In 1872 Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) decided to celebrate Peace Day in Boston, in what is considered the first antecedent of Mother’s Day. A poet and social activist, she wrote the “Appeal to Womanhood,” a true call for peace and disarmament. And a reaction to the carnage of the American Civil War (1861-1865) and the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871). After the War, Ward Howe became involved in the women’s suffrage movement. In 1868 she helped form the New England Women’s Suffrage Association, of which she was elected its first president, a position she held until 1877. Earlier, in 1871, she had become the first president of the American branch of the Women’s International Peace Association. Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910). In the “Appeal,” Julia Ward Howe writes the following: But women need no longer be made a party to proceedings which fill the globe with grief and horror. Despite the assumptions of physical force, the mother has a sacred and commanding word to say to the sons who owe their life to her suffering. That word should now be heard, and answered to as never before. Arise, then, Christian women of this day. Arise, all women who have hearts.… Our sons shall...

In February 1957, in the province of Yunnan, in Mao’s China, the so-called Asian Flu broke out and from there spread to Beijing, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, India and Australia. Three months later, it would get to Africa, from where it would jump to Europe and the United States in the summer of 1957. One of the first expressions of globalization: the transmitting agents flew in DC-7 planes or arrived at the ports with their sailors and captains. The so-called flu worked in the opposite way as the coronavirus of today: from the bottom up from the point of view of the ages. A historian writes: “The pandemic especially affected children, schoolchildren, adolescents and young adults, coinciding with the grouping effect of the school stage after that first summer. Hence one of the most pronounced peaks was recorded in October 1957. And that between January and February 1958 there was a second pandemic wave that mainly affected adults.” According to virologists, it was a virus A (H2N2), common in wild ducks, that had mutated when crossing with another strain that came to affect humans (zoonotic transmission). It is estimated that it caused 1.1 million deaths in the world, of them...

Since the end of the Ford administration (1974-1977), and especially during the beginning of Carter's (1977-1981), there was a certain thaw between the governments of Cuba and the United States. One of the prevailing perceptions, from the United States, especially in the political discourse and the liberal press, stressed that after the events in Bolivia, with the death of Ernesto Che Guevara and the liquidation of his guerrilla group, Cuba was no longer in a condition to export the revolution. That moment ended with the events of the Angolan war, which paralyzed a rapprochement that led to the creation, in 1977, of the respective Interest Sections in Washington and Havana. On the other hand, the idea begins to emerge among the emigrants that this was not going to be as short as it was presumed from the beginning, because after two decades the so-called institutionalization process was taking place in Cuba following the imprint of the Soviet Union, after the failure of the Great Harvest and the entrance to CAME. That atmosphere had an impact on many Cubans in the United States and there were two events that somehow marked a change. First, for reasons of its own, a group...

...tremendous time in the sack and a stack of positions, We almost used a box of condoms. El Chacal   Historically, Cuban men have been quite reluctant to use condoms for allegations such as lack of lubrication, discomfort and interference in sexual pleasure. But also for a sexist component that made and still makes the task of contraception fall on women, and which implies a visceral rejection of the word “vasectomy” due to an alleged effect on their virility. The picture is completed if it is considered that in several generations of sexually active men before 1985, the most that could be expected from an unprotected “hitch” were STDs treated with antibiotics such as penicillin. But the emergence of HIV-AIDS in Cuba began to change the picture, and since then its use has gone up, although not without contradictions, paradoxes, resistance and zigzags. For example, in 2006 a survey applied in a polyclinic in the Centro Habana municipality to teenagers from 10 to 19 years and to young people from 20 to 24, found that 61% had an active sex life; that the onset of sexual intercourse had occurred at 44% in the ages between 15 and 19; and in...

