English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
In a city of two and a half million inhabitants such as Havana — its streets riddled with potholes, its garbage cans overflowing, its hydraulic networks shattered and a layer of soot covering the facades of its homes and commercial buildings — it seems anachronistic to see language schools teaching British English. At the corner … Continue reading “Havana: English for Everyone / Ivan Garcia”
It’s hard to bury faith in any God, ideology, or vices. For others, like Vladimir, the passion for the Soviet era, like old rockers, never dies. Son of Communist parents, he studied at universities in the former USSR. He speaks Russian like a Muscovite and still reads Gorki or the poems of Yevstushenko in the … Continue reading “Soviet Cuba Remains in the Official Imagination / Ivan Garcia”
Let’s go to Alamar! My mother would say and we would head out to visit some relatives who lived in that so-called “Siberia.” We arrived in an area of ugly, coarse buildings haphazardly tossed on the grass. We would play with other kids among these concrete boxes in the high grass that grew all around. … Continue reading “Alamar and Hip-Hop / Yoani Sanchez”
An acquaintance of mine traded his one-and-a-half-room apartment for an even smaller one and a little cash, to ease his alcoholism and misery. I never entered his house and so I was unaware of his poverty. His furniture looked like shabby junk, which was probably — as in most Cuban houses — bought before the … Continue reading “Descriptive Hardship / Rosa Maria Rodriguez”
Among the most precious possessions of my childhood was a collection of science fiction books. Those pages filled long hours of my life, allowing me to know other worlds and to escape — at will — the flat reality. My sister liked the tales of far off planets, space ships and extraterrestrial civilizations. I preferred … Continue reading “From the Pen of Bradbury, Čapek, Hurtado and Chaviano / Yoani Sanchez”
The State brigade arrived in Vibora’s Red Plaza and in no time at all erected a slapdash wood and metal platform. On the nights of December 31 and January 1, a crowd fueled by cheap rum and bad beer will see in 2014 dancing to a Cuban timba orchestra. The guys who set up the … Continue reading “New Years in Havana / Ivan Garcia”
On 13 March 1963, during a commemoration on the steps of the University of Havana, Fidel Castro said: “For there walks a specimen, another byproduct we must fight (…), many of these lazy ‘hipsters,’ children of the bourgeois, walk around in their too-tight pants, some of them with a guitar thinking they’re Elvis Presley. And … Continue reading “The Night of the Long Scissors / Camilo Ernesto Olivera”
I scan the shelves, dusting off my memory for books over these last decades, in search of the titles that I must keep, at all costs, from the fire of oblivion. It’s not an easy task. Every author, every text chosen… is an act of betrayal toward the rest. Making a list of the essential … Continue reading “Choosing a Book, or the Reader’s Betrayal / Yoani Sanchez”
Photo from http://www.elcomercio.com/ Again terrorism achieved its murderous aims when many innocents were killed at the finish line of the Marathon held in Boston, Massachusetts for more than half a century. Naturally, the bombing also erupted in the media, which sent us images of the two Chechen youths who were the authors of this act … Continue reading “Killing Without Showing Their Faces / Rosa Rodriguez”
La Coubre — the name that comes from a ship involved in a tragic eventthat killed many Cubans — is now a symbol of contemporary sadness: The National Railway Terminal, baptized with the same name. Its back patio consists of a large roofed space divided into several offices in the form of ships, which serve … Continue reading “An Odyssey That Begins in La Coubre / Eliécer Ávila”
When Leandro was born, back in 1930, there was no television. Of course, there was no Internet, computers or mobile phones either. The radio and the movies were no longer silent, and newspapers used to have many pages. Leandro still remembers when at age 13 in San Antonio de los Baños, he saw two planes … Continue reading “Portrait of a Revolutionary Old Man / Iván García”
I do not know if there is any index of foreign authors published by Cuban publishing houses in the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first, but if so I would guess that the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz is excluded. He is known, however, to creators who read his diaries and novels, received … Continue reading “Gombrowicz, Another Author “Ignored” in Cuba / Miguel Iturria Savón”
Without detracting from the prestige gained by Cuban education since 1959, in my view the shortage of toys that children in Cuba have suffered, and do suffer, has been ignored. While the Russians were sending millions of rubles every day, our parents gave up sleep to buy three toys a year. In schools and kindergartens … Continue reading “The New Man Needs Toys / Dora Leonor Mesa”
Someone gave me a copy of the documentary “Partisan of Music“. In addition to its impeccable execution of presenting us with pathways to self-discovery, the filmmaker worthily captures the stories of a rock group from Belarus. They are underground guys who have decided, after countless arrests and beatings, to confront soldiers and approach their own … Continue reading “Partisans Against Those in Power / Luis Felipe Rojas”
As societies are complex systems of interrelated elements, when they face structural crises with harm to all their components, it’s impossible to remedy them with changes limited to one aspect of the system, as is the case with the economy; in its place there needs to be comprehensive approach. Among the elements whose influence is … Continue reading “Politics, The State, The Market and Civil Society / Dimas Castellanos”