Heoido

In the same days that the dismissal of Carlos Lage and Felipe Perez Roque was catching the attention of the foreign press and the local rumor mill, Xiomara was worrying about something closer to home.  For the past four months, in her town of Pinar del Rio the sanitary pads that women use to mitigate… Continue reading Moist trivialities

People waiting, with a stick or a knife under the bed for a day they can use them.  Entrenched hatred against those who betrayed them, denied them a better job, or made sure their youngest child couldn’t study at the university.  There are so many waiting for possible chaos to give them the time necessary… Continue reading The short night of the long knives

The old pots and pans for feeding the family can be transformed, in the event, into the ballot we can’t leave in the box and into the hand we dare not raise in the assembly.  Any object can serve, if given the space required: a piece of fabric hung from the balcony, a newspaper waved… Continue reading The kitchen chorus

The Summit of the Americas ended yesterday and it doesn’t appear that an urgent meeting of parliament, or a special plenary session of the Party Central Committee, is being convened to discuss the proposals made by Obama. “A fresh start with Cuba,” the American president said in Trinidad and Tobago, but today Fidel Castro’s Reflections… Continue reading To the outside world

You’ll remember that a couple of months ago I tried to implement some improvements in Generation Y, but they failed, but now it seems that they will work. To make these changes, the comments will be closed until next Tuesday in every language. After the changes, the translated sites will operate as before, but the… Continue reading GY repairs, final steps

Today in Italy the publisher Rizzoli is presenting a compilation of my posts entitled “Cuba Libre.”  I hope to be able to announce soon an edition in my own language.  The book leads off with  the beginning of Generation Y, which just now has passed its second anniversary, with 300 posts published between then and… Continue reading The log of the blog

The ball is in Cuba’s court after Obama threw it yesterday, as he announced new flexibility in his policies toward Cuba.  The players on this side seem a bit confused, hesitating between grabbing the ball, criticizing it, or simply ignoring it.  The context couldn’t be better: loyalty to the government has never seemed more perverse… Continue reading And now what?

Today I bring you photos of the port that gave its name to thousands of Cubans and then fell into a long oblivion for thirty years.  “Los Marielitos” left from there and in my primary school we were told they had been looking for “drugs and perversions” on the other shore.   So I imagined them… Continue reading Mariel

When I was little my mother forced me to eat all my food.  The phrase used to clear my plate was, “Don’t leave even a spoonful, there are other children in the world who have nothing to put in their mouths.”   Within just a few years the profound crisis caused by the collapse of socialism… Continue reading Children of the crisis

What was the origin of the conflict between the family of Romeo and the powerful clan into which Juliet was born?  I remember the scaling of the balcony, the promises to return, and the banishment to Mantua, but I can’t specify the spark that set off the confrontation between the two clans.  Many young Cubans,… Continue reading Montagues and Capulets