Stories about Cuba from December, 2011
Cuba: The First Book on Afro-Cuban Women
NegraCubana interviews Daysi Rubiera and Inés María Martiatu [es], authors of the first comprehensive book on the “history, thought, and cultural practices” of Afro-Cuban women.
Cuba: on writer Achy Obejas
Montague Kobbe profiles Achy Obejas, a Cuban-American writer who “constantly challenging her readers to (re)think their positions in relation to the most basic principles that govern our attitudes towards each other.”
Cuba: Waiting for Change
Yasmín Portales writes that she is still waiting for radical changes [es] and different governance strategies and practices in Raúl Castro's Cuba.
Cuba: LGBT Rights on the Way
Blogger and LGBT activist Paquito el de Cuba writes about the lastest news on the status of the bill [es] that will amend the Family Act in Cuba to include more rights for the LGBT community.
Cuba: #Twittsaneo
The blog El Microwave writes about the initiative #Twitsaneo [es], convened originally by El Taburete [es] and organized by a group of avid Cuban twitter users. #Twitsaneo was the name given to the event last December 26 when a group of people got together to clean sections of the coast...
Cuba: Dance Flash Mob in Plaza Vieja
To celebrate the end of the year long activities around the 20 years of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Unicef, ballet and dance students worked together to produce a colorful flash mob in the Old Square of La Habana as seen in this video.
Cuba: talking to Orlando Luis Pardo
Along the Malecón posts a three-part video interview with Cuban writer, photographer, and blogger Orlando Luis Pardo of the blog Boring Home Utopics.
Video Highlights: Protests, Elections, Culture and GV
A selection of Global Voices' recent and interesting stories including video from Middle East and North Africa, Sub Saharan Africa, Eastern and Central Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America, selected by Juliana Rincón Parra.
Cuba: thinking about the film festival
Havana Times asks whether the Havana Film Festival has strayed from its original ideals — “Much has happened since its inception in 1978, since which time its revolutionary and emancipatory ideals have faded considerably” — and wonders if the festival could once more “encourage revolutionary and popular cinema (in the...
Cuba: succession fears
The death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il and the succession of his son prompts Generation Y to think about the Cuban government's own succession plans. “The dauphin over there is named Kim Jong-un; perhaps soon they will communicate to us that over here ours will be Alejandro Castro Espin.”
Cuba: owing obsolete rubles
Cuba has a longstanding debt to Russia of 20 million Soviet rubles — a currency that no longer exists. Machetera asks: “how and when do you decide what a vanished currency is really worth?”
Cuba: Prix Carbet for Padura
Cuban writer Leonardo Padura has won the 2011 Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe, reports Repeating Islands. The prestigious prize for works of Caribbean literature in French, founded by the late writer Edouard Glissant, was awarded to the French translation of Padura's novel El hombre que amaba a los perros (The...
Cuba: The Living Dead
Generation Y sees parallels between the film “Juan of the Dead” and life in Cuba: “More than gazing on a story of beings taken from our worst nightmares, the public wants to decipher the second reading contained in the film…such that, between laughter and shrieks, the metaphor crumbles, it is...
Cuba: In Defense of Human Rights
Pedazos de La Isla highlights the testimony of one of the Ladies in White who relates her experience as a victim of the “vigilance operations, brutal beatings, arbitrary arrests, deportations, and other forms of violence against those who publicly demonstrated on the streets of the island in defense of human...
Cuba: Defining “Vulgarity”
Without Evasion continues to share her thoughts about the outcry over the “vulgarity” of a popular reggaeton song, saying: “The confusion lies, then, in properly ascertaining the limits of vulgarity and limiting at the same time in what spheres of social life vulgarity will be allowed without it constituting a...
Cuba: Food History
Iván García reviews Fidel Castro's history with “experiments”, saying: “The ex-president has put his foot in it many times. In all fields. The most painful has been in regard to food.”
Cuba: Christmas Lights, No Human Rights
“In the long list of the words forbidden in my childhood, there were two in particular that were censored: ‘Christmas’ and ‘Human Rights'”, writes Generation Y, explaining that Christmas has become acknowledged – unlike human rights; Uncommon Sense supports her claim by quoting “one of the island's preeminent human rights...
Cuba: Human Rights Day
Uncommon Sense says that tomorrow, International Human Rights Day, “is for all to celebrate the basic rights we share and to remember those in Cuba and elsewhere whose rights are trampled by their rulers.”
Cuba: Same Old Story
Laritza's Laws compares the content of a 1989 edition of “Granma…the official mouthpiece of the Central Committee of the Party” to a current one, and says: “The failure is evident. The housing situation is precarious…public services in decline; and don’t even talk about the protection of the workers…”
Cuba: The “Chupi Chupi” Scandal
“A disproportionate scandal has been unleashed these past few days around a vulgar Cuban video clip officially demonized and quasi-banned by the Culture Minister himself”: Without Evasion blogs about the furor surrounding the reggaeton hit Chupi Chupi.
Cuba: Housing Backlog
“As of the enactment of the new norms decreed by the Council of State, which modifies the law regarding housing, Cuban property owners are running en masse to the Notary of Property Registration in order to comply with the new laws” – but according to Laritza's Laws, “not all has...
