto Cesar San Martin”
He chaired the National Council of Culture in the ‘70s, which marginalized hundreds of intellectuals and artists. He reappeared on TV in 2007 and caused the “little war of emails.” —- The political commissar Luis Pavón Tamayo, one of the executors of censorship in the ‘70s, died Saturday in Havana, according to the writer Norberto … Continue reading “Luis Pavon Tamayo Dies, One of the Executors of Castro Censorship / Diario de Cuba”
The shortest monologue in the world has just been presented in a small room in Havana: “And where did Cuba end up?” (It is at the level of the short story “The Dinosaur” by the Guatemalan Augusto Monterroso.) Its name is Rhapsody for the Mule, and it is directed by Nelda Castillo for her theater … Continue reading “A DEER IN CHAINS / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
To get freedom we must escape from what oppresses us. To leave the ranks, dissent, desert what we haven’t even been consulted on. What we have been forced into by necessity. The first reaction is to accept, to resolve, to wait. Until one day you discover that no one is going to do it for … Continue reading “Pinch of Salt / Lilianne Ruiz”
I am reading The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera. The first time the book showed up (the expression seems fantastical, but in Cuba that is how one gets these books), I was washing diapers. I preferred to read it and laugh quietly in the early morning so as not to wake up my … Continue reading “The birthmark of the rabbit shows his life in the snow… JLL* / Lilianne Ruiz”
My name has been printed in a filthy little “Incident Book” at the Muelle dock for the Regla ferry. While still at home I felt this strange hyper-attentiveness to some details, which always ends in finding out it was intuition, and meanwhile in my backpack I had some big scissors, the kind used to cut … Continue reading “The Paranoia of the State / Lilianne Ruíz”
The situation in which we live incites violence in many ways, and we must not allow ourselves to provoke it. Not only because they have the weapons and the power to annihilate any popular uprising, but also because we do not have to be like them, the men and women who have managed to free … Continue reading “Spring for Cuba / Lilianne Ruíz”
Havana has carried out a process of appropriation of post-Marxist nationalism, through a nearly mystic cult of the figure Jose Marti, at the same time attempting the depoliticization of writers and artists. The mechanism of terror employed by a dictatorship fails only with one social group: the intellectuals. It’s not necessarily that the intellectuals are … Continue reading “Praise for the Cowardly / Wendy Iriepa and Ignacio Estrada”
