English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
Miriam Celeya, Cubanet, Havana 15 January 2016 – The year 2016 has begun under a bad omen. If it weren’t enough with the general gloominess after one year of uneasy peace between the governments of Cuba and the US without any perceived improvement in living conditions, the food crisis has become more acute, and shortages … Continue reading “Leap Year, Creepy Year / Miriam Celaya”
Cubanet, Miriam Leiva, Havana, 29 December 2015 — Cubans greeted 2015 with joy and great expectations, but they are saying goodbye to it sadly and without hope. Cuban officials will not be able to blame the United States government for the current crisis and the coming catastrophe that popular wisdom senses is coming. Throughout the … Continue reading “Cuba: Downhill in 2015 / Miriam Leiva”
14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 21 December 2015 – “Hurry! Get in! The patient is dying,” the driver warned the young man flagging him down at the corner of Calzada del Cerro. At the wheel was Carlos Alberto Valdes, a technician from the Electrical Generators Group of Havana, who was on a mission worthy of a … Continue reading “Cuba’s Energy Revolution is in a Tailspin / 14ymedio, Luz Escobar”
Cubanet, Miriam Celaya, Havana, 4 December 2015 — Next Sunday, December 6, 2015, when the legislative elections in Venezuela finally take place, not only will they be deciding the short-term political fate of that South American nation but also, to some extent, they will be deciding future policies of various nations of this region, whose … Continue reading “Choosing between Chaos and a New Order / Miriam Celaya”
Fernando Damaso, 2 December 2015 — Once again we residents of Nuevo Vedado have had to suffer the incompetence and irresponsibility of the “Tree Destruction Brigade” from the Electric Company. Without the least knowledge of what it means, they “prune” them, leaving just a trunk with two or three branches that look more like arms … Continue reading “A Deplorable Example / Fernando Damaso”
Today we publish the first part of the testimony of a Cuban who has made the dangerous trip from Guatemala to the United States 14ymedio, Mario J. Penton Martinez, Guatamalan/Mexican Border, 13 November 2015 – I live proud of being Cuban. I always have been. Cuba evokes the warmth of a mother’s lap, the tenderness of … Continue reading “Chronicle of a ‘Rafter’ on Foot (Part 1 of 3) / 14ymedio, Mario Penton Martinez”
14ymedio, 22 May 2015 — I am a Cuban of Spanish descent. I was born in Havana exactly fourteen years after Franco’s death, ten years after the Spanish Constitution of 1978 was ratified, and one year before the fall of the Berlin Wall. My grandparents, most of them from the Spain’s Galicia region, could be … Continue reading “Letter from a Cuban-Spaniard to Pablo Iglesias / 14ymedio”
Ivan Garcia, 29 April 2015 — The urology ward at Calixto Garcia Hospital is a bleak scene. Patients in soiled pajamas wander through the halls like zombies with serum on their hands, in search of a urologist, who hasn’t come through the intake room all morning. Ubaldo, sitting on a granite bench outside the room, … Continue reading “Cuba Needs More Doctors and Better Hospitals / Ivan Garcia”
Now that the beginning of the VII Summit of the Americas in Panama is upon us I think I understand why there are so many expectations. I studied in the former USSR and I know that many optimists are living in a sort of suspense similar to that of Moscow in 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan … Continue reading “Cuba: Dreams and realities before and after the Summit of the Americas / Juan Juan Almeida”
They are referred to as old folks, half-timers and the pure. They are shipwreck victims of a capsized island. They cling to debris, trying to stay afloat. Cubanet, Camilo Ernesto Olivera Peidro, Havana, February 27, 2015 — Men and women in Cuba who have reached the age of forty are referred to as tembas (old folks), medios tiempos (half-timers) and los puros … Continue reading “Being Forty Years Old in Cuba / Cubanet, Camilo Ernesto Olivera”
Cubanet, Tania Díaz Castro, Havana, February 19, 2015 — Homosexuality has been around longer than humans have been walking upright. But Fidel Casto — working through State Security, an organization he founded and of which he has always been in charge — has done everything possible to banish it from Cuban soil. He once looked … Continue reading “Mariela Castro’s Eloquent Silence / Cubanet, Tania Diaz Castro”
1994 was an amazing year. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the disappearance of the USSR had been the trigger for the beginning in Cuba of the “Special Period in Times of Peace,” an economic crisis which lasted for 25 years. We returned to a subsistence economy. The factories shut down as they had … Continue reading “The Day the People of Havana Protested in the Streets / Ivan Garcia”
Nuria retired last year and this month she traveled to Miami, where her sisters live. On returning to the Island she showed 14ymedio what she brought home in her suitcase. Let’s take a look at what she threw in her bags with brief comments from her about why she chose each product. Two bottle of … Continue reading “What Does a Cuban Bring Home in Her Suitcase? / 14ymedio”
1994 was an amazing year. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the disappearance of the USSR had been the trigger for the beginning in Cuba of the “Special Period in Times of Peace,” an economic crisis which lasted for 25 years. We returned to a subsistence economy. The factories shut down as they had … Continue reading “The Day the People of Havana Protested in the Streets / Ivan Garcia”
Artwork by Rebeca An article by a young Cuban journalist was just published in the so-called youth newspaper under the arresting title “The Happiest Children in the World.” In it she recalls her childhood of aged, half-bald dolls previously belonging to her older sisters, toys given to her by a neighbor after he was too old to … Continue reading “A Hilarious Conclusion / Fernando Damaso”
