Search results for: fuel crisis

In the blink of an eye the voltage at the symmetrical hour of the prime time news, 8:08 on a Sunday evening, as boring as slitting your wrists, or walking naked in the street with a pacifist placard, or some other symptom of insanity. A blink of an eye and then black silence, deathly. The … Continue reading “Chronicle of the Blackout / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”

Seven years after the massive injection of new equipment for urban transport, the familiar scene repeats itself: seeing the buses pass without stopping at full stops where you can wait for more than an hour. It was expected that the massive replacement of the fleet required, in turn, the spare parts and equipment to replace … Continue reading “A Science Fiction Story / Regina Coyula”

When someone shows up in the same place over and over again, in Cuba we say “he’s like white rice.” It’s a very popular way to refer to someone whose presence is excessive, be it in a determined sphere, activity, or process. The metaphor obviously comes from the starring role this grain has in the … Continue reading “Raúl Castro Goes to Vietnam to Ensure Rice on Cuban Plates / Yoani Sánchez”

Although our little girls (a 2-year-old and a newborn) were healthy, my husband and I woke up at different times, he at 6:00 am and I at 9:00. Bedtime was also different. He could rest at midnight and I, after 3:00 in the morning because they had to take gas without the harsh sound of … Continue reading “1992: Cuba Had Everything / Dora Leonor Mesa”

It was July 15 or 16, 1994 when Angela Medina, my children’s aunt, asked me to accompany her to a house in the Purisima neighborhood, Cotorro municipality, where she saw her neighbors shot with water cannons in Havana Bay by the military who shipwrecked the tugboat, 13 de Marzo, in which she had meant to … Continue reading “Sad Memory / Miguel Iturria Savon”

A drop slid down my leg, I maneuvered it into the hollow between my ankle and my shoe and did a thousand pirouettes so my high school classmates wouldn’t notice. For months, my family had had only mineral oil for cooking, thanks to pharmacist relative who was able to sneak it from his work. I … Continue reading “Oiled Mechanism / Yoani Sánchez”

The scene lasted just seconds on our screens, a brief flash, chiseled on the retina, of thousands of people protesting on the streets of Cairo. The situation was described by the pompous voice of the Cuban announcer, who explained that the crisis in capitalism had sparked discontent in Egypt and that social differences were sinking … Continue reading “So Far From Cairo / Yoani Sánchez”