English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
2010 — Mario Vargas Llosa, Peru 2009 — Herta Mueller, Romania and Germany 2008 — Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, France and Mauritius 2007 — Doris Lessing, United Kingdom 2006 — Orhan Pamuk, Turkey 2005 — Harold Pinter, United Kingdom 2004 — Elfriede Jelinek, Austria 2003 — J. M. Coetzee, South Africa 2002 — Imre Kertesz, … Continue reading “AND WHAT ABOUT MY CUBA…? / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
A suspicious incident has provided me with writing material this time. As a sample of a rare will for controversy and democratic confrontation, the site Kaos en la Red, which promotes itself as the champion of intellectual reflection, has just censured a post originally published on this blog, which some reader decided to post on … Continue reading “My Friend The Enemy / Ernesto Morales Licea”
I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that the most persistent recount I have made at my age is of precisely those things I still have left to do. A friend, psychologist by profession, attributes it to the obsessive features my personality brings but, I tend to disagree a little on the analytic categories so … Continue reading “Small Dreams”
Commander Delio Gómez Ochoa has disappeared from the annals of the Cuban military and bureaucracy. Only his family and colleagues remember his actions in war and the energy he put into businesses and regions in the country. Some say he fell into disgrace after his failed intervention in the Dominican Republic where he went in … Continue reading “The Commander’s Chiaroscuros”
An apparently simple act, like decorating student dormitories with Barbie dolls and advertisements for capitalist consumer goods, has unleashed a mini-storm with the authorities on the island. Agustin Alfonso, age 20, a junior (3rd year) law student at the University of Havana, is the typical model of ideologist ambiguity who lives on the island at … Continue reading “Che Yes, Barbie No”
The famous Mejunje was never a cafe, but rather a well-crafted platform for intersex hustlerism. 14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 29 June 2025 — I go to the Novelty—I never go to the Novelty—the café owned by Unamuno and Torrente-Ballester, although I’m not a fan of either. Salamanca’s Plaza Mayor bustles with tourists and people who, … Continue reading “Cafés”
14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, January 6, 2024 — “Down with the apolitical writers! Down with the supermen of literature!” “Their original sin: they are not authentically revolutionary.” “Outside the Revolution, no rights.” The law of eternal return presides over the tension between the intellectuals and communism. Guevara repeats Castro, and Castro repeats Stalin or Mao. … Continue reading “‘Writers and Artists Under Communism’, a Chronicle About the Cuban Government’s Hatred of Culture”
14ymedio, Rosa Pascual, Madrid, 10 March 2016 — Moscow 1989. Mario, a Cuban journalist working in the press department of the secretariat of the Organization for International Economic Cooperation (OCEI) representing the island in the Soviet capital, attends, with his family, the premiere of the play The Master and Margarita, whose main female part is … Continue reading “‘Matryoshkas’ of Exile / 14ymedio, Rosa Pascual”