In a famous essay, Alejo Carpentier defined Havana as “the city of columns.” Indeed, walking through places like the Calzada de Jesús del Monte, so marked by the poet Eliseo Diego, or the current municipalities of El Cerro, Diez de Octubre and Plaza, it is not unusual to find buildings and constructions featuring Ionic or Doric columns, a poor copy of an outdated neoclassicism that, however, gave that Havana a special touch of distinction among the Latin American capitals of the time. Walking through certain areas of El Vedado, the scent of daisies and jasmines fills the gardens and parks; there are the magnificent columns―some intact, others in semi ruins―that now coexist with an omniscient urban protagonist: the grilles and fences, put up on purpose as insulating structures of an outside world that is perceived as profane, vulgar, promiscuous and, above all, intrusive and insecure. But they are by no means an absolutely new feature. Carpentier writes: “The traditional Cuban house―and this is even more visible in the provinces―is a house enclosed in its own gloom, like the Andalusian, Arab house, from which many descend. The spiked gate only shows the face of the person who used the knocker. Rarely...

This December 17 marks five years since the announcement of the “thaw” of diplomatic relations between the governments of Cuba and the United States by the then presidents Raúl Castro and Barack Obama. The five-year period, which began with the historic announcement of the reestablishment of diplomatic relations and the visit of President Obama to the island, ends with a 180-degree turn in U.S. policy towards Cuba, new presidents in both countries and relations at a critical point. This has been, broadly speaking, the chronology of a path that promised a new stage in relations between the two countries and that distorted the intentions of normalization after the arrival of the Trump administration. 2014 December 17: Raúl Castro and Barack Obama announce the reestablishment of bilateral relations. The prisoners accused of espionage are released, in Cuba the American Alan Gross and in the United States the Cubans Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero and Ramón Labañino. Measures are announced, among others, to facilitate travel and remittances to Cuba. 2015 January 17: The measures announced by President Barack Obama on December 17, 2014, which remove some restrictions on trade and certain categories of travel to Cuba for Americans, come into force. January 21-22:...

After having undergone a drastic disconnection from the USSR and CAME mechanisms, with dramatic repercussions on the quality of life of citizens, a group of strategies aimed at weathering its internal and external impact were adopted in Cuba. The economists of the 1990s used to refer to tourism with a metaphor of frightening futuristic flavor, but real, when they said that it was the new locomotive that pulled the train, as sugar did before. That was in force until the emergence of new alternatives, mainly the sending abroad of medical personnel and technical advisors for a limited time. From there they sent remittances―and send―to their relatives and returned with goods and merchandise not easily purchased on the island after having contributed to the State a substantial part of their monthly emoluments, the amount of which varies depending on the country in question. Foreign investment, on the other hand, never became a hard and definitive economic fact due to a set of various limitations and restrictions, but especially slowness, bureaucratization and the old mentality. However, it implied the emergence of a business sector involved in joint ventures and tourism, frequently affected by a clash between historical values ​​and those of the...

Times of crisis bear a component of irrationality that is not always emphasized in sociological studies, and even less in the economic ones, because they are not the object of their study. In Cuba, their main expression is the psychological impacts on a society marked since 1993 by the circulation of two currencies and by the existence of population sectors that don’t have a systematic access to one of those currencies. As is known, it is called CUC, and it has been given even more value than a USD, but the neighborhood people continue to overwhelmingly call it: "dollars" or "fulas." Also, of course, they unleash cravings for consumption of goods and services that cannot be accessed with national currency, in which however the vast majority of citizens perceive their salaries, all of which takes place because of the growing place of money in social relations. A shock wave is taking over everything, and not even religion escapes. For example, many Santeria Ifá priests seem to be concerned today about the use and abuse of spurious practices that reach the point of classifying deities as "cold" and "hot"―that is, cheap and expensive―related to the amount of money to be paid...

