English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
Lately, in correspondence with the new travel and immigration law passed, much emphasis was placed on protecting national brains and talent for the sake of development. The story below continues this interesting narrative. In the years of the Cold War, the conquest of the cosmos was a major scene of clashes between the Soviet Union … Continue reading “The Solitude of a Cosmonaut / Fernando Damaso”
Since yesterday, November 7, 2012, there have been numerous arbitrary arrests, which continue to today. The number arrested at this time is impossible to determine because, as on previous occasions, the mobile and fixed phones of those involved have been interrupted and cut off. Among the arrested are Antonio Rodiles and Yoani Sanchez. The trigger … Continue reading “Declaration No. 1 of Thursday November 8, 2012, About the Arbitrary Arrests Happening in the Last Hours / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
Points of the declaration from Virginia. The signatories below, members of a countless number of organizations which make up the Central Opposition Coalition, an entity affiliated with the Orlando Zapata Tamayo National Front of Civic Resistance, have gathered this Wednesday, 3rd of October 2012, in the already historic and war-hardened neighborhood of Virginia, in Santa … Continue reading “A Declaration from Virginia / Jorge Luis Garcia Perez Antunez”
The privileges granted by the regime to the Cuban military elite, behind the back of the people’s will and stepping over any consensus from the citizens, have as solemn goal to buy the loyalty of this elite. Bought loyalty is not acting in a reasonable and conscious way, which would be the right thing to … Continue reading “The Privileged Ones / Mackandal – Manuel Aguirre Lavarrere”
“I do not agree with giving mercenaries the same rights as intellectuals,” claimed the writer Miguel Barnet, president of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) and member of the Communist Party Central Committee, at the 30th Conference of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) held in San Francisco, California, this May. Barnet’s … Continue reading “Who is the Mercenary? / Oscar Espinosa Chepe”
My friend Agustin is worried about me. Today, when I was just about ready to take a warm shower after working out, I’d put on Linkin Park to raise my energy level: “Somewhere I Belong”, and during that the phone rang. I haven’t wanted to interpret what happened next as anything more than a coincidence. … Continue reading “The Children of Promise / Lilianne Ruíz”
Another tragic event focused again on the eastern Cuban provinces started the year. Wilman Villar Mendoza, sentenced to four years’ imprisonment, died after conducting a hunger strike, which has rocked the Cuban dissidence and international public opinion which follows events of the island. The rapidity with which these events developed surprised everyone. In October of … Continue reading “One More Time / Rafael León Rodríguez”
Nobody can deny the foundational importance of October 10, 1868 for the Cuban nation. Though twenty years before Narciso Lopez had, for the first time, unfurled the national flag calling for combat against the oppressor, though his voice was not listened to then, the opposite occurred in Yara, when Cubans, conscious of their nationhood, responded … Continue reading “Another Look at the Grito de Yara* / Fernando Dámaso”
Few intellectuals more timid than the Cuban must have existed in the history of art and contemporary thought. Few intellectuals with such iridescent skin that it amusingly changes tone and nuance according to the light that passes over them. In these days when a monumental name in Cuban art has just suffered the endless fruits … Continue reading “Sparrows Without a Country / Ernesto Morales Licea”
HOWLABANA (Allen Ginsberg howls back in La Habana) Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo [Performed in La Madriguera (Finca de Los Molinos), at 9 PM in Friday 18 September 2009, as a part of the poetry reading of Mundo Beatnik/Hippie.] I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through … Continue reading “UNLIMITED READINGS / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”