English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
14ymedio, Zunilda Mata, Havana, 3 January 2017 – This week Luisa Camejo’s biggest headache will be getting the rebar she’s lacking. For months she’s been piling up stacks of cement, bricks and other materials to build an improvised room in the Cerro district of Havana. If she’s lucky she’ll soon finish her house built with … Continue reading “Housing Construction In Cuba Remains Very Slow / 14ymedio, Zunilda Mata”
Ivan Garcia, 17 December 2016 — At the exit of the Bay Tunnel, the P-11 bus is packed with passengers. While the riders enjoy the view of the sea, the odor of saltpeter fills their noses. In this stretch of Havana’s geography, where Monumental Avenue runs, an eight-lane street inaugurated in 1958 by the dictator … Continue reading “What Fidel Castro Left Us (Part 1) / Iván García”
14ymedio, Marcelo Hernandez, Havana, 3 December 2016 — For decades this fountain remained dry. It was built in the late ‘80s as an ornament to the entrance to the day-care center located in the corner of the Xifre Street and Carlos III Avenue, in the heart of Central Havana. The children who opened this day-care center never … Continue reading “The Mind, The Spirit, The Source Revived / 14ymedio, Marcelo Hernandez”
14ymedio, Zunilda Mata, Havana, 30 November 2016 – Cuba’s official press and, oddly, a good part of the international media, never stop repeating that Fidel Castro brought Cubans free education and healthcare for all. Cuba was already, however, one of the most developed countries on the continent before the Revolution, much more so even than … Continue reading “Fidel Castro’s 13 Most Notorious Failures / 14ymedio, Zunilda Mata”
14ymedio, Pedro Armando Junco, Camagüey, 13 September 2016 — The struggle of a small community of neighbors in Camagüey against the allocation of a plot of land at the corner of their building to an official from the Ministry of the Interior, has resulted in a small victory, as they have managed to stop the … Continue reading “Camagüey Neighbors Manage To Stop Work On An Official’s House / 14ymedio, Pedro Armando Junco”
14ymedio, Lilianne Ruiz, Havana, 22 December 2015 — “These buildings are earthquake resistant,” says the owner of an apartment for sale in a Havana neighborhood. The potential buyer listens incredulous, looking out from the balcony at other concrete blocks in the surrounding area. What was once a working-class neighborhood, where work and political “merits” were needed to … Continue reading “Cuban Middle Class Takes Over ‘Proletarian’ Neighborhoods / 14ymedio, Lilianne Ruiz”
Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, 23 June 2015 – The building where I live is like a diminutive Cuba, where the larger country appears represented with its vicissitudes and hopes. Fourteen stories that at times offer a biopsy of reality or a representative fragment of life outside. For years, the emigration of young people has marked … Continue reading “Emigrating in the Third Age / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez”
Havana, June 9, 2014, Victor Ariel Gonzalez — Corrugated fiber-cement sheets and wooden planks form a security fence in the shadow of the two tallest buildings of an iconic Havana site: the “Twin Towers” at Texas Corner, where 240 families live, marooned, as the buildings crumble. Every day many people walk past, where the sidewalks … Continue reading “Our Own Dangerous “Twin Towers” / 14ymedio, Victor Ariel Gonzalez”
Ever since the time, now remote, when dollarization was introduced in the Cuban economy the freebies have been fading away, along with the subsidies and other gifts from the public treasury that our government makes in their inordinate desire — as a poet from the romantic era said — to anticipate the future. “The invisible … Continue reading “No More “Letters”! / Reinaldo Escobar”
Placing zeros to the right seems to be the preferred sport of those who put a price on the homes they sell in Cuba today. A captive market at the end of the day, the buyer could find a lot of surprises in the wide range of classified ads. From owners who ask astronomical sums for … Continue reading “Three Parameters, One House / Yoani Sanchez”
The sign is small, peeking out with a certain timidity over the balcony wall several yards above ground. A simple “For Sale” that would go unnoticed if it weren’t that in the apartment next door you can read the same phrase painted on a window. Two floors higher, the neighbors on the 6th floor have … Continue reading “Before the Revolution or During the Revolution? / Yoani Sanchez”
For decades the extinct Microbrigades Company of the City of Havana, today Group GECAL, has caused our family deep sorrow and anguish as a consequence of its creation of a warehouse in our backyard. My daughters avoid using the bath and looking out the windows. The usual threats of damage to our property and dispossession … Continue reading “EFE with the Cuban News of the Year / Dora Leonor Mesa”
First they took the communists, and I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t a communist. Then they took the Jews, and I said nothing because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the workers; I said nothing because I was not a worker or a unionist. Later they threw out the Catholics, and I … Continue reading “Constitution Threatened by GECAL* / Dora Leonor Mesa”
Benedict XVI’s visit to our country brought to mind the days when hard and pure atheism was imposed as official policy. In a great deal of paperwork the question of religious faith frequently appeared with the purpose — should the answer be affirmative — to make decisions with that in mind. In job applications or … Continue reading “The Material Expression of Atheism / Reinaldo Escobar”
The best weapon the Cuban regime has cultivated is ignorance and fanaticism. I have never believed that my neighbors, without exception, are bad people. I live in a building from the 1980s constructed by a microbrigade. It has twelve floors and twelve apartments on each floor. My family background was marked by separations, other situations … Continue reading “Does Human Nature Suffer a Mutation in the Cauldron of Totalitarian Violence? / Lilianne Ruíz”