China is at the forefront of many things, one of them buying cars. And the Chinese do it not only with their characteristic patience, but also with a peculiarity, one of the boomerangs of the westernization process, but that at the same time refers to the qualitative differences between the local and the foreign: they prefer foreign brands and not their own, especially the Toyotas, GMs and Fords, firms that have seen their sales grow to impressive levels. For obvious reasons, today China is the main vehicle market in the world. In 2018 the tariffs on the import of cars and their spare parts were reduced, which allowed greater access to those goods. They were cut from 25 to 15 percent on most vehicles, part of the efforts to continue opening the markets. They also reduced the import levies on parts to 6 percent (from around 10 percent). "The benefits are tremendous for our business," said a spokesman for the Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. BMW said it would review its prices: the decision was "a strong sign that China will continue to open." Audi executives received as imagined the "greater liberalization and opening of the Chinese market." In Cuba, the...

At the start of the Republic, the island’s elite had decided to eliminate the Spanish footprint in architecture, since it did not represent the modern spirit, such as France or the United States. As an expression of the times, one of the works built during the expansion/remodeling process of Prado was the Glorieta, designed by French architect Charles Brun, where the Army ‘s General Band played for the enjoyment of Havanans, well seated on iron chairs around it or beginning the practice of sitting on the Malecón’s wall to take in the sea breeze. Enrique Loynaz del Castillo (1871-1963) and his wife María de las Mercedes Muñoz Sañudo, a descendant of illustrious military and religious Basques, lived nearby. A man known to Havanans because of his merits during the 1895 War of Independence and for composing the "Himno invasor" hymn. He was, in effect, commander, lieutenant colonel, colonel and brigadier general, ranks won through his own merits, to which we should add the confidence of José Martí and the fact that he had saved Antonio Maceo’s life in Costa Rica. According to historians, at the exit of a theater a Spaniard shot Maceo in the back, seriously injuring him. Another...

A ghost travels through the island: globalization. For obvious reasons, it doesn’t have an impact as in Moscow, Beijing, Mexico City, Madrid, Paris, Santo Domingo, Buenos Aires or New York, not with transnational corporations, or with Mc Donald's or Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises, or malls with Michael Jordan shoes, Banana Republic or Victoria's Secret clothing in shop windows. But it is a fact that from the 1990s to date the country has been opening. The Pope’s visit put it in a slogan: "That Cuba open to the world and that the world open to Cuba." First there was a wave of emigrants after the maps changed color, including about 35,000 rafters floating in the Strait (1994) and stranded for almost a year at the Guantanamo Naval Base; then, a successive increase of tourists and of Cubans residing in the United States, Europe and Latin America and, finally, a migration reform (2013) that changed the relationship with the world in many ways, whatever its limitations. Experts call cultural remittances certain artifacts sent by those who go to the North and continue with their heads in the South, something that, as the category itself says, is not limited to the money they...

I At first it was a path linked to sugar production, the great change that brought the plantation economy to the island. According to Lo que fuimos y lo que somos o La Habana antigua y moderna (1857) by José M. de la Torre: It was first called the Camino de San Antonio, for the San Antonio el Chiquito sugar mill, which belonged to Alderman Don Blas de Pedroso; it still existed at the time of the English invasion, and it also had a beautiful masonry hermitage and portal, being the main exit road from the city to the countryside, until 1735, when a bridge was built on the Calzada del Monte.... It started at Calle Real , crossed the Campo de Marte, and in a tortuous line it continued to the aforementioned San Antonio sugar mill. Then it took the name of another saint. Since then, the Jesuits and a corrosive vision of the elderly, gossiping and politicians had premonitorily appeared. It was given the name of San Luis Gonzaga, for the hermitage dedicated to that saint (erected in 1751 and destroyed in 1835), which was on the corner of the Orphanage. In 1735 it was repaired and it...

Richard Nixon’s biography, like that of many American politicians of his time, has its links with Havana. Indeed, the later sadly famous president for the Watergate scandal, traveled several times to the Cuban capital, first as senator and then as vice president. The first time was in 1940, with his wife Pat Ryan (1912-1993) on a United Fruit Company vessel from Puerto Rico. From that moment on, according to Henry Kissinger, "Nixon was fascinated with Cuban mysticism." A mysticism that certainly had nothing to do with interest in the local culture, nor in music, nor even in the rumba or in its people, nor in its women, it is assured, but rather in alcohol and casinos. Fascination with the Casino of the Hotel Nacional and that of Sans Souci, where he was seen gazing with some desperation at the roulette or the card mat. Nothing extraordinary if it were not because, in his case, both hobbies involved contacts and relations with the Mafia, which in the 1950s had taken control of the city based on the freedoms and privileges that Fulgencio Batista had granted it with the Law on Hotels 2074. The Las Vegas of the Caribbean before the latter...

