English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
Juan Wilfredo Soto García, “The Student,” October 13, 2010 May 5th was the fourth anniversary of the brutal beating of activist Juan Wilfredo Soto García, which resulted in his death two days later. It was followed bythe deaths of noted leaders Laura Pollán and Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, in which many also acknowledge the presence of … Continue reading “Four Years Without Justice / Mario Lleonart”
Authored by Angel’s Editor, 4 April 2015 — But you are not one of those worthy men who serve a prison sentence in Cuba for raising his voice against the abuses of the dictator. You are a prisoner of conscience, because your conscience is not free; it is a slave to the designs that Raúl … Continue reading “Cardinal Ortega: You Are a Prisoner of Conscience”
No blogger, no cry. Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo 1 In the beginning was the Blog. 2 But blogs were formless and empty. 3 Repression was all over the blogosphere. 4 And the citizens saw the blogs were good. 5 So that lacking other channels of expression, the Cuban civil society occupied blogosphere as a tool for … Continue reading “No blogger, no Obama / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
(EFE) 21 March 2015 — The leader of the Cuban dissident movement Ladies in White,BertaSoler, is “convinced” that“Cuban State Security is hiding” behind the conflicts within the group and which led to the separation of some of its members. Soler pointed to a History student, Alejandro Yañez, as the person who leaked a video that … Continue reading “Berta Soler believes that conflicts in the group are due to ‘infiltrators’”
Ivan Garcia, 11 March 2015 — During the hot summer of 2013 I remember Blanca Reyes, wife of the poet and journalist Raul Rivero, writing letters to the pope in the Vatican, to the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina and to Nelson Mandela in South Africa, reminding them that Fidel Castro had … Continue reading “The Ladies in White Should Change Their Political Profile / Ivan Garcia”
MantleThought.org, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, 18 March 2015 — The U.S. embargo against the Cuban government is like those recurrent childhood nightmares, for both Cubans living on the Island and abroad. Oh, the Embargo Embargo: limit of our life, fire of our leaders… During decadent decades the Cuban Revolution has been defined by that urge … Continue reading “NO EMBARGO, NO CRY / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
Hector Maseda after his release, with his wife Laura Pollán, founder of the Ladies in White, who later died under circumstances still being questioned. Ángel Santiesteban-Prats, Border Guard Prison Unit, Havana, February 2015 — February 12th will be four years since the release of the last prisoners belonging to the group of 75 arrested in … Continue reading “The Same Script for Every Dissident / Angel Santiesteban”
14ymedio, Clive Rudd Fernandez, 22 January 2015 — In July of last year, when I talked to some of the victims of the “Marzo de 13” Tugboat massacre in the Bay of Havana, I found a list of horrifying statistics. Two of them would make any halfway decent human being shudder: the bodies recovered from … Continue reading “A Question for Roberta Jacobson / 14ymedio, Clive Rudd Fernandez”
Alan Gross, like every North American who comes in contact with the Castro regime and defends it even from within a captivity of little lies — attacking his own government with million-dollar demands — is a bad man. Gross’s little suicide threats, his lack of solidarity with Cubans in exile and civil society on the Island, … Continue reading “Look at Me, Miami and, If You Value Your Death, Don’t Cry / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
Translator’s Note: On Thursday, Dec. 4, 2014, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo participated in a panel discussion at Florida International University, in Miami. The program announcement is here. Since the time of the Iron Curtain and Soviet socialism, the word, “solidarity,” has been one of value in anti-totalitarian use. Within the dictatorial models that communists have historically … Continue reading “What I Said at FIU / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
Friends of the world, I just talked with the graffiti artist El Sexto — Danilo Maldonado Machado — from Havana, Cuba. State Security agents are like bloodhounds after him, all over the city, on motorbikes and in cars. They are intimidating him, but in the end his arrest by the police appears imminent. The Ladies … Continue reading “El Sexto Again in Danger, December 2014 / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
Castroneirics: Is there Cuban literature after the Revolution? Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo This story started long before the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, on January 1st1959. In the beginning it was not the Word, but the War. And in the war Fidelity is the utmost value, its betrayal usually paid with death, whether civil or political, … Continue reading “Castroniria / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
This I believe is the second or third occasion that I write to you, and as always without the least mood or desire that you answer me, because given the absolute contempt and disgust that emanates from your person I can’t feel otherwise. Señor Dictator and Genocide, 24 years and five months ago at barely … Continue reading “No, No and No Raul Castro / Jose Luis Garcia Antunez”
THE TRANSITION THAT IS ABOUT NOT TO COME The power of Castro’s dictatorship couldn’t rely only in the annihilation of all kind of opposition, despite the fact that, since January 1959, its governability depended on fear (out of pure terror) to reduce a plural society to military obedience, ideological hatred, and apartheid, whether geographical (in … Continue reading “THE TRANSITION THAT IS ABOUT NOT TO COME / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
Investment in Cuba? What for? ASCE XXIV / 2014 Annual Conference, Miami Hilton Downtown Hotel, Florida, USA Panel 12. Concerto Ballrom B – Friday, August 1st, 2:45-4:15pm 1. In Cuba during the 1970s, historian Manuel Moreno Fraginals challenged poet Jose Lezama Lima with his trendy scientific notions about the laws of objectivity and the transition … Continue reading “Investment in Cuba? What for? / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
