I remember when, in 1994 they allowed licenses to open a private restaurant (paladar) or a cafeteria.  Havana filled with improvised kiosks that brought back lost flavors and desired recipes.  Within a couple of months all the creativity showed in hundreds of umbrellas, tables on  porches and even sophisticated places to try a mamey shake… Continue reading The hidden energies?

In a place of obligatory confluence, beside the main door of the Dihigo building, rests the reddish mastodon known as the “bench at the Literary School.” On it have rested, in the last decades, the most illustrious behinds of our intellectual class.  Many of those knowledgeable derrières rest today on a couch in Paris or… Continue reading The bench at the Literary School

Last year Cuban newspapers strongly criticized the rebirth of the “consumerist” tradition of the Three Wise Men.   They describe the crowds that, for days, filled  the toy stores with convertible pesos and they attacked the social differences that this practice generates.  This January the authorities have found the solution to avoiding “excessive spending” and… Continue reading The Three Wise Men on foot

A dozen or so kids attacked my friend Geraldo and his girlfriend one night at the beginning of December.   They were walking by Belascoaín street when the mob, which was getting out of a concert in a nearby park, intercepted them.  My friend’s backpack was the main temptation and the purse in Elena’s shoulder… Continue reading Red Chronicles or “the city is not the same anymore…”

People start arriving before seven in the morning. There is everything: dreamers, the disillusioned, and even provocateurs. They wait under a tree, perhaps a flamboyan tree, to the side of the Central Committee.  They are there because they wish to present their letters, repeat their requests or check, for the umpteenth time, if their pleas… Continue reading The Wishing Tree

I try to imagine an incredible twenty-four hours in which I wouldn’t have to rely on the informal market. What about a day without the milk from those who knock on my door, replacing the absence of dairy in the rationed market for those of us who are older than seven and younger than sixty… Continue reading A day without the black market

Friends, despite some recommendations, I’d rather keep the discussions generated by these posts inside “Generation Y.”  I appreciate those who created the discussion forum in Yahoo! to ease the excessive amount of comments in this Blog but, as it happens, my access to the Internet is so complex that it would help me a lot… Continue reading My limitations

If I’m absent for several days from cyberspace, don’t worry.  Right now, I’m mounting a Blog service for people from inside Cuba who want to write their own posts.  Let’s see the nut cases who want to participate… so far I have about seven people convinced… The subjects will be varied: culture, society and personal… Continue reading Blogger platform

A sensation of tensed string, of collective asphyxiation, is what I feel these days in the streets.  Strange December this one, in which I don’t hear anyone make predictions for the New Year.  Not even the shy prediction that 2008 maybe bringing us “better things.”   These expectations we spent on the previous New Year’s Eve,… Continue reading Do we arrive or not?

Today I’ll celebrate Christmas Eve with my family and friends. We’ll assemble an improvised table with the old doors of the elevator and over them a blanket will play the role of a tablecloth. Everyone will bring something to the party. We won’t have grapes, cider or nougat candy, but we’ll be together in harmony… Continue reading An empty chair