English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
Communists or dissidents, famous or unknown, Cubans love awards and competitions. Of all kinds, national and foreign. They delight in being chosen and enjoy the glory they feel when they win. It doesn’t matter if the prize is a diploma or a work of art. The money, yes. In pesos, it’s not bad, but in … Continue reading “Cuba Will Have to Put Its Dreams of a Nobel Prize on Hold / Iván García”
Jorge Ferrer presents ‘Between Russia and Cuba’ in Barcelona. Against memory and oblivion. 14ymedio, Yaiza Santos, Barcelona, 17 May 2024 — The history of the link between Cuba and the Soviet Union, and what this meant for the world in the years of the Cold War, is well known. However, until now no one had … Continue reading “Cuba: ‘The Only Eastern Country in the Heart of the West’”
14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 2 May 2023 — The Cuban dictatorship has practiced for decades the exclusion and extermination of anyone who thinks differently. They shot and put thousands of adversaries behind bars, locked others in concentration camps, ostracized hundreds of artists and intellectuals, and pushed almost a quarter of the population into forced … Continue reading “Killing the Castro We Carry Inside Us”
14ymedio, Havana, 1 September 2022 — The editorial team of the independent news source El Toque denounced on Wednesday, from its editorial office in Cuba, the harassment by State Security of nine young journalists, who, as a result, gave up their jobs. During a conference broadcast on YouTube, the directors, residing abroad, answered the questions … Continue reading “‘El Toque’ Denounces Harassment Against its Journalists in Cuba”
14ymedio, Ariel Hidalgo, Miami, July 7, 2021 — The sole political party that governs Cuba created a bureau on ideology to determine whether people could think or not — “don’t worry about thinking; we’ll save you the trouble” — because thinking something other that what the party had decreed could be dangerous. You had be careful … Continue reading “I Don’t Think, Therefore I Survive”
14ymedio, Havana, August 5, 2020 — The Camagüeyan writer, Pedro Armando Junco, has been expelled from the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) for “acting in stark contradiction to the principles, statutes and rules” of the organization, according to what the author himself posted on his Facebook page. “As all my followers can … Continue reading “UNEAC Expels the Writer Pedro A. Junco for his Letter to Cuban President Diaz-Canel”
14ymedio, Ernesto Santana, Havana, 21 June 2018 — His voice amazed me the first time I heard it, when he had just turned 80. A voice grave and smooth at the same time, a voice I no longer remembered from his years on the radio. A mariner’s voice perhaps, someone who has traveled other worlds and has … Continue reading “Rafael Alcides: The Great Poet Of The Cuban ‘Insilio’”
Iván García, 16 November 2015 — In the depths of the peeling, unpainted building where the journalist and independent writer Víctor Manuel Domínguez lives, a lady, who is waiting for customers behind a display counter of cheap Chinese jewelry, is reading a well-used copy of a book by Corín Tellado. On a rusty, narrow vertigo-inducing … Continue reading “Eight Years of the Cuban Independent Writers Club / Ivan Garcia”
See here for background information on this series of posts. René Vázquez Díaz, Sweden, 2007 — Last year, during a period of several months, personalities committed to the politics of cultural repression during the 1970s were interviewed on various Cuban television programs. The reappearance on the small screen of odious characters who call to mind … Continue reading “Rene Vazquez Diaz: Cuban Forgettings / Intellectual Debate”
See here for background information on this series of posts. Your message to Desiderio has motivated me to add some ideas to this debate, which, to my taste, has left us with an excess of words in the middle of a desert of actions. Compared with the richness of ideas and reflections that have been … Continue reading “Message From Juan Antonio García Borrero / Polemica, The 2007 Intellectual Debate”