Yoani Sanchez

Today the Cuban government's official website Cubadebate, whose tagline is "Against Media Terrorism," posted an article titled "The Impossible Innocence of the CLICK Festival." In the title the initials CIA are capitalized in the word "innocenCIA" to make it clear to readers who is supposedly behind this event that begins...

Fidel Castro's latest "Reflections" columns, published in the Cuban press, have left many readers inside and outside the Island in a mild state of shock. Without exceeding a hundred words, the ex-president's most recent texts seem to be...

She asked only to have the same rights enjoyed by a man in her country. She took the loudspeaker to expose laws that in Iran left her defenseless and at a disadvantage against men. Blogger...

A classic play of the Spanish theater, written by Lope de Vega in 1610, tells how an entire people kills a tyrannical and despotic commander. In the town of Fuenteovejuna the people come together to...

We had moments when it became fashionable to close the door, cover your ears and hang up the phone on others. Entire periods in our national history when dialog was synonymous with giving in and the exchange of ideas was an act close to admitting defeat. Fortunately, every day in...

Villa Marista is the main operations center of the Cuban Ministry of the Interior. Its huge structure was built to house a school run by a religious order, but since 1963 it has been home to the most feared jail cells in the country. At the beginning of the Revolution...

Saturday night and G Street in the most central part of of the city, is packed with young people sitting on the grass or pressed together in the darkest areas of the park. They boastfully show off every type of...

Photo: MJ Porter/Translator

The cast bronze sculpture rests one arm on the bar. He looks ready to order another daiquiri, but in reality he's observing, with his metal eyes, everyone who comes and goes from El Floridita. Some flash their cameras at that life-sized Hemingway...

The plane touches down in the middle of a Havana night and tourists pass through the international airport terminal where dozens of Cubans offer them taxis, rooms for rent, rum or mulatas. A young man approaches a short, dumpy visitor and, squatting close to his ear, asks, "Mister, you like...

Boys playing baseball in Havana. Photo: MJ Porter/Translator

Monday night could have ended with a roar running through the city or, instead, a silence growing from every house. The latter is what happened, because the capital's baseball team lost...

Havana. Photo: MJ Porter, Translator

We Cubans occupy our beds, the stairs of our houses, the piece of the table before us, the chair in front of the television, the empty refrigerator, the half open shutters we peer out of. All this...

The mystery has been solved, the enigma of the fiber optic cable between Cuba and Venezuela has been cleared up because of an indiscretion. The Venezuelan Minister of Science and Technology affirmed a few days ago that it "is absolutely operational," and what it is used for will...

She carries a name that evokes encampments, and I am just a Sanchez, dragging the "ez" ending that once meant to be "the son of" some Sancho. Yes, like that chubby guy on the donkey who accompanied and satirized Quixote, although I weigh many pounds less and have never galloped,...

What is an academic? What is an intellectual? These are some of the questions that have haunted me for years, even before I graduated in Hispanic Philology. Immersed in adolescent insolence, I thought at some point that to be one or the other it was necessary to assume certain poses,...

He was awarded it as a perk based on merit, paying a subsidized price in 1975, the same year as the first Communist Party Congress. He won the chance to buy that brand new Fiat 125, made in Argentina, because he was a vanguard doctor and an unimpeachable Revolutionary. The...

The market is almost empty. It's still very early and someone is writing the new prices for a pound of pork on a blackboard. It seems a simple gesture, that of the hand that has changed only one digit...

I wasn't yet old enough to go to school and I was at the park the neighbors in the area called "Carlos III," although the maps insisted on labeling it "Carlos Marx." My sister and I were playing in...

If anything distinguishes May Day from other days in the year, it's not the parade, nor the crowd waving its paper flags. The most striking is the silence that falls over Havana after the mass rally in the Plaza...

During the last week, the official media have greatly emphasized the origin and workings of the Red Cross in Cuba. Around May 8th, the founding date of this humanitarian body, they...

On the ground, turned over, and with a huge hole in the bottom, lies the dumpster on the corner. It was put there just months ago, with its bulky gray...