The hour of revenge is near, at least for veterans Eastern Massachusetts Senior Softball Association (EMASS) who seek revenge on the four straight losses they suffered in Boston at the end of August to Cuban baseball senior stars, including the legendary Pedro Chavez. Michael Eizenberg , founder of the organization "Educational Travel Alliance " and of this sports bridge between Cuba and the United States, confirmed OnCuba that everything was ready for the continuation in Havana of these friendly  matches that began in November 2009, when Teofilo Stevenson threw the first pitch . These events have been characterized by close games and rivers of adrenaline that rejuvenate players who even are over 70 years of age. In addition , last year and this Veterans of Cuba were to play in Boston, not as sporting rivals, but as old friends, literally. "A great friendship between the Cuban and American players has been born, even though very