English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
Not content with deporting the recently released political prisoners, the Cuban government is now expelling from his land the exhumed remains of Orlando Zapata Tamayo. The procedure has been the same: make life impossible for the family and offer them the tantalizing solution of exile. They repeat, in this way, the well-known recipe of launching … Continue reading “Orlando Zapata’s Inconvenient Corpse / Reinaldo Escobar”
No blogger, no cry. Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo 1 In the beginning was the Blog. 2 But blogs were formless and empty. 3 Repression was all over the blogosphere. 4 And the citizens saw the blogs were good. 5 So that lacking other channels of expression, the Cuban civil society occupied blogosphere as a tool for … Continue reading “No blogger, no Obama / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
MantleThought.org, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, 18 March 2015 — The U.S. embargo against the Cuban government is like those recurrent childhood nightmares, for both Cubans living on the Island and abroad. Oh, the Embargo Embargo: limit of our life, fire of our leaders… During decadent decades the Cuban Revolution has been defined by that urge … Continue reading “NO EMBARGO, NO CRY / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
In my Cuban childhood, during the horrendous ‘70s, years of scarcity and closure, the United States was a mythical space. It was the unknown, the outside, the other, freedom, illusion: a chimera of hope in the midst of the sterilizing infirmity of Real Socialism. In my childish imagination, perhaps because the maps imported from Eastern Europe were … Continue reading “My United States / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
As a birthday present, Willy Toledo announces that he is going to live to Havana. At forty something and with his own First World “savage capitalism” bank account, it was now time for the actor to star in one of those “humanist processes that have improved the lives of people” and which are an “example … Continue reading “Willy and the Magic Beanstalk / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
The images of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero covered the façade of Cuba’s diplomatic mission at New York City Read OLPL in English in Sampsonia Way here. Rosa María Payá is visiting the United States from April 3 to 16. She lives in Havana and is the daughter of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, the Cuban dissident … Continue reading “Light and Liberty / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo from Sampsonia Way”
While I’m a Cuban author, sometimes I would love to be the political police. Only they have all the information, omniscience obtained by legal means, or through crime under contract. Only they have absolute operability, all-powerful regardless of the mediocre bureaucracy and the little national swamp of ministerial resolutions. Only they have the diegetic sense … Continue reading “And the Police Arrived, Yes Sir / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
BUT THE DEAD, AYE, CONTINUED DYING The Februarys begin to accumulate, with the complicity of our indolent amnesia. Indecent. Till death do us bring together. Was it one or three years ago? Orlando Zapata Tamayo? Or were the last names reversed? From Santa Clara or Santiago de Cuba? Before or after the clinical case of … Continue reading “FEBRUARY 23 #OZT / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
LOOK AT ME DEATH, AND DO NOT CRY FOR YOUR LOVE [Short video of the tanks on the train] When Orlando Zapata Tamayo died in Havana, I went to the Playa del Este to die a little too me. En route 462 we saw a convoy of trucks loaded with tanks. Tanks of war to … Continue reading “IN THE DEATH OF THE HEART / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
www.thestarklife.com/2011/11/03/el-sexto-cubas-graf-king/ This article can be read at the original site – STARK: A Digital Culture Magazine – here — along with the accompanying images. The original article is in English. EL SEXTO: Cuba’s Next Graf King Danilo Maldonado may be the new face of revolution in Cuba, but he’s no politician. As El Sexto, he’s … Continue reading “El Sexto in The Stark Life / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
DEATH IN MAY Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo It begins happening more every day. First as an accident, then as business-as-usual. The despicable childishness of the police beating innocents (in the street and in prison) is also a sinister little game, eventually an assassination. As the pyramid of governability disintegrates in Cuba, as the budget for … Continue reading “DEATH, DEATH AND MORE DEATH / 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”
This February 23 commemorated the first anniversary of the passing of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a man who paid with fearlessness for his ticket to immortality. He was serving a penalty imposed by a court composed of jailers, judges and police, where all were mentally uniformed and carrying the same intellectual arms. This tenacious fighter did … Continue reading “Orlando, Son of Cuba / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado”
This February 23 commemorated the first anniversary of the passing of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a man who paid with fearlessness for his ticket to immortality. He was serving a penalty imposed by a court composed of jailers, judges and police, where all were mentally uniformed and carrying the same intellectual arms. This tenacious fighter did … Continue reading “Orlando, Son of Cuba”
Revista free-lance VOCES 6 ya a punto de caramelo…, originally uploaded by orlandoluispardolazo. Very soon. Hopefully next week. VOICES with its usual 60 pages and twenty authors, plus a minimum dossier on THE BODY AS RESISTANCE AND INSUBORDINATION, dedicated to the martyrdom of the political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo. February 19 2011