CUBA CULTURE SECTION - Havana Journal > Cuban People
Recent News and Information
Reuters
Independent Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, who chronicles the woes of life in communist-run Cuba, was awarded one of Spain’s top journalism awards on Friday, the Ortega and Gasset prize for digital journalism.
Spanish newspaper El Pais, which awards the prize annually, said Sanchez won it for her “shrewdness” in overcoming hurdles to freedom of expression in Cuba, her “vivacious” style and her drive to join the “global space of citizen journalism.”
Her Generacion Y blog is the most popular blog posted from Cuba.
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By Shasta Darlington | CNN
In a rare public expression of discontent, a video obtained by CNN shows Cuban students grilling a top official about low wages and why Cubans are barred from tourist hotels and from traveling abroad.
Ricardo Alarcon, the president of Cuba’s National Assembly, was grilled about government policies.
During a meeting between Ricardo Alarcon—the president of the National Assembly—and students at the University of Computer Science, the young people voiced some of the concerns many Cubans share in private, but don’t often…
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I was checking in on Yoani’s blog from Havana and see that she posted many articles on January 6 including this one:
If I’m absent for several days from cyberspace, don’t worry. Right now, I’m mounting a Blog service for people from inside Cuba who want to write their own posts. Let’s see the nut cases that want to participate… so far I have about seven people convinced…
The subjects will be varied: culture, society and personal rants like these ones I do. The comments, open and democratic, even…
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CONSEJO CUBANO DE SACERDOTES MAYORES DE IFA
LETRA DEL AÑO 2008
Signo: Iguori ogbe ( Iguoribolbe )
Profecía: Ire Arikú Oyale lese Olokun. ( Aldimú ) Ofrenda variada de frutas, viandas, etc.
Gobierna: Yemaya
Acompaña: Changó.
Bandera: Azul con ribete rojo.
EBO: 1 gallo, 4 palomas, 2 cabezas de carnero, una palangana de agua de mar, granos de todo tipo, una campanita, un palo del tamaño de la persona, tierra de un remolino, papeles firmados de trabajo, melón de castilla, dos velas, un coco, pescado ahumado,…
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(see rest of story link below for video)
Wall Street Journal
On a recent morning, Yoani Sánchez took a deep breath and gathered her nerve for an undercover mission: posting an Internet chronicle about life in Fidel Castro’s Cuba.
To get around Cuba’s restrictions on Web access, the waif-like 32-year-old posed as a tourist to slip into an Internet cafe in one of the city’s luxury hotels, which normally bar Cubans. Dressed in gray surf shorts, T-shirt and lime-green espadrilles, she strode toward a guard at the hotel’s threshold and…
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In a country where the media is completely state-owned, this young Cuban blogger is extremely brave. In this post, she talks about the release of the Academy Award-winning German film, ‘The Lives of Others’. Set in Communist East Germany in the mid-1980s, the film tells the story of a Stasi agent assigned to monitor an East-German playwright suspected of subversive intellectual pursuits. The film details the alarming efficiency of the East German snooping machinery, including bugs planted in apartments and around-the-clock monitoring of a suspect’s private life.
But for Yoani, the…
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Monsters and Critics
‘You can sit down, my love. We will be with you shortly.’
Leticia Santa Cruz greets each woman who enters her hairdresser’s shop in the central Havana neighbourhood of Pilar-Atares with the same commonplace phrase.
However, eyebrows are raised when instead of a gossip or fashion magazine - which are in any case not abundant in Cuba - the customer is handed two leaflets containing information on HIV/AIDS and a pack of condoms.
Salud=Belleza Afrodita, which translates as Health=Beauty Aphrodite is a rare pilot project that seeks to combat…
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By MARC LACEY | New York Times
Cubans are migrating to the United States in the greatest numbers in over a decade, and for most of them the new way to get north is first to head west — to Mexico — in a convoluted route that avoids the United States Coast Guard.
American officials say the migration, which has grown into a multimillion-dollar-a-year smuggling enterprise, has risen sharply because many Cubans have lost hope that Raúl Castro, who took over as president from his brother Fidel in 2006, will make changes that will improve their…
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I watched this short CNN video about how “green” and environmentally friendly Cuba is. Green in the sense that people walk to work and have to grow their own food and how forward thinking Cuba is. She makes no mention about all the air and water pollution in Cuba. Really a shameful video that should be shown at Granma.cu.
Shasta, have a better look around and then give us another report.
Then there is this other idiot from a CNN video who says the the Special…
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By MOLLY A STRAUSS | Harvard Crimson Staff Writer
The “Kosher Taste of Cuba” dinner, which also included Cuban-style brown rice, mojo chicken, and Havana black bean soup, led into a multimedia book discussion with author and University of Michigan professor Ruth Behar.
The meal drew a “really excellent” turnout, according to Associate Director of Harvard Hillel Michael A. Simon. Elena C. Castañeda ’08, co-president of CAUSA who herself is one-eighth Jewish, noted the plethora of “non-traditional Hillel students eating here.”
Susana Bejar ’08, CAUSA historian and a member of Harvard’s Sephardi Society, a…
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