Category: Generation Y

December has started with the rare spectacle of Christmas trees adorning shops, hotels and other public sites.  After several years in which they were erected only in the living rooms of some houses, they have returned and their dusted snow contrasts with all the sun outside.   It seems that the ban on putting them in… Continue reading The trees sprout

Finally we are beginning the planned journey of the bloggers.  The shouts delivered at the police station, the constant agent we’ve had with us since last Thursday, and the prohibition on travel to Pinar del Río weren’t much use.  We ended up finding the cracks between the fingers of the censors, between which the fine… Continue reading Fine sand

In the ‘90s, a poem satirized the disappearance from Cuban tables of several agricultural products.*  Its author never signed the friendly verses, but the caustic style pointed directly to a well-known writer.  Those were the years when CAME [Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, or Comecon] was going to hell in a handbasket along with the… Continue reading A stray monosyllable

At nine in the morning an official looks, with boredom, at the citation we have presented at the door of the 21st and C station.  We are left waiting on one of the benches for about 40 minutes, while Reinaldo and I take the opportunity to discuss all those things the dizziness of daily life… Continue reading The reprimands of Wednesday

I swear I haven’t run a green light, nor have I bought cheese on the black market for more than two months, and I have not walked out of any store without paying.  I don’t recall having violated the laws–too much–these last days, not even by passing myself off as a foreigner to use the… Continue reading First round

<> There is a glaring absence in our daily landscape.  Those calls to march, so frequent two years ago, have become rarer, leaving behind the impression of a city permanently on edge.  It used to be a rare month that Habaneros were not called to a demonstration to shout slogans and applaud passionate speeches.  They… Continue reading Missing the marches

Diplomacy is one of those arts that makes me itch, one of those dances where watching the performance makes me seasick.  However much I try to understand the ambassadors, foreign ministers and that whole stripe of cunning characters, their actions only manage to confuse me more.  They embrace and smile, exchange promises and take pictures… Continue reading Goodbye to the tutu

In reference to the jury prize for Best Weblog and the award for Reporters Without Borders in The BOBs contest. Well yes, but there is still much that I lack.  Not exactly prizes, but rights long neglected, like the ability to be read within my own country.  I must be able to say all this… Continue reading What more could one ask?

Finally the excitement around the BOBs awards comes to an end. We know that Generation Y came in first in the public vote in the Reporters Without Borders category, but we still have to wait for what the jury says. Whatever happens we are going to celebrate it, because we don’t need much of a… Continue reading It’s a nail biter

For weeks, there are words like “ballot box,” “votes,” and “candidates” that persecute us everywhere.  First there were the elections in the United States and now the issue has been revived with what happened on Sunday in Venezuela.  It’s as if at the end of the year everything conspires to remind us of our condition… Continue reading I’d love to choose