English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
14ymedio, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Madrid, 29 April 2023 — I’ve aged in opposition to your regime. Before you were born, I was a premature anti-communist, totally intuitive, at 16 years of age. I was 15 years old when the revolution triumphed. Today, I am 80. You have no right to this continuity. And I was … Continue reading “Cuba: An Open Letter to President Miguel Diaz-Canel”
14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, January 4, 2023 — The Cuban communist regime has to prepare for this year. It has just begun, and the first blow of the many that will arrive as the months go by has already fallen. I am referring to the decision of a federal judge in Florida who, based … Continue reading “Justice for the Expropriations by the Cuban Communist Regime Will Come in 2023”
14ymedio, Ariel Hidalgo, Miami, 3 December 2022 – Those who today, even after his death, reproach Pablo Milanés for what he said or stopped doing in previous times, have a very selective memory. The majority of people who lived during the first two decades of the Revolution belonged to the Committees for the Defence of … Continue reading “Pablito, and Selective Historical Memory”
14ymedio, Yunior Garcia Aguilera, Madrid, August 16, 2022 — Does the Cuban revolution still exist? For some it ended at the exact moment Fidel Castro delared it to be Marxist. In the pages of Bohemia years earlier he had accused Fulgencio Batista of being the communists’ candidate in the 1940 election, of being photographed with … Continue reading “Cuba: The Seven Lives of Revolution the Cat”
14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, July 7, 2022 — Before the next International Congress of Business Management and Public Administration to be held in Havana until July 8, the Deputy Minister of Economy, Johana Odriozola, has made statements to the official newspaper Granma that have been published under the title “Transformations in the Cuban business … Continue reading “Can State-owned Enterprises Change the Ways of Thinking and Redesign Production Processes?”
14ymedio, Madrid, 1 July 2022 — Singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez, who continues his particular process of rectifying the Cuban system, admitted this Thursday on his blog Otra Cita that “the various real experiences of socialism show that, as conceived, it is impracticable” and proposes to reformulate the model with “socialist governments running capitalist economies.” The artist wrote a brief … Continue reading “Cuban Troubadour Silvio Rodriguez Prefers a ‘Socialist Government With a Capitalist Economy’ Like… China”
14ymedio, Ariel Hidalgo, Miami, May 17, 2022 — When the so-called Ten Million Ton Sugar Harvest of 1970 failed and a young teacher from a trade school called for “a revolution within the revolution” at a mass rally, he was on the verge of being arrested. The Cuban revolution had been completed just two years … Continue reading “Cuba: We Need Another Revolution”
14ymedio, Madrid, 28 April 2022 — The departure of Armando Franco Senén, former director of the university magazine Alma Mater, continues to generate reactions, and the Communist Party has taken notice. In a message on Twitter, Enrique Villuendas Calleyro, an official of the Ideological Department of the Central Committee and in charge of the press, said that he met … Continue reading “Silvio Rodríguez Regrets the ‘Closeness’ of the Cuban Leadership and the ‘Powers of Impunity’”
14ymedio, Madrid, 13 April 2022 — The greatest troubadour of the Revolution, Silvio Rodríguez, raises the tone in his criticism of the Cuban regime by describing the Government of Miguel Díaz-Canel as a “sect” and coming out in defense of the young musician Abel González Lescay, recently sentenced to six years in prison after demonstrating … Continue reading “Silvio Rodriguez Calls the Leadership in Power in Cuba a ‘Sect’ and Laments the Conviction of Lescay”
14ymedio, Ariel Hidalgo, Miami, 6 March 2022 — The person who’s writing to you, a former professor of Marxist Philosophy in the high schools in Havana, and author of a book that was chosen as a supplementary bibliography for all writing careers on the history of the labor movement in Cuba and the first Cuban … Continue reading “Letter from a Cuban Addressed to the Left Around the World”
14ymedio, Madrid, 14 February 2022 — The “Revolutionary Offensive of 1968” has done a lot of damage to the Cuban people, according to Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez, who is once again critical of some aspects of Cuba’s historical and current ruling power in an interview with the Argentine news agency Télam. The troubadour affirms that the US … Continue reading “Silvio Rodriguez Continues With His Very Personal Process of ‘Rectification of Errors’”
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 11 February 2022 — Like a trickle of indefinite but constant frequency, we see citizens who decide to free themselves and stop supporting the dictatorship in Cuba. The regime’s spokesmen call them deserters, whether they are doctors, athletes, artists or communicators. For those who have taken that step before – a … Continue reading “By When Does a Person Have to Leave or Desert for it to ‘Count’?”
Dimas Castellanos, Havana, 29 November 2021– “The U.S. government is following a script, seeking to portray Cuba as a failed state,” grumbled Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla on Wednesday, November 10, during his appearance before the accredited diplomatic corps in Cuba. Among the defining elements that characterize a failed state, those related to its economy are … Continue reading “Yes, Cuba is a Failed State / Dimas Castellanos”
14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 1 December 2021 — The police have found a homeless person huddled at the corner of Paseo Avenue and 11th Street in Havana’s Vedado. “Please give me something to buy a pizza, I’m hungry,” insists the woman, speaking to the visitors of the brand new Fidel Castro Ruz Center, living … Continue reading “An Irreverent Tour of the Temple Dedicated to the God of the Cuban Revolution”
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, November 2, 2021 — The dictatorship’s most frequently recurring formula to impede or interfere with changes that do not align with their interests has been to incarcerate. They’ve raised the bar in two ways: first, by presenting as apocalyptic the results of anything they consider a “return to the past,” and … Continue reading “A Brief Chronology of Disregard and Intolerance in Cuba”
