English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
Iván García, 17 May 2017 — In front of an old mansion on 17th Street in Vedado that now serves as the headquarters of the Union of Writers and Artists, there is a poster showing hundreds of men dressed in battle fatigues and lined up in military formation. A resounding verdict in two rows of … Continue reading “Cuba: More Castroism but Without the Castros / Iván García”
Iván García, 11 May 2017 — Scarcely a block away from the majestic Grand Hotel Manzana Kempinski, whose inauguration is expected next June 2nd, next to the Payret cinema, a state-owned cafeteria sells an acidic and insipid hamburger with bread for the equivalent of 50 centavos. Workers in the neighbourhood and beggars who survive on asking … Continue reading “Cuba: Forbidden Fruit / Iván García”
Vicente Botín, Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE), The Hilton Miami Downtown Hotel, 29 July 2016. Once upon a time… A female cat fell in love with a handsome young man and prayed to the goddess Aphrodite to turn her into a woman. The goddess, pitying the cat’s yearning, … Continue reading “Cuba: Tallies and Tales of the Reforms / Vicente Botín”
Iván García, 28 July 2016 — A woman with outlandish eye-glasses, reading a book in the back seat, and a sinewy mulatto who is chain-smoking and chatting up the driver on the approaching economic austerity are two of the six passengers in an old collective taxi that the chauffeur drives, zigzagging along the ruined road. … Continue reading “The Other Mariel / Iván García”
Iván García, 18 July 2016 — Two retirees, a strolling detergent vendor and a vacationing doctor, kill time in a park in south Havana, debating the surprising Portuguese victory of Cristiano Ronaldo in the European Cup. They also comment on the Regime’s new austerity measures, which presage another season of “skinny cows” [shortages]. Neither the … Continue reading “Cuba: Where is the Money? / Iván García”
Montonous, grey, controlled, censored, demagogic, jingoistic, for more than half a century as spokesperson for phantom successes Cubanet.org, Victor Manuel Dominguez, Havana, 31 March 2015 (Cuba Sindical) – The “Revolutionary” Cuban press, characterized as demagogic, monotonous, manipulative, with a grey design, poor quality paper, without stylistic and conceptual diversity, born of the mortal remains of … Continue reading “The Lying Cuban Press / Cubanet, Victor Manuel Dominguez”
Iván García, 4 February 2015 — For the prolific and noteworthy Cuban composer, Jorge Luis Piloto Alsar, born in the winter of 1955 in Cárdenas in the town of Matanzas, some 145 kilometers north of Havana, not in his wildest dreams could he have imagined that his songs would achieve international fame. Let’s get into … Continue reading “Seven Hours with Jorge Luis Piloto in Miami / Ivan Garcia”
Autocrats and Commanders like the cinema. Fidel Castro tried to convince the US director Roger Donaldson to act his part in the film 13 Days, about the 1962 missile crisis. According to Castro’s security people who deserted to Florida, on his property of more than 40 houses, known as Zone 0, to the west of … Continue reading “About the Screening of a North Korean Movie in Havana / Ivan Garcia”
The recent Congress of the CCP, with all its greyness and its whiff of pre-epitaph – since it is probably “the last” where the so-called historical generation will be in attendance — has clearly demonstrated some issues that, until now, were cause for speculation among the Cuban reality analysts: behind the charade reform of the … Continue reading “What is Real, Possible and Desirable / Miriam Celaya”
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”