English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
Last Sunday ended the Catholic Social Week of the Miami Archdiocese, and luckily, I was able to participate in two of the events. In one of the programs, Cuban American businessman Carlos Saladrigas held a conference on the business future of Cuba. Saladrigas allowed the public to present written questions. According to the moderator, not … Continue reading “I Felt Shame, Much Shame / Pablo Pacheco”
On Saturday March 3 we had a meeting at Estado de SATS regarding cultural and academic exchanges between Cuba and the United States. The panel consisted of the philosopher Alexis Jardines who participated by video-recording, political analysts Julio Aleaga Pesant and Miriam Celaya, and Charles Barclay deputy head of the United States Interests Section in … Continue reading “Cultural Exchanges and a Democratic Transition / Estado de Sats, Antonio G. Rodiles”
When a minister of culture has to concern himself with the trivialities of commercial art or its substitutes, that minister obscenely carries a gun under his incivil pants: phallic cannon to the left of his national fly. Such is the case for quite unpresentable Abel Prieto in Cuba, minister of culture whose resignation (according to … Continue reading “Ministry of Culturuti / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
I’m curious to know the great influences of the reggaetoner Osmani Garcia, “The Voice” at the top of the Cuban charts. Good friends should be there. Not every reggaetoner achieved the status of censored celebrity displayed today by Chupi Chupi, turned into an ugly duckling of the radio stations, but a white swan of popular … Continue reading “Guilty of Singing El Chupi Chupi / Ernesto Morales Licea”
If a some genuine idolatry remains for the old, the idolater must be suffering a severe existential crisis. The lackeys with pedigree, the real ones, suffer the unspeakable when their idols are revealed as mere humans, and, in cases like this — Fidel Castro publicly exposed for 6 hours — a human grotesque. To associate … Continue reading “Harlequin Memoirs / Ernesto Morales Licea”
How is it possible that intellectuals who were humiliated and punished by the same people who now govern the country, stay next to the boots that kicked them into submission, that harassed them until they were broken in body, soul and artistic endeavor? They suffered so much that the fear still corrodes them and they … Continue reading “Cuban Intellectuals: When Fear Seeps Into the Bones / Angel Santiesteban”
I disagree with what you say, I totally disagree with it, but I would defend with my life your right to say it. Voltaire Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y, 22 November 2011 — I press the headset until it almost touches my eardrums, but still the music in the collective taxi is pounding in my head. … Continue reading “El Chupi Chupi and the Dilemma of Limits / Yoani Sánchez”
Reading Carlos Alberto Montaner’s book, Conversation at the funeral of the Comandante. What will happen after the death of Fidel Castro?, from the first pages I could recognize a reality that was predicted by the author several years before it happened. Who could have predicted that Carlos Lage — the “majordomo” of the Palace who, … Continue reading “The Fate of the Cuban Taliban / Angel Santiesteban”
CINDERELLA AND THE PAINTER by YOANI SANCHEZ (TAKEN FROM VOCES 8) Cinderella, the tail of this torpid caiman, the westernmost point of a country that long ago ceased to call itself the West. That’s Pinar del Rio, a place that has remained in the memory of thousands of Havanans, where we spent our long stays … Continue reading “CINDERELLA AND THE PAINTER / Yoani Sánchez”
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”
LET US NOT FORGET OLIVA IN HIS HOUR OF HORROR Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo I don’t know the Pinar del Rio painter Pedro Pablo Oliva. i don’t know anyone among the stateless dust of a people dispersed as are Cubans (maybe we don’t even go that far, and we are just an illusion of identity). … Continue reading “MINCULT OR MINCUT VERSUS PEDRO PABLO OLIVA / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
TOMÁS PIARD: Y OLPL DÓNDE ESTÁ…???!!!, originally uploaded by orlandoluispardolazo. Finally, the half-hidden premiere of the documentary “Trocadero 162, Lower Floor” by Tomas Piard (which should have been released on December 19, 2010 for Jose Lezama Lima’s centenary), where Abel Prieto, the Minister of Culture, cowered in my presence and my words in almost a … Continue reading “TOMAS PIARD: AND WHERE IS OLPL…???!!! / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
The Florida media commented on the details of the flow of musicians and writers that travel from Havana to Miami or New York, where they perform in clubs and theaters or speak in universities and conference rooms. Among the literary figures the writer Miguel Barnet, the President of the Union of Writers and Artists of … Continue reading “Barnet and His Alter Ego / Miguel Iturria Savón”
FROM “THE FLIGHT OF THE CAT”* TO YOUR MOTHER’S TWAT** Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo There’s the lyrical Lezama Lima, of unintelligible flight, before whose spirals we bow because to read them would be in vain, and a pain. And good for us. That Lezamian lyricism never had much success, except for quoting and thus accumulating … Continue reading “A LEZAMA FOR MOPPING (DUPING) / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
The Cuban filmmaker Tomás Piard now faces ideological pressure in his work for having interviewed me in his most recent documentary “TROCADERO 162, LOWER,” filmed last November for UNEAC, its producer. The debut of the film planned for 19 December 2010 (the 100th birthday of the Cuban writer José Lezama Lima, the subject of the … Continue reading “SOLIDARITY WITH TOMAS PIARD / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”