English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
Foto: Claudio Fuentes Madan How much do you make? That was the question a faceless journalist asked a man on the National Television News (the best science fiction saga on Cuban television, after, of course, the reading of Fidel’s Reflections). As he earned about three hundred pesos a month, she was wanted to know how … Continue reading “Historical Absurdities / Claudia Cadelo”
I To try to defuse the tension that comes over me by surprise and makes me clench my teeth, I decided to take these last days, nothing special, to enjoy doing nothing. Noting, indeed, the Cuban governments’ announcements for 2011. I try to be objective, I try to be dispassionate, I try to be optimistic, … Continue reading “Jaw Clenching and the End of the Year / Regina Coyula”
Pinar del Río is a city without movie theaters, an urban place where cars barely pass and at night the streets are dark and empty. However, some personal projects shine in the midst of such paralysis. One of these is Pedro Pablo Oliva’s workshop, with its room halfway between a family home and an art … Continue reading “The Great Alumbrón* / Yoani Sánchez”
HOWLABANA (Allen Ginsberg howls back in La Habana) Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo [Performed in La Madriguera (Finca de Los Molinos), at 9 PM in Friday 18 September 2009, as a part of the poetry reading of Mundo Beatnik/Hippie.] I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through … Continue reading “UNLIMITED READINGS / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
The regressive count has now commenced for the Cuban government. A swarm of hungry men and women being chased down by entourages of state inspectors, and a rampant wave of people who snitch on others has launched a new massive wave against individual initiative, the primogenial production belt of any country in the modern age, … Continue reading “Working for Yourself? Or Working for Everyone? / Luis Felipe Rojas”
Before the end of this hectic 2010, I wish all readers health and prosperity in the new year. Some responses to messages you have sent me are still pending, some requiring deeper analysis than a few lines. I assure you I will reply in a few days, as soon as I can sit down and … Continue reading “Miracles and Coincidences / Miriam Celaya”
Left behind was the romantic stage, when a notable majority of leftist intellectuals pinned their hopes on the Revolutionary hurricane of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. A Cuba that clouded the reason of heavyweights in the world of letters such as Jean Paul Sartre, Julio Cortázar and José Saramago has lost its steam. The “snob … Continue reading “The Cuban Revolution No Longer Enchants / Iván García”
On December 31, precisely at midnight, a waterfall poured from every balcony of my Yugoslav-style building. Cubans keep the tradition of throwing a bucket of water at year’s end to clean all the bad brought by previous months and to spiritually “clean” the January about to begin. This year there were infinite reasons to throw … Continue reading “The Buried Revolution / Yoani Sánchez”
For more information about this series of posts, please click here. From Consenso digital magazine The digital magazine “Consenso“* is putting at the disposition of its readers a portfolio which contains almost all of the texts that were circulating via electronic messages among numerous Cuban intellectuals in the months of January and February of 2007, … Continue reading ““Consenso“ in the Intellectual Debate / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate”
The Cuban revolution is a historic event. One cannot deny this fact. Its roots hail from this very country. It did not arrive as an import from the Kremlin. However, after perpetrating itself, in certain periods, it imitated the style found in Moscow. The July 26th movement, headed by a young lawyer called Fidel Castro … Continue reading “Year 52 of Fidel Castro’s Revolution / Iván García”
After eight long years, my family can once again smile during Christmas. The hate and intolerance of the regime in Havana kept 75 Cuban families from being able to celebrate Christmas together. A couple of friends invited me to spend Christmas Eve with them in the town of Marbella. As a result, a well-nourished group … Continue reading “A Christmas Spent in Freedom / Pablo Pacheco”
Twenty-ten, this year of three hundred and sixty-plus days that many of us thought would be new, is ending. But 2011 begins and once again the battery of optimism is recharged. Like every Cuban from the generation of the ’50’s, I started my adolescence with the illusion of a better country. The deadlines for meeting … Continue reading “Message with Promise / Reinaldo Escobar”
THE FUTURE WILL BE TODAY Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo The night in Cuba is long and damp. A light drizzle snows on the abandoned neighborhoods. The facades soften, trace their inconceivable masterpieces at the point of bursting. Everything is plastic in the middle of the debacle, remotely and very humanly textured. Everyone speaks, there is … Continue reading “10 From 2010 / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
It could pass for a joke in bad taste. It could pass for the invention of a playful spirit. Unfortunately, horribly unfortunately, it is neither: The place where the 34-year-old young man named Alexander Otero is standing in these photos is nothing more nor less than the ground that the People’s Housing Authority in Granma … Continue reading “And They Lived Happily Ever After / Ernesto Morales Licea”
His face is a catalog of discouragement. Sitting with his elbows on his knees, his horse’s reins in his hands, he seems to me like a pillar of salt from another time. With several days growth of beard, and a yellowish coat he must have exhumed from a closet in these days of winter. “Would … Continue reading “In a Coach, Down a Dark Alley / Ernesto Morales Licea”