Jamaican Walter Adolphe Roberts (1888-1962), the author of the book on Havana discussed in a previous article, unfoundedly has also been called a racist for his portrayal of Chinatown. His approach to the place, on the contrary, is invaluable to be able to capture the marginality that characterized it in the 1950s, at times with a harshness that is nothing but an expression of the purest realism, despite the euphemisms that the author uses or is forced to use. Roberts scares away from the place potential visitors, far from encouraging them to enter. And he does so from an ethical stance, and even personal security, very well defined and consistent with other testimonies of the time. He writes: Like most of the Chinese neighborhoods of the New World, Havana’s has its morbidly secret side, its dens where opium is smoked and other vices are practiced. The visitor would do well to stay away from them. Anyway, few guides would risk showing him the way, and he would never find it by himself. If you can’t satisfy yourself only if you've taken a glimpse of the degradation, you don’t have to go any farther than some of the bars open in...

Also read: Lives of King Jesus and House of Glory (I) In 2014 the Casa de Gloria (House of Glory) church was founded in Marianao in the home of the parents of its pastor, Adrián Pose Coizeau. The perfect type. Young, former Santeria practitioner son of Eleggua, raised in a family environment of a father who is a Palo Monte practitioner and a mother who is a spiritualist. And a tanned body from taekwondo. "I was the leader of the negative, of bullying," he once said in an interview. But at age 17 he had an encounter with Jesus Christ. And in September 2017, an experience with the Holy Spirit―and with angels. The (new) chosen. "He placed his hand on his head, bathed him in gold dust and told him that he would bring the supernatural power of God to this country. Based on that, Casa de Gloria, his temple, started expanding and its 'miracles' multiplied," said a report by Washington Blade. That’s when Pose knew he should preach the Gospel and work for the Kingdom not only with his actions, but also, they say, writing books. One of them with a slightly long title, but surely not very distant...

The name of Guillermo Maldonado probably doesn’t mean too much for many readers in Cuba, and perhaps also from abroad. Suffice it to say, in short and to the point, that he is one of the most famous so-called prosperity pastors among Hispanics in the United States, founder in 1996 of the non-confessional church King Jesus Ministry, according to some, the fastest growing within the Union. The story of King Jesus is in fact not very different from that of other churches of its kind. Its official narrative postulates that it began with twelve parishioners―and here the parallelism is obvious―in the living room of an apartment in SW Miami, and concluded with a huge temple in an area of ​​Kendall, at 14100 SW 144th. Ave., near the Tamiami Airport. And with twin ministries in Naples, Cape Coral, Hialeah, Little Havana, Tampa, and outside of Florida in Marietta (Georgia) and Astoria (New York), among others. In this journey, religion, mass media, market and strategic alliances are interspersed with individuals like Toufik Benedictus Hinn, better known as Benny Hinn, the Israeli televangelist inevitably associated with both crusades of miracles and several frauds. Today Maldonado’s ministry is located on about 100,000 square feet...

In 1946 a Santiago-born graduate of Business Administration at Yale University called Goar Mestre (1912-1994) laid the first stone of a building on the corner of 23 and L. Then he said something that worked like an oracle: that this would be "the heart of Havana." It was the birth of a cultural and business complex designed after New York’s famous Radio City, and in particular the Warner movie theater―Radio Centro and finally Yara would come later―with capacity for 1,700 people, in which the first film in Cinerama, a technology released in the United States in 1952, would be shown.  And it was also the birth of those five blocks from 23 and L downward, in search of the sea, which would be known as La Rampa. At a short distance from that heart, on 17 and N, the Focsa building (1956), by Ernesto Gómez Sampera, was the pioneer of coastline skyscrapers, one of the seven wonders of local architecture. Then came the Capri Hotel (1957) by José Canaves; and on La Rampa the Retiro Médico (1958) by Quintana, Beale, Rubio and Pérez Beato; and the Habana Hilton (1958), a run-on of Welton Becket Associates with the Cuban Arroyo y...

