COBERTURA CONJUNTA DE ELTOQUE Y PERIODISMO DE BARRIO
Is Being a Man Easy?
Not crying or expressing some emotions is still one of the first lessons too many young boys learn. It’s an essential condition to being or becoming a real man. But what does this mean exactly? What are the standards that society tells men follow?
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Bartering on Telegram to Navigate Cuba’s Shortages
Packages of basic products sold on Tu Envio and at some stores brought a return to bartering in Cuba. Thousands come together from all over the island to swap items they don’t need for others they do.
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Private Enterprise in Cuba: The Rhetoric & Reality Gap
Some weeks after private micro, small and medium-sized businesses (MSMEs) were formally authorized in Cuba, implementation is still in the project phase.
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How Are Cubans Communicating These Days?
The main reason why there are still some users on CubaMessenger and Sijú was their popularity reached when there was no access to Internet via mobile data in Cuba. The other one is the price.
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A Space for Women in Havana’s San Isidro Neighborhood
La Chiqui and other women from the San Isidro neighborhood in Havana have found a place where they can talk about their everyday problems during sessions of the project “Space for women’s dialogue and liberation”.
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Why Map Sexual Harrassment on Cuba’s Streets?
There is another form of sexual harassment that is a lot more common, in our everyday lives and visible. It is such a naturalized form of sexual harassment, that quite a few people even question whether it is reason enough to file a complaint and be rejected. I’m talking about sexual harassment on our Cuban streets.
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Let’s Cycle Havana
On August 2nd, after the pause imposed by the COVID-19 outbreak, members of Masa Critica (the name of this community and online forum) were once again the center of conversations and surprised looks from passers-by and Havana locals.
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Would Revamping Ration Stores Lessen the Lines?
Bodega stores are open longer hours, unlike shopping malls; they have never closed at 5:30 or 6 PM, and they have always respected peoples’ working hours, giving priority to those most in need. They aren’t always packed, it’s only normally the first week of the month or when groceries come in.
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Cuba, Dollarization and Changes to Official Discourse
In terms of the Cuban government’s dual currency – partially “triad”, right now -, it has taken on the role of the loser.
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My Thinking about Cuba
I hope that, one day, even if I am far away, that Cuba is interested in listening to the opinions of its children who are no longer there. Their comments, their ways of making progress; and listening to us and sharing a responsible dialogue, that contributes something and helps us get somewhere.
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What’s Going On with Rice in Cuba?
In late March, you could find a pound of rice for 10 CUP – the State’s market price for imported rice is 4 CUP/pound -, but over time and with greater shortages, this price has doubled in some places in Havana and Holguin. It has even been sold for up to 50 pesos.
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A Life of Blistered Hands in Rural Santa Clara, Cuba
Rosa and her son’s life has been getting increasingly harder, just like their blistered hands.
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Reinventing Everyday Life in Cuba
The global COVID-19 outbreak has given rise to many testimonies. Some people have experienced one of the toughest moments in their lives, others have faced this time with more optimism and have found creative ways to live and find a solution to the crisis.
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Cuba: From Politics to COVID-19 and Vice-Versa
COVID-19 came and imposed itself on the reality that preceded it, and it will leave us a reality that it isn’t really at fault for. Human behavior, collective consciousness, common sense, political decisions and their benefactors, continue to be what has the last word at the end of the day.
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Life Alone from My Window in Santa Clara, Cuba
Sitting out on my balcony became a routine and a privilege. I started taking photos outside of my four walls, of the things I saw and heard from my window.
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Cuban Government Legally Recognizes that Paulo has Two Mothers
Almost a year after beginning the process in the US for registering their son as a Cuban citizen, Dachelys Valdes Moreno and Hope Bastian finally received his birth certificate on June 18th, which features both of them as his mothers.
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Details on Reopening Cuba Tourism post-Covid-19
Cuba has announced that it will begin lifting restrictions post-Covid-19, in three staggered phases. Tourism, the country’s main economic activity, has been significantly affected by the pandemic and the Cuban people’s main concern is that new cases will be imported, once it reopens.
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On an Island of Lines, Lobster Is Only a Tale
Not even lobster boat owners and their crews can eat lobster out on the high sea, the interviewee replies. He follows this up and tells me that everything that is caught needs to be handed over to ACOPIO (Cuba’s State purchasing entity) centers in offshore waters, near the cays.
