Tuesday, December 15, 2009




Among the poetry, laughter, music, coffee and tea, on the afternoon of Monday, December 15, I was at the opening of the Poetry Without End Festival.  I could not, thanks to institutional censorship, be at the House of Culture in Alamar, where the readings normally happen.  However, the house of David, one of the members of the group Omni Zona-Franca, hosted the poets and the fans of poetry.

Micro Diez in Alamar might seem horrible at first glance; there are places in Havana from where it is very difficult to exchange one house for another: Alamar and El Reparto Eléctrico.  But today I left with the absolute certainty that, at bottom, Alamar is not so bad.  What it lacks in aesthetics the town makes up for by the creativity and solidarity of neighbors.

I could be happy every day of my life to take the P11 bus just for the readings of the poet Manual González Busto, and to dream for a half hour that I am Giselle, the Dutch muse to whom he directs his letters; to hear Francis Sánchez and aspire to understand his verses about the history of Ciego de Ávila, to shout, “I love love!” in the chorus of David and to close my eyes when Amaury Pacheco plays the bells.

But above all these things, in the end I can’t deny that to read under the lamplight is incredible; I want to live in a neighborhood where the neighbors, when they are called to participate in a repudiation rally, oppose it, where they discuss and argue with the delegation about their reasons for refusing, as David’s neighbors did that evening.  This is the Cuba in which I want to live, which I refuse to stop imagining, the Cuba that one day—without any doubt—not only will commit itself to poetry, but to all the other freedoms, perhaps more profane, to which I aspire as a human being.

3 comments:

Humberto Capiro said...

ABC NEWS PIECE: U.S. Travel Industry Gearing up for Return to Cuba

"A bill to end the travel ban sponsored by Democrat Bill Delahunt of Massachusetts and Republican Jeff Flake of Arizona has 195 backers in the House of Representatives, 23 votes short, supporters of the measure said.
Similar legislation in the Senate has the support of key senators such as Republican Richard Lugar of Indiana, but needs 60 votes to pass.

"They are within striking distance in the House," said Phil Peters, a Cuba expert at the Lexington Institute think tank.

No action on the bill is expected until the spring."

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=9356973

Humberto Capiro said...

Over 50 years had to pass so "hermanisimo" Raul Castro would recognized that he and his brother Fidel are criminals, a FREUDIAN SLIP he had during a speech at the ALBA Summit "in December 2009 says it clearly.


THANKS TO JOEL GARCIA'S BLOT "A CUBAN IN THE CANARY ISLANDS"
http://uncubanoencanarias.blogspot.com/

Humberto Capiro said...

ASSOCIATED PRESS ARTICLE: Amid crisis, Cuba falls short on home-building

"A report prepared for Sunday's session of parliament indicates that authorities missed by more than a third the target of building 32,000 homes this year.
There was no reason given for shortfall, reported in the Communist Party newspaper Granma. Cuba's cash-strapped economy has been pummeled by the global economic crisis, however, causing officials to slash imports of food and other basics as the country's foreign debt balloons.

In September 2005, Fidel Castro said housing was such a priority that his country would build 100,000 new homes per year. That goal proved so overambitious that by 2008, officials had lowered annual projections to 50,000 homes, then sliced them to 32,000 for 2009 — a bar that still proved far too high."