English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
Newspaper accounts written by different independent groups of the private sector in Cuba do not supply the images that emerge from the histories, essays and poems produced by the experience of being imprisoned under the Castro dictatorship in the 54 years that it has been in power. From José Martí to Carlos Montenegro; from Pablo … Continue reading “A Literature Against the Gallows / Luis Felipe Rojas”
I am in search of the forbidden book, like the Golem, or like the treasure of Eternal Youth. Why does a presidential, dictatorial or authoritarian edict decide to ban, hunt down and remove a book from a country. Faced with these questions I went looking with my Facebook friends and put an invitation on the … Continue reading “The Banned Book in Cuba / Luis Felipe Rojas”
From El Blog de Montaner Yoani Sánchez visits Miami. It is the most difficult stop in her long tour. Everywhere, like a bullfighter hailed after a good afternoon, she has been carried on the shoulders of the crowd. She will also triumph in Miami, but her task will be a bit harder. I get the … Continue reading “Yoani Sanchez: An effective voice against the Castro dictatorship / Carlos Alberto Montaner”
This time I will talk about Camagüey, after many trips to my city, trips that are always of return and obligatory because with it, without my neighborhood of La Vigia, without the alleys, the dilapidated rail, the vibrant Republica Street, the thousand church domes bowing to the heavens wherever you look, the Casino Campestre park, … Continue reading “Happy Anniversary, Camaguey / Henry Constantin”
Trying to analyze the strategy of the Castro brothers is an exercise in pure abstraction. Their way of moving tokens on the political board tends to go against logic. The incarceration of 75 dissidents ordered by Fidel Castro in the spring of 2003 was a miscalculation.Foreign pressure led General Raul Castro to correct the error. … Continue reading “Cuba: The Time to Fill the Jails Came Again / Ivan Garcia #Cuba”
Now one of the photos I had put in my posts has been taken by State Security and put in a 17 minute documentary to try to accuse Señora Martha Beatriz Roque and twenty other Cubans of faking their hunger strike. I wasn’t able to watch the documentary because my television broke some weeks ago. … Continue reading “Nothing New Under the Sun / Lilianne Ruiz”
“The responsibility of Cuban writers, more than ever, is to protest, to make their disagreements public.” For more than a decade, starting with invisible struggles that happened during literary events that were taking place in Cuban literature in the 90’s, the name of Angel Santiesteban was mentioned several times, but always strangely linked to the … Continue reading “Interview of Cuban writer Ángel Santiesteban Prats by Amir Valle – Part 1 of 4”
Once again, State Security uses the old tactic of trying to discredit, given its inability to come to a public debate of arguments and ideas. A debate that would have a long-awaited end, because absolutely nobody can hide the ruin they have brought to the Cuban nation. They razed it and follow by trying to … Continue reading “Who Are the Real Anti-Cubans? / Estado de Sats, Antonio G. Rodiles”
It would be really good if the Cuban Revolution were to finally admit that it has a lot of political opposition, peaceful and civil, from within and without the island. Because from the beginning, “The Revolution” refused to admit that it was having “political problems” within its own borders. It’s more confused and wastes more … Continue reading “How Night Fell (Cómo llegó la noche*) / Lilianne Ruíz”
Click to view slideshow. Katia Sonia Martín Véliz, Eastern Coordinator of the Cuban Independent and Democratic Party, delivered a Constitution Proposal at noon on July 21, to the People’s Power National Assembly in the name of the National Executive Committee of the CID. The proposal of the Constituent Assembly is the fruit of months of … Continue reading “Cuba Independent and Democratic Party Delivers Constitution Proposal to Cuban Parliament / Ricardo Medina”
The young emigrant Sergio de los Reyes (b. Havana 1978), is based in Toronto, Canada, where he alternates his work and his passion for literature, has just launched an SOS to his countrymen on the island and exile who have Internet access, to ask them help on his personal project for a digital Library specializing … Continue reading “A Digital Library / Miguel Iturria Savón”
At dawn on March 18 I was kidnapped along with Aimé Cabrales Aguilar at the corner of Calzada de Infanta and San Tomas a few meters from my house and on a public street, from a bus with a veneer of tourism in which women in the uniform of the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) came, … Continue reading “History of a Kidnapping / Katia Sonia”
In 2003, 75 Cubans were arrested in four days. Their crime? Being pro-democracy political activists, fighters for human rights, or simply journalists independent of the hegemonic line of the only Cuban political party, the Communists. Pedro Argüelles Morán was one of them. Seven years later — in the same arbitrary way as the imprisonments — … Continue reading “Journalism as a Living Faith: Telephone Interview with Pedro Argüelles Morán #liberanlosya / Claudia Cadelo”
There are regions in my country where I still cannot enter. At least not unless if I am loaded with official documents, authorizations, guarantees, and recommendation letters. An entire list can be made out of these things. I’m used to it: In Cuba, one can write – actually, those in power have already done so … Continue reading “Closed, for Cubans / Henry Constantín”
Like a birthday present to himself, the Cuban ex-president Fidel Castro launched a book in which he narrates as episodes his experiences in the Sierra Maestra during the fight against Fulgencio Batista. In this memoir narrated in epic tones, he deletes all those who then didn’t see clearly the destiny they’d been fighting for and … Continue reading “Fidel Castro Threatens with “The Strategic Victory” / Katia Sonia”