English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 2 May 2023 — The Cuban dictatorship has practiced for decades the exclusion and extermination of anyone who thinks differently. They shot and put thousands of adversaries behind bars, locked others in concentration camps, ostracized hundreds of artists and intellectuals, and pushed almost a quarter of the population into forced … Continue reading “Killing the Castro We Carry Inside Us”
14ymedio, Havana, April 13, 2023 — Cuban writer, journalist and publisher Eduardo Heras León, National Prize for Literature in 2014, passed away this Thursday in Havana at the age of 82. Founder of the Onelio Jorge Cardoso Literary Training Center, he was one of the intellectuals “parameterized”* during the so-called Grey Quinquennium, the Five Grey … Continue reading “Cuban Writer Eduardo Heras Leon, ‘Counterrevolutionary’ and Loyal to Fidel Castro, Dies”
14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 2 January 2022 — In a calm voice, Ernesto Hernández Busto (Havana, 1968) says that, at the funeral of José Lezama Lima, an alleged spy filmed everything with a camera. The video, which no one has seen, must have been hidden in the secret archives of ICAIC [Cuban Institute of Cinematographic … Continue reading “‘To Write the Biography of Lezama is to Write a History of Cuban Culture’”
14ymedio, Havana, 1 September 2022 — The editorial team of the independent news source El Toque denounced on Wednesday, from its editorial office in Cuba, the harassment by State Security of nine young journalists, who, as a result, gave up their jobs. During a conference broadcast on YouTube, the directors, residing abroad, answered the questions … Continue reading “‘El Toque’ Denounces Harassment Against its Journalists in Cuba”
By Carlos Manuel Álvarez, published in Univision News, 19 May 2016 Published in Malaletra, a Blog Made in Cuba, Regina Coyula, 11 July 2016 He looks like a god but is a heretic. He seems carved in stone, but is a nervous wreck. He looks like the first among men, but is just the last … Continue reading “The Reclusive Poet / Carlos Manuel Alvarez, Regina Coyula”
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 Gray Years’, Dies”
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”
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 10 August 2021 — I always knew your name was Teo. It is a long story of childhood, literature, an imaginary friend and confidence in believing that you were just around the corner, we just needed to meet. On 11 August 1995 I finally held you in my arms and smelled … Continue reading ““Give That Kid a Real Name!””
14ymedio, Ariel Hidalgo, Miami, July 7, 2021 — The sole political party that governs Cuba created a bureau on ideology to determine whether people could think or not — “don’t worry about thinking; we’ll save you the trouble” — because thinking something other that what the party had decreed could be dangerous. You had be careful … Continue reading “I Don’t Think, Therefore I Survive”
14ymedio, Havana, August 5, 2020 — The Camagüeyan writer, Pedro Armando Junco, has been expelled from the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) for “acting in stark contradiction to the principles, statutes and rules” of the organization, according to what the author himself posted on his Facebook page. “As all my followers can … Continue reading “UNEAC Expels the Writer Pedro A. Junco for his Letter to Cuban President Diaz-Canel”
14ymedio, Ernesto Santana, Havana, 21 June 2018 — His voice amazed me the first time I heard it, when he had just turned 80. A voice grave and smooth at the same time, a voice I no longer remembered from his years on the radio. A mariner’s voice perhaps, someone who has traveled other worlds and has … Continue reading “Rafael Alcides: The Great Poet Of The Cuban ‘Insilio’”
14ymedio, Maite Rico, Madrid, February 26, 2018 — Mario Vargas Llosa, who was born in 1936 in Areuquipa, Peru, is in full form. Combative, ebullient, brimming with laughter, the Nobel laureate travels widely and operates on a variety of intellectual fronts, crafting fiction and scrutinizing facts. In a recently published essay, “The Call of the … Continue reading “Vargas Llosa: ‘No Moderately Sane Person Would Want a System Like Cuba’s for Their Country’”
Alejandro González Acosta, 1 December 2017, Mexico City — Lichi[1] told me that the last time he was in Cuba[2], he went to visit a G-2 colonel at home, the brother of a famous Cuban historian who was Lichi’s good friend in Mexico. Between drinks and confidences, Lichi asked him: “Come on, man, just between us: … Continue reading “The Euphemism that Looks After Me / Alejandro González Acosta”
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 25 September 2017 — When leaving the Argos Theater after the performance of Love Letters to Stalin, a good part of the audience needs to shake their heads. Like someone waking from a nightmare, there will be those who, for long minutes, fear that the monsters from the dream might appear around … Continue reading “The Intellectual and Power, More Than an Epistolary Relationship”
Iván García, 16 November 2015 — In the depths of the peeling, unpainted building where the journalist and independent writer Víctor Manuel Domínguez lives, a lady, who is waiting for customers behind a display counter of cheap Chinese jewelry, is reading a well-used copy of a book by Corín Tellado. On a rusty, narrow vertigo-inducing … Continue reading “Eight Years of the Cuban Independent Writers Club / Ivan Garcia”