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A Cuban Going Round and Round!
A line in Cuba isn’t the same as a line anywhere else in the world. Lines in Cuba are commotions of desperate people with bloodshot and worried eyes, on the edge of their nerve to see if they will make it to the counter before everything runs out, or everything does run out and nothing is left.
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The Cuban Vote in 2020: Rejection of Trumpism or “Somos Continuidad”?
Contrary to what some Cuban officials have suggested, there are few signs that opposition to the Trump administration’s Cuba policy will drive strong anti-Trump Cuban-American turnout at the polls. Why? And what could make that attitude change?
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In Cuba, Chicken Doesn’t Believe in Applause
Ever since the COVID-19 lockdown officially started in Cuba, a lot has been discussed about help, and the lack of it, for the people who are fighting the virus in health institutions on a daily basis.
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A Cuban Doctor on New York’s Frontline
Gabriela Sanchez-Bravo left Cuba with her family in 2005. She has now received a degree from the Upstate Medical University and is studying the 1st year of her Family Medicine residency at the Institute for Family Health in New York.
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A Cuban Woman Describes How She Got Stranded in Guyana
Yiset Lorenzo left Havana and headed to Georgetown on Tuesday March 10th. It was the first time that she had flown abroad. On that day, Cuba still hadn’t confirmed any positive cases of COVID-19, Guyana hadn’t either.
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Urgent Recommendations to Support Cuba’s Private Sector
The pandemic’s aftershocks have hurt over 26,000 renters, over 500 Airbnb experience hosts and over 52,000 drivers in Cuba.
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“Stay at Home” and an Unfamiliar Havana
“Stay at home and protect yourself”, protect us all from the terrible disease that has been roaming Havana and Cuba’s streets, ever since March 11th.
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Cuba’s “Temporary” Crisis and Coronavirus: Don’t Think About the Future
The fact that reality here in Cuba exceeds fiction is already too familiar. This time, it looks to me like reality has gone a little too far. If it was a matter of just overcoming reality, we wouldn’t have to be in such a tight fix.
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Seamstresses after the Virus Hit Cuba: from Dresses to Masks
Up until recently, the Procle workshop was filled with the sound of sewing machines, as well as Caridad and Zademys’ chattering and laughter. However, customer service has been put on the backburner with the new situation created by Coronavirus.
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A Propensity to Hug and Coronavirus
There is a skill in his heart that nobody had to teach him as soon as he started walking: the language of hugging.
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Succumbing to COVID-19 or Anxiety
The day Zammys Jimenez left Atlanta, only 7 had tested positive for COVID-19 at Fulton county, and there were 121 confirmed cases across the state of Georgia.
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Coronavirus “Case #78” in Cuba Speaks Out
Ruben Dario Herrera was assigned bed 22 at the isolation center in Santa Clara. On March 27th, he officially became case #78 confirmed with COVID-19, according to the report issued by the Cuban Ministry of Health.
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Tips for Coping with Fake Coronavirus News
The serious consequences of circulating fake news ranges from defamation to even swaying public opinion or raising social concerns. Unfortunately, we aren’t aware a lot of the time of just how much we contribute to its dissemination.
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Coronavirus in Cuba, Social Symptoms
It’s Friday March 20th, 1 PM. Some twenty confirmed cases of Coronavirus have been reported. TV doesn’t talk about anything else. The city continues to be slow and vulnerable like it is every day.
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Italy in Its Darkest Hour
Italy had been one of the first countries to cancel its air operations with China, when it made any sense to still identify COVID-19 as “Chinese pneumonia” or “Wuhan fever”.
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Coronavirus and the Traumas of a Cuban Living in Cadiz, Spain
This afternoon, I was overwhelmed by sadness when I went to the supermarket. I wanted to compare it to former experiences, because every time a new emotion blossoms within me, I try and compare it to my life in Cuba. At that moment, I wondered whether it was within my right to take photos of empty display cabinets. “A trauma of the period I have always lived in,” I could say.
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Cuban Gov. Authorities Meet with Entrepreneurs and Academics in Havana
Organized by Havana University’s Business Network and the Public Administration Academy, the first “Governance, from a public-private alliance perspective in Cuba” conference took place in the capital.
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Potatoes in Cuba: Short Term Availability for Some Provinces
Potatoes are the highest priority crop grown in Cuba.
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