English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
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, 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’”
By Ambrosio Fornet / See here for background information on this series of posts. 1 It seemed as if the nightmare was something from a remote past, but the truth is that when we awoke, the dinosaur was still there. We haven’t found out — and perhaps will never know — if the media folly was … Continue reading “The Five Grey Years: Revisiting the Term / Ambrosio Fornet”
Speaking: Raudel Collazo, from Patriot Squadron. Sadly… the situation is a little complicated… my voice… my poetry… it is not permitted to hear it… it’s a word like censorship… STATEMENT OF COOPERATIVE PRODUCTIONS To Whom It May Concern: The reason for this letter is an event that happened on March 6, 2012, Year 53 of … Continue reading “AWAKENING / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
[I have decided to publish, before this blog is closed down, some texts that I didn’t publish at the time because it was practically impossible to do it because of obvious difficulties or because as time passed I doubted that it would be the best idea. Due to recent events, I think it is best … Continue reading “Closed by Demolition / Francis Sánchez”
He died, in the end, without a name, the poor little high-contrast black and white kitten. He died of hunger and cold despite our sheltering him in a warm cloth with all the warm milk we could drop into his strawberry mouth. Separated from his mother by the mean hand of dim-witted resident of Buenavista … Continue reading “Meow Meow the Dead / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
– From Josefina de Diego – I confess that I didn’t remember the full text known as “Words to the Intellectuals,” delivered by Fidel Castro on June 30, 1961, at the National Library to a group of intellectuals. I think that, like many people, the only thing I remembered from the text was his famous … Continue reading “Thoughts on Fidel’s “Words to the Intellectuals” and other texts / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate”
“The Little Email War,” “Little Glasnost,” “Rebellion of the Intellectuals” or “The Created Situation,” have been some of the names used to baptize this phenomenon which I prefer to call, “words of the intellectuals” (with the “of” in bold and underlined). Evidently a hole has been opened in this Pandora’s box (which was a gift … Continue reading “The Journalist Reinaldo Escobar Enters the Debate / Polemica, The 2007 Intellectual Debate”
Manuel Piñeiro died in strange circumstances while preparing his autobiography 14ymedio, Juan Izquierdo, 26 March 2024, Havana — This Tuesday, not a single official newspaper alluded, in the eulogies dedicated to the anniversary of State Security, to its most famous founder, Commander Manuel Piñeiro, known as Barbarroja. On the other hand, there are many tributes to … Continue reading “The Cuban Regime Erases ‘Barbarroja’ from State Security History”
14ymedio, Mexico, December 15, 2023 — A family of nine Cubans got lost last Wednesday in the mountainous area from Tijuana to Tecate in the Mexican state of Baja California, in their attempt to reach the United States. The migrants managed to make a phone call to the city council to ask for help and … Continue reading “A Cuban Family of Nine Is Rescued in the Mountains of Tijuana After Trying To Reach the United States”
Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 15 May 2023 – On 20 June 2022, the Cuban Language Academy (ACuL) sent out a laconic message: the poet Roberto Méndez, who should have led the institution until 2026, gave up his post “for health reasons”. His successor would be the essayist Jorge Fornet, the then vice-director and one of the … Continue reading “The Cuban Regime Hijacked the Academy of Languages for Critcising Daniel Ortega”
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, 9 April 2023 – The apathy of Cuban intellectuals after the death of Jorge Edwards contributed to the fact that the regime’s censorship managed to render him invisible. The machinery of the Cuban press lives by a certain law of fiction, and that fiction selects, redacts, patches over and twists the … Continue reading “Jorge Edwards in Cuba: A Spy in the Land of Slogans”
14ymedio, Havana, April 27, 2022–On Tuesday Alma Mater, the Cuban university magazine, was left without its director, Armando Franco Senén, a decision of the Union of Young Communists (UJC), in a clear interference by the university publication’s partisan organization. The news was delivered by Alma Mater itself on its Facebook page, where it shared the short … Continue reading “Outrage Among Cuban Officials Over the Dismissal of Alma Mater’s Director”
