Search results for: Reinaldo Arenas

Prison Diary LXIII: It’s Not Feeding Revenge, It’s Saving Embarrassment / Angel Santiesteban

UMAP: Useful Citizen Force Dictatorships, according to the analysts, mutate to make threats disappear when their totalitarian power is threatened; to manage it, they are capable of acting against themselves. Nothing is worth more than the Government and its remaining in power as omnipotent beings. Hitler, for all his ravings, lacked foresight into the future, … Continue reading “Prison Diary LXIII: It’s Not Feeding Revenge, It’s Saving Embarrassment / Angel Santiesteban”

The Sky Over Havana / Jorge Alberto Aguiar Díaz (JAAD)

—I’m dying, damn it, and you’re going to die alone on this shitty island! —she shouted at him. Then she hit him. Violently. It split open his lips and nose. It left him collapsed against the wall. —Tell me, faggot, why don’t you hit me back? She spat on him. He became still. Looked up. … Continue reading “The Sky Over Havana / Jorge Alberto Aguiar Díaz (JAAD)”

Where is Robertico? / Luis Felipe Rojas

Photo: Luis Felipe Rojas This is the question many are asking after the events at the “Protestdrome,” where the Cuban musician Roberto Carcassés let loose with good things. The first thing that happens in these cases is a silence that is scary … the repressed and repressor (for different reasons). Although they haven’t taken physical … Continue reading “Where is Robertico? / Luis Felipe Rojas”

The Hungers That Kill Me / Luis Felipe Rojas

“Fly without fear” series, by Luis Felipe Rojas It was the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges who said “To organize libraries is to silently practice the art of critique.”  In the past few months I have also dedicated myself to organizing  ’my library,’ but backwards, the library of books which I maybe had one day, … Continue reading “The Hungers That Kill Me / Luis Felipe Rojas”

Three Memories of Angel Santiesteban / Miguel Iturria Savon

On September 2, 2011 I published the “SOS for Angel Santiesteban” in Cubanet, when despite his having been awarded multiple prizes by the regime itself, the Cuban government’s own political police were harassing the writer. In late 2012 Angel was sentenced to five years imprisonment after a show trial in which his ex-wife was used … Continue reading “Three Memories of Angel Santiesteban / Miguel Iturria Savon”

Yoani Sanchez: An effective voice against the Castro dictatorship / Carlos Alberto Montaner

From El Blog de Montaner Yoani Sánchez visits Miami. It is the most difficult stop in her long tour. Everywhere, like a bullfighter hailed after a good afternoon, she has been carried on the shoulders of the crowd. She will also triumph in Miami, but her task will be a bit harder. I get the … Continue reading “Yoani Sanchez: An effective voice against the Castro dictatorship / Carlos Alberto Montaner”

The Children The Revolution Didn’t Want / Ángel Santiesteban

By Víctor Manuel Domínguez HAVANA, Cuba, February, http://www.cubanet.org. History repeats itself. Another Cuban writer will be sent to prison. Angel Santiesteban, author of the blog The Children Nobody Wanted, was sentenced to five years in prison under the crime of housebreaking and injury. The Supreme Court upheld the penalty. According to what Santiesteban said to … Continue reading “The Children The Revolution Didn’t Want / Ángel Santiesteban”

Diary of a Desperado. Our Angel of the Cuban Narrative. / Angel Santiesteban #Cuba #FreeSantiesteban

By Daniel Morales The writer Angel Santiesteban-Prats has been sentenced to five years in prison by the gang of assassins that, for more than 50 years, dominates every living creature that lives in the beauty and always Faithful Island of Cuba. That sentence was so expected by Angel himself, like for all of us who, … Continue reading “Diary of a Desperado. Our Angel of the Cuban Narrative. / Angel Santiesteban #Cuba #FreeSantiesteban”

The Sad Centenary of Virgilio Pinera – Part II / Angel Santiesteban

As in the great circus, this year, on the centenary of the birth of the great writer, the “official culture” of the island has fired the warning shot that tells the contestants that the fight has begun. The regime has raised the vestiges of censorship that still remained on the famous intellectual, whom they made … Continue reading “The Sad Centenary of Virgilio Pinera – Part II / Angel Santiesteban”

The Sad Centenary of Virgilio Pinera – Part I / Angel Santiesteban

It has always surprised me how Cuban intellectuals, particularly the generation that lived through the seventies, which later came to be called “the five gray years,” have this bad public memory, and in general, among people they trust, they express the pain they still feel for the abuses committed against them by the functionaries faithful … Continue reading “The Sad Centenary of Virgilio Pinera – Part I / Angel Santiesteban”

Havana Cuba 16 February 2012. Report of the Cuban League Against AIDS about Human Rights Violations in Cuba Against the LGBT Community / Wendy Iriepa and Ignacio Estrada

Five decades have passed since that fateful triumph featuring people dressed in garments of olive green, who descended from the mountain proclaiming a society of equality for all men without distinction of race, creed, political or sexual orientation. Not many years had passed when they begin to devise on the island the first exclusions from … Continue reading “Havana Cuba 16 February 2012. Report of the Cuban League Against AIDS about Human Rights Violations in Cuba Against the LGBT Community / Wendy Iriepa and Ignacio Estrada”

Absent from the Book Fair / Miguel Iturria Savón

Not even an enormous Persian magic carpet would be big enough to bring to the Havana Book Fair, running from February 9th to 19th at La Cabaña, a sample of the extensive work of fiction, poetry, essays and historiography of exiled Cuban writers and those excluded from within the island for reasons other than literary. … Continue reading “Absent from the Book Fair / Miguel Iturria Savón”

REQUIEM FOR HUMBERTO ARENAL / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

The Cuban writer Jorge Alberto Aguiar Diaz (JAAD) pointed him out to me. Humbert Arenal had just awarded my book (Collage Karaoke) in the “Pinos Nuevos” Contest in the year zero, or 2000. JAAD said to me, “Go and introduce yourself. This old guy is the last witness of another era.” In fact he looked … Continue reading “REQUIEM FOR HUMBERTO ARENAL / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”

Updating Immigration Policy in Cuba / Jeovany J. Vega

The mere fact of hearing it on television petrifies me, but listening to the president of my county has been illuminating, because in revolutionary Cuba there are issues so ethereal that they never find an appropriate occasion to be raised “procedurally,” taboos the single mention of which give one goosebumps, themes that cannot be approached … Continue reading “Updating Immigration Policy in Cuba / Jeovany J. Vega”

RIDING MISTER ROJAS / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

RIDING MISTER ROJAS, originally uploaded by Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo In art, like in politics, the speeches of epigones, now free of the original guilt of the Messiah, start attempting a liberal rereading of the revolutionary scripture and end up being pure fascism. The Cuban intellectual Fernando Rojas, beyond his high governmental charge (every now … Continue reading “RIDING MISTER ROJAS / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”