A preliminary look reveals that the suspension of U.S. cruises will have a specific impact on the Cuban economy, but it is far from being the end of the world, although it is taking place at a very complicated time. According to estimates by John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, in 2018 cruise ships contributed between 63 and 107 million dollars to the Cuban government, quite modest figures considering the 2.5 billion in revenue the Ministry of Tourism reported that year. The classic slip-up: "What Cuba earns for cruises is insignificant. The bulk of the money is earned by the cruise company," said Emilio Morales, president and CEO of Havana Consulting Group. But undeniably the services provided to American cruise passengers strengthened and created new links in a whole network, especially in Old Havana and its surroundings, even though, in fact, this type of tourism always leaves less money than the hotel stays, especially since visitors spend the night in their large floating hotel, where practically all the services are available to them. However, several testimonies have been underlining the impact of the measure among Cuban entrepreneurs: "This is another hard blow," Miguel Ángel Morales, owner...

Read From the embrace to the ax: travel from U.S. to Cuba (I) Starting from the line set in the Presidential Memorandum on National Security, signed in Miami by President Trump on June 16, 2017―which among other issues deals with that of the Cuban military―, on June 5, 2019 the ax fell on people-to-people travel, cruise ships, yachts, sailboats and private aircraft. According to the press release of Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin: Cuba continues to play a destabilizing role in the Western Hemisphere, providing a communist foothold in the region and propping up U.S. adversaries in places like Venezuela and Nicaragua by fomenting instability, undermining the rule of law, and suppressing democratic processes. This Administration has made a strategic decision to reverse the loosening of sanctions and other restrictions on the Cuban regime. These actions will help to keep U.S. dollars out of the hands of Cuban military, intelligence, and security services. By placing the military and security services as if they were loose electrons, the fact that they contribute to the State the income obtained in the tourist facilities they manage remains in parenthesis. Exactly the same as is done by the hotel chains beyond their control....

In its process of interaction and engagement with Cuba, the Obama administration gradually modified the Cuban Assets Control Regulations (CACR) based on its own objectives: "get involved with and empower the Cuban people" and "increase contacts to support Cuban civil society" were two of its key expressions. This was done several times since 2009. The last one was on March 15, 2016, shortly before President Obama's visit to the Island. The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) announced several "significant amendments" to the CACR, one of which would allow "non-tourist personal travel," a move designed to clear the way for commercial flights, which had already been announced in January. Going to the Island would be simpler starting then: it would no longer be necessary to do it in groups or packages, but through the individual basis―the self-directed―, a variant that some called the face-to-face. You just had to fill out a form declaring the educational purpose to travel to Cuba. In fact, with regular direct flights, a ticket to Cuba could be booked online, just like traveling to Buenos Aires, Paris, Moscow or Burundi. In February 2016, both governments...

The Cuban “piropo” or compliment was inherited from Spanish nobility and gallantry. Expression of some sexist codes in which in normal practice men were always supposed to take the initiative, in its origins this cultural practice sought to denote the beauty of a woman to continue insisting in case the gesture was reciprocated. There are multiple types of compliments according to tradition: poetic, culinary, humorous...some have lost their motivation; others survive, although without their past effectiveness. The humorous ones classified among the most effective due to their articulation with the national idiosyncrasy and the ease with which they unleashed a smile that acted as a bridge and allowed taking the intersexual relationship to a higher level, beyond the casual. That's what my grandfather did on a Casablanca boat to the woman who would later be his wife for more than 40 years, and which I won’t tell now for lack of space. Their main guarantee was located in the domains of an elliptical sexuality, as developed by the popular vernacular songs of the first decades of the 20th century with refrains such as "Put your hand here, Macorina" or "If you ask me for the fish, I’ll give it to...

In Cuba, food production has fallen short of forecasts. Importing food has represented a headache for the State, much more in a context like the current one, characterized by serious problems of liquidity and asymmetries in the balance of payments. Agriculture has gone downhill. And the great white hope, the process of distributing idle lands, has not yielded the desired results for a set of reasons that range from bureaucratic obstacles to lack of resources and the lack of incentives for producers. At different moments of the process came the cattle, poultry and pig plans, usually small with respect to consumption needs. For a long time, the first has resulted in a beef supply in shock, which has resulted in beef steaks, shredded meat and roast meat being three sources and three integral parts of the esotericism at the table of Cubans Its natural daughter, milk production, has persistently remained below floating levels. Two years ago, for example, we had to import more than 173 million dollars in powdered milk, more than 10 million in butter and more than 25 million in cheese and curd. In short, more than 215 million in dairy products. Poultry has become synonymous to intermittence....

He had arrived in the emerging city, founded shortly before by Cuban, Spanish and Italian immigrants around tobacco factories. By then it had become a hotbed, and therefore the Spanish colonial authorities had marked it as a place to watch and punish, as much or more than the Key. One day two Cubans ―one mulatto, the other white― who had volunteered as personal assistants, gave him a cup of Coca wine from Mariani. The man who always dressed in black accepted it, but at the first sip he noticed something strange and set it aside. The individuals disappeared from the scene, additional evidence of the attempt to assassinate he who, without a doubt, had become the soul of the revolution. His friend, Dr. Miguel Barbarrosa, was immediately called. He had him vomit and pumped out his stomach. Commemorative plaque. Photo: Roberto A. He was staying in the home of Paulina Hernández and Ruperto Pedroso ―both blacks and laborers, two of those poor people of the earth whom he mentioned in a famous book of verses published In New York― in Ybor City, where today there is a park with a statue of him and palm trees planted with Cuban soil....

Last January, a joint operation by the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) and U.S. aviation bombed several Al-Shabaab bases near the border with Somalia, leaving more than 50 dead and an indeterminate number of injured. According to intelligence sources quoted by the Kenyan newspaper Daily Post, "the group is in dire need of doctors and medical equipment," and that would be the reason that would explain the kidnapping of Cuban doctors Landy Rodríguez Hernández and Assel Herrera Correa in Mandera, a town on the border with Somalia where they were serving under an agreement between the governments of Nairobi and Havana. In that case it would be the first action carried out for that purpose by this affiliate of Al-Qaeda, the protagonist of a history of kidnappings for money, extortion of international NGOs, drug trafficking, donations from abroad and the imposition of taxes in the territories controlled by them as forms of financing, among other actions in that sense. In the area where they penetrated on April 12, local doctors had taken flight due, precisely, to security concerns. There were not many other options then for Al-Shabaab to be able to solve the problem of caring for their wounded...

... because the wind, the graceful wind, extends like a cat to let itself be defined. José Lezama Lima Marianao is not a suitable place to wear long sleeves, especially in the summer. According to the website Weather Spark, in Havana, to which it belongs, at this time of the year the average temperature is about 32 degrees Celsius. And it lacks that gentle breeze that comes from the sea, characteristic of other municipalities such as Playa, Plaza, Centro Habana or Old Havana. Today in Cuba there are pastors of churches that dress with long sleeves and, sometimes, even with suspenders. One of them is new here: his name is Adrián Pose and he has practically just founded in Marianao a church ―Casa de Gloria―, which alludes to what comes after salvation and miracles. An interesting phenomenon within the national religious panorama, characterized by diversity and certain specificities. Perhaps the main one is the expansion of charismatic and Pentecostal forms, which confirms that poverty has been extending like a cat throughout the social fabric, a fact that sociologists support through the Gini coefficient. And also that the insular condition is permeated by globalization and its correlates, once studied by Néstor...