CUBA CULTURE SECTION - Havana Journal
Recent News and Information
By Jorge Casuso | Miami New Times
When Miami sports agent Juan Ignacio Hernandez Nodar, 51, flew into Miami Friday after spending 13 years in a Cuban jail, he felt a bit like Rip Van Winkle. The small children he had left behind were all grown up and Miami had sprouted a new skyline.
Hernandez, who tried to help Orlando “El Duque Hernandez” and other baseball stars defect from the Communist island, served “every last day” of his 15 year-sentence. (A Cuban jail-year is 10 months long.) And he believes what he did was right.
“What we did we did…
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Boston.com
In a little-known nook of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, with a fine view five floors above Boston Harbor, lies a book-lined room with a lion skin throw rug, a scrapbook with photographs of old fishermen, and a host of other odd relics from Cuba.
Entry is permitted only by appointment.
The 30-year-old collection is a peculiar exhibit in a museum built to honor the late president, given his efforts to overthrow the island country’s leader, Fidel Castro.
The collection, instead, serves as a repository of information about another American icon from the same era: Ernest Hemingway.
Despite…
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Guardian.co.uk
The actor Sean Penn has flown to Cuba to chase what would be the biggest scoop of his career as a part-time journalist: an interview with Fidel Castro.
The Oscar winner, who last year bagged interviews with Raúl Castro and Hugo Chávez, is reportedly on assignment for Vanity Fair in his quest to meet Cuba’s former president.
In a sign of Havana’s approval the communist party newspaper Granma covered Penn’s visit yesterday to the Island of Youth, where he visited a gallery and met artists.
According to the online magazine tmz.com Penn hopes to ask Fidel about Cuba’s evolving…
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By Bill Chastain | MLB.com
Cuban defector Aroldis Chapman arrived in New York on Wednesday seeking the opportunity to sign with a Major League team and cash in on what the market might yield for a 21-year-old left-hander with top-of-the-rotation potential, according to multiple reports.
Chapman showcased his abilities for Cuba in March during the World Baseball Classic before defecting this summer when Cuba played in a tournament in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. After defecting, Chapman established residency in Andorra. Several teams had planned to see Chapman throw in Europe, but upon the advice of his agent, Edwin Mejia, he decided…
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(Original title is Havana Times: The First Anniversary. As many Havana Journal readers know, I have been a long time critic of Circles Robinson and the Havana Times since he was never up front with his job as a worker for the Cuban government. See my comments in bold in parenthesis added to the otherwise unedited article below.)
By Circles Robinson
HAVANA TIMES, Oct. 15 - One year ago I was on vacation in Matagalpa, Nicaragua, sitting in a friend’s apartment during the second week of October editing the diary posts and features…
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Our writer from Havana has sent us this information regarding the Partagas Meeting of Customers and Friends that will be held in Havana from November 16th to the 19th.
Monday November 16th - WELCOME
Time: 8:00 pm
Price: 50.00 CUC
Dinner-Buffet and Cocktails
Tasting of three Habanos made especially for the event.
Show awards and acknowledgments of special participants
Tuesday November 17th - DAY AT THE BEACH
Departure from Partagás and Hotels 9:00 am
Price: 75.00 CUC
Water Sports, Dancing, games, cocktails, tasting of three special Habanos and…
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By Alvaro Vargas Llosa | Deseret News
A few weeks ago, Hilda Molina, a delicate, soft-spoken neurosurgeon, obtained an improbable victory against Cuba’s regime when she left Havana and joined her son and grandchildren in Argentina. Listening to her story in a Buenos Aires restaurant, I could not keep from thinking that the real measure of the Caribbean tyranny is not how it treats its enemies but its friends.
Molina was her country’s first female neurosurgeon. In 1989, she founded the International Center for Neurological Restoration. It quickly gained attention; by the early 1990s, Molina’s prestige in the scientific community…
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Billboard
An international lineup of Latin acts will join Colombian rocker Juanes at his controversial “Paz Sin Fronteras” (Peace Without Borders) concert, scheduled for Havana, Cuba Sept. 20.
The free concert, which coincides with the United Nations’ International Day of Peace, will also feature Spanish pop act Miguel Bosé and Puerto Rican tropical star Olga Tañón in addition to Cuban artists Amaury Perez, X Alfonso, Carlos Varela, Los Van Van, Silvio Rodriguez and Orishas. CuCu Diamantes and Yerba Buena, Italian artist Jovanotti, Puerto Rico’s Danny Rivera, Ecuador’s Juan Fernando Velasco, and Spain’s Victor Manuel and Luis Eduardo Aute are also…
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Larry Luxner | Cuba News
As President Barack Obama moves to ease restrictions on trade with Cuba, cigar lovers are savoring the prospect of legally lighting up a smoke that has long required a black-market connection and a willingness to flout the law. Bloomberg reported in mid-June. “There’s a mystique about a Cuban,” said John Anderson, owner of W. Curtis Draper Tobacconist Inc., a cigar shop in Washington. “Cuban tobacco has become the forbidden fruit.”
The possible end to the 47-year U.S. embargo on Cuba trade has intensified a legal and lobbying fight between cigar manufacturers…
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Jeff Franks | Reuters
Five members of Britain’s Royal Ballet came down with the H1N1 swine flu virus during their just-ended visit to Cuba, but all have recovered, a spokeswoman for the dance company said on Monday.
Tests confirmed the dancers had the virus, they were isolated and given flu medicine the ballet had brought along on its first trip to Havana, said spokeswoman Elizabeth Bell.
The outbreak forced some personnel shuffling among the 96 dancers, but performances went on as scheduled.
“It was contained and the show went on,” she said. “They are all well now.”
A sixth dancer…
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