English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
When the high creole hierarchy enjoyed the arrival of the 51st anniversary of the insurrection which elevated them to power on 1 January 1959, a violent cold front was ravaging the west of the country. In Mazorra, a psychiatric hospital located on the highway that leads to the principal airport, a major scandal was uncorking … Continue reading “In 2010, Bad News Abounded in Cuba / Iván García”
I saw him. I’m sure it was him. He didn’t recognize me, absorbed in himself as he was, sitting in a bar on Belascoaín Street, listening to Olga Guillot on a decrepit RCA Victrola. It was four in the afternoon on September 8th. A desert sun seemed like it was going to melt the Havana … Continue reading “On the Virgin’s Day, The Poet Was Listening to Boleros / Iván García”
THE OLD HOUSE OF THE CUBAN BOOK Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo I knew this was going to happen. His name was Roberto Casanueva and he was a real curmudgeon. I met him in the last years of our lives (there is no future anymore for anyone in the Cuban publishing industry). He was in the … Continue reading “CASANUEVA IN MEMORIAM / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
Photos/Luis Felipe Rojas A few days before the start of the new school year I was browsing my son Malcom’s school books and it seems to me he is going to have a heavy weight to struggle through. My wife and I bought colored jackets and cut our pieces of nylon to cover them, and … Continue reading “Doctrine, Cradle and Bread / Luis Felipe Rojas”
Military institutions always produce fear. Even if they treat you with respect. This past Monday, August 9th, Havana looked a lot like London. A thin and bothersome rain had been pouring down all day, so much so that even our bones were soaked. Saturday, the 7th, a State Security official had dropped off a citation … Continue reading “Cuban Counter-Intelligence Demands Respect for the Military / Iván García”
It seems like a kids’ game. Two sides. Good guys and bad guys. The Cuban government tries to make us look like a bunch of crooks, fools, delinquents, mercenaries, and traitors to the country. But life is much more complex. It has mixes. Nothing is black and white. A wrongful precedent is created when the … Continue reading “Delinquents and Loyalists”
The sun beats down hard on the grey and white building located on Aguila street at the corner of Dragones, next to Chinatown in Havana. On that piece of real estate which was long ago given up by the Cuban Telephone Company, are the offices of ETESCA, the Empresa Cubana de Telecomunicaciones (the Cuban Telecommunications Company). On his morning walk … Continue reading “An Act of Repudiation from Within”
The megaconcert started at 5 p.m. sharp. The one in charge of warming up the 100,000 people crowding into the “Anti-Imperialist Rostrum,” popularly known as the “Protestodrome,” was Cuban singer Kelvis Ochoa. For nearly an hour, in warm spring sun and a gentle breeze, Ochoa went through his repertoire from top to bottom. He heated … Continue reading “Calle 13 and their Havana Megaconcert”
The street corners of Havana are hot. Glowing. Like a match on sandpaper that will burst into flame at the slightest touch. Baseball is to blame. This spring it is being played coast-to-coast on the island, celebrating the playoffs of the national sport, and Los Industriales, the team representing the capital, is hitting hot. The … Continue reading “A Minister in the Public Pillory”
Julia Romero, a 20-year-old university student, will never forget the day she lost her virginity. Forget the fairy tale of a magical night, surrounded by a pleasant environment. “My first night of love was terrible. It was in the middle of spring, we left a mediocre disco and had sex in a pitch-black park, surrounded … Continue reading “Love in the Time of the Special Period”
I saw him. It was he. He did not recognize me, engrossed as he was, in a bar on Belascoaín Street, listening to one of Orlando Contreras’ boleros, or perhaps it was La Lupe, with “Yours is Pure Theater,” on a decrepit, recycled RCA Victor record player. It was 4:30 in the afternoon on Wednesday, September 8. An almost desert-like … Continue reading “The Poet Was Listening to Boleros”
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”