These are very strange days: with the usual repression. However, they’ve also felt like the freest since I’ve ever known about Cuba’s political situation. I follow events with a close eye, just like everyone has. And try to get involved as much as I can before fear takes over.

Now I was thinking that my grandmother has never eaten tacos, sushi or been in an airplane. Neither has my mother. Two generations. They work hard and can barely buy food. Nope, they haven’t seen anything. They know nothing. It is scary to think of growing old in this country.

Then the results came out and my problems flared up again. The day before, on November 2, the school year had started in Havana after several months on hold due to COVID-19.

I take out a little bit so that it doesn’t overflow because half of it is spit chickpeas and it’s made 500 coffee pots explode.

I have seen many people lose their home and end up on the street. With the clothes on their back. After a hurricane, after a tornado, after a downpour. Or because the roof just can’t hold up anymore.

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.

A person shouldn’t be afraid to go outside, to show themselves, to publish or comment on something. But so much suffocating is making us afraid of our own country.

It’s 11 PM and the building doesn’t have any electricity. I fan my son and try to calm him down, but the shouting continues to come in through the space between the blinds and you can hear it all as if it were in the living room.

On Sunday December 1st, at ten in the morning, Fernando Rodriguez leads a group of Christians who have come together to read the Bible. The Malecon is full of fishermen, tourists and people marching about their daily business.

I would have to wake up at 5 AM, and I barely had time to make a coffee because the boss was never worried about what time I got to work, as long as everything was ready for 7:30 AM. My boss was the manager: a stout man in moccasins with his own black Toyota […]