English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
Wendy Guerra, Habáname, 15 December 2014 — About three years ago, a young man – tall, blond and ungainly – would haul an enormous sack full of DVDs of pirated movies, music videos, TV shows and series. Today, this same young man – now more poised and better dressed – walks the streets of Miramar … Continue reading “Being in “The Packet” / Wendy Guerra”
14ymedio, Havana / Holguín, Lucía Oliveira and Miguel García, 3 March 2024 — Where before there were tables with screens and keyboards, now there are boxes of vegetable oil, piles of spaghetti packages and bags of powdered milk piled up. Two of the most important buildings of the Youth Computer and Electronics Club in Holguín … Continue reading “The Youth Club in Cuba Ends a Project That Was More About Politics Than About Computers”
14ymedio, Natalia Lopez Moya, Havana, 30 July 2023 — Inflation continues to take its toll on Cuban pocketbooks. In addition to increases in the cost of transportation and food, the fees families pay to watch foreign television programs via illegal satellite dishes are also going up, doubling in some Cuban neighborhoods to as much as … Continue reading “Prices for Illegal Satellite Dish Services in Cuba Skyrocket”
14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 2 February 2023 — I have seen the documentary Nicaragua, patria libre para vivir [Nicaragua, a Free Homeland to Live In], three times, and all three times it has shaken me to the core. Its director, the Andalusian poet and philologist, Daniel Rodríguez Moya, says that you can be born … Continue reading “A Free Homeland to Live In”
14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 24 September 2021 — For months, Yanet Fernández, who lives in the neighborhood of multi-family buildings in Havana’s Nuevo Vedado, has not started her day with kisses to her classroom friends and the rowdy conversation of the “gang” before the morning assembly. Since the capital’s schools closed last January, he has had … Continue reading “Cuban Teleclasses: A 20th Century Practice That Fails Among Today’s Students”
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 10August 2021 — The illegal satellite dishes, used by Cubans to access television from Florida, are once again the target of censorship to prevent the dissemination of images of the protests of July 11 on the island. Although they have always been persecuted, in recent years the raids to detect … Continue reading “Cuba Increases Police Raids to Confiscate Satellite Dishes”
14ymedio, Havana, 18 July 2020 — A few hours after the burial of the popular reggaetoner El Dany, hundreds of young people gathered on Saturday night on the corner of San José and San Francisco in the neighborhood of Cayo Hueso, Central Havana, to pay tribute to the musician, who died the previous morning. His songs … Continue reading “The Music of ‘El Dany’ Sounds in the Streets of Havana as a Farewell to the Reggaetoner”
14ymedio, Marcelo Hernández, Havana, May 19, 2020 — A lone motorcycle makes its way along Cerro Road in Havana. Behind the driver is a brightly colored box displaying the logo of a home delivery service, one of the few private businesses that seems to be thriving in a city paralyzed by COVID-19. Classified ad sites … Continue reading “In Cuba the Pandemic Spawns Home Delivery Businesses”
14ymedio, Marcelo Hernández, Havana, 7 May 2020 — When I was a child one of the smiles that populated my childhood was that of Sarita Reyes, one of the most popular Cuban actresses of the last century. Versatile, witty and with a touch of authority, her presentations on the program Behind the Facade were the first … Continue reading “Sarita Reyes: Goodbye to One of the Smiles on Cuban Television”
14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 20 April 2020 you’re — Time is deformed in quarantine. It seems like an eternity has passed since the first case of Covid-19 was reported in Cuba, and yet, it was just a few weeks ago that they announced on official television that three travelers had symptoms when they arrived on … Continue reading “Day 31 of the Covid-19 Emergency in Cuba: Guesser, Seer”
14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 30 March 2020 — Mondays are always complicated. But this one dawned calm, with the city in a rare silence although the chimney of the Ñico López refinery had one of the tallest columns of smoke I can remember. The sound of the birds filled the dawn in this neighborhood where the fury … Continue reading “Day 10 of the Covid-19 Emergency in Cuba”
14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 23 March 2020 — Mondays are always complicated. The neighborhood agricultural market, the epicenter of our commercial life, is closed; the building’s elevator is more congested than usual; and the water supply is less due to the “excesses” of cleaning and washing on the weekend. And now, to all this, we … Continue reading “Day 3 of the Covid-19 Emergency in Cuba”
14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y, Havana, 27 December 2019 — Through the “Weekly Packet” of audiovisuals that circulates so widely in Cuba, this week an excellent copy of Netflix’s film The Two Popes has reached viewers on the Island. The film addresses, as fiction, the moment of the resignation of Benedict XVI and the surprising rise of an … Continue reading “The Master Lesson of ‘The Two Popes’”
14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y, 18 December 2019 — Masks, disguises, deceitfulness… in a society where many fear to speak and behave freely, opportunism has become a technique of self-preservation, in a real strategy for social, professional and political survival. Thirty-two years ago, the journalist Reinaldo Escobar, then a columnist for the newspaper Juventud Rebelde (Rebel … Continue reading “‘It Is Opportune To Speak About Opportunism’ and Other Daily Masks”
14ymedio, Marcelo Hernández, Havana, October 17, 2019 — Joaquín and Modesto are friends and relatives who saw from the beginning that trips to Panama to bring back to Cuba household appliances and electric motorcycles would be a successful business. Since the middle of 2018 they have worked fulfilling on-demand orders, putting an added value on the … Continue reading “For the "Mules," Life Goes On, and So Does Business”
