English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
Image: The Executioner, Luis Trápaga Her mornings have been the same for years: buy the flour “on the left” from the State bakeries, get the eggs from sellers who carry them hidden in backpacks, haggle for the guayabas in the produce market to give it her business. With the ups and downs that depend on … Continue reading “Fatigue / Claudia Cadelo”
Drinking alcohol is one of the passions of the average Cuban. A true national sport. Next to baseball, sex, playing dominoes, and leaving the country. Drinking rum or beer is known in Cuba as “bending the elbow.” Or “sucking the rat’s tail.” There are various groups of drinkers. There are hard and fast alcoholics. Those … Continue reading “Welcome to the Island of Rum! / Iván García”
The following letter was written by Reynol Vicente Sanchez, a common prisoner who is currently in Combinado del Este. To Mr. Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo: To classify the conditions which you were subjected to as torture is not only irrational but also very cynical on behalf of the Castro regime, for these inhumane conditions we prisoners … Continue reading “Open Letter to Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo / Voices Behind The Bars, Reynol Vicente Sanchez”
I go over to a friend’s house and find her roaring with laughter over her son’s homework. She gave me a sheet of notebook paper and invited me to read it, but not before clarifying, “It’s very honest, you can see he’s only seven.” My school My whole school is nice except the bathroom, because … Continue reading “Homework”
These are the Dog Days. With the fine and constant rain and the overcast sky the color of a gray mouse. Likewise, a freezing cold. We throw to one side in this January of the new year the postcards of brilliant sun that show us a happy, festive, and warm city. Since January 1st, the first … Continue reading “Cuba, Dog Time”
By Sindo Pacheco Berto Meciar was rocking in his armchair, as he had been doing every night for the last twenty years, when he saw the drunkard who turned in front of his house, lurching from one side to the other. Only then did he remember the hole. That piece of the rarely traveled road … Continue reading “The story of the hole”
(Text written on June 7, and for reasons you can imagine published today. This clarification is to connect it chronologically with respect to the news published in the newspaper Granma on June 10 about sanctions for illegal solid waste collectors, that is so-called “divers”.) Slowly, imperceptibly, the dumpster has become part of my life. (Before … Continue reading “The dumpster and me”