English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
When I was 17, in the midst of blackouts of the “special period”, I found a happiness in my heart. (I know what I’ve said but with a little patience you who read me will see where I’m going with this.) It is only possible to speak of this in a language that resists time. … Continue reading “WORDS AND THINGS / Lilianne Ruíz”
By K. Barth When we thought we had it all resolved and the Bolshevik godfather would guarantee life for ever and ever, the beginning of the end came. The old and apparently well-formed USSR fell apart; that happens with giants with feet of clay. I remember well the day I internalized the collapse of European … Continue reading “STORIES OF THE THOUSAND AND ONE PERIOD, Part One / Mario Barroso”
It’s 10:00 am at the Plaza Hotel a few yards from Havana’s Capitol building. A smell of moisturizer wafts from the bodies of tourists rushing through their coffee so they can go out and explore the city. On one side of the lobby several people line up at the entrance to a small office where … Continue reading “The Internet for Cubans: A Permanently Impossible Dream? / Yoani Sánchez”
The authorities in my country are addicted to using general statistical figures to show the success of its economic, political and social model. I refer to the figures that may seem positive, as the negative ones are ignored as nonexistent. The first appear in big headlines, and all around them, is mounted a great media … Continue reading “Don’t Play With The Ticket List / Fernando Dámaso”
Poor little doll of sticks and tinsel, as she bumps over the length and width of thousands and thousands of kilometers. Last night I saw her, in Lawton. It was overwhelming. For her and for the fading environment. A neighborhood tensed from the spirit of its citizens towards heaven which hovers up there, propped on … Continue reading “The Invisible Little Virgin / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
CINDERELLA AND THE PAINTER by YOANI SANCHEZ (TAKEN FROM VOCES 8) Cinderella, the tail of this torpid caiman, the westernmost point of a country that long ago ceased to call itself the West. That’s Pinar del Rio, a place that has remained in the memory of thousands of Havanans, where we spent our long stays … Continue reading “CINDERELLA AND THE PAINTER / Yoani Sánchez”
The American Gary Marks’s stay in Cuba, from 1998 to 2002, and his contacts with segments of our intelligentsia anchored in everyday survival, sparked the interest of the northern professional in documenting the contrasts. How? Through a DVD documentary about the unbreakable friendship of two artists, one who went rafting to Florida during the mass … Continue reading “Dream Havana / Miguel Iturria Savón”
Knowing how to say no when the opportunity presents itself, no matter the surprise, the gain, or the subsequent costs of the negative, is what differentiates us from prostitutes. My rejection of the regime came to me from an early age, I knew it was the wrong road and that with the Communist System the … Continue reading “Testimony: The Failed Attempts to Make Me an Agent – I / Angel Santiesteban”
By Dagoberto Valdes and the Editorial Board In editorial No. 14 of Convivencia Magazine (www.convivenciacuba.es) of March-April 2010, we said that: “In the last year there has been a visible increase of the natural diversity of expressions of men and women in Cuba. This plurality has been manifested, mainly, in the cultural world. This world … Continue reading “Pedro Pablo Oliva and Henry Constantin: Two Examples of the Blockade on the World of the Cuban Culture / IntraMuros, Dagoberto Valdes”
In the neighborhood of Cayo Hueso, there are people who are viewed with disdain. Waldo is one such case, chief of surveillance for the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR). A neighborhood full of prostitutes and marginal people who live from what “falls off” the truck. Due to his intransigence and zeal to … Continue reading “Cuba: Poor but Content / Iván García”
Rafael Alcides collects more than thirty years of yellowing manuscript that he likes to call his originals. In red cardboard folders, they fill a two door cabinet. Eighteen years ago, pregnant with Rafael, (at this point, if readers have not discovered, Alcides is my husband) I found among those old papers a tome that I … Continue reading “Finally, the First Novel of Rafael Alcides / Regina Coyula”
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”
There are two Cubas, one in which nothing ever happens, and another in revolt, boiling over, which never stops sending me signals of change. My life moves from one to the other and I can never be sure which of the two is real. In any case, the dome over our heads is shaking. And … Continue reading “Preludes / Claudia Cadelo”
Fidelism Cuba emerged on the international map as a tiny little island threatened and blocked by a powerful neighbor. With an excellent lecture from Sun Tzu and Machiavelli; without forgetting Gustave Le Bon, Fidel convinced the majority that he was speaking for the Fatherland, and the Fatherland was the Revolution and was Socialism. Fidel was … Continue reading “More About Egypt and Cuba. Popular Uprising: Between “Papa” and Potatoes / Regina Coyula”
I’m sitting at the computer with the TV on in the background — sometimes I’m a little masochistic — and suddenly my attention is grabbed by a list: iPod, iPhone, DVD, cell phones and flash memories. The announcer explains that kids these days are experts at working these technological implements. I think about the kids … Continue reading “Disconcerting Television / Claudia Cadelo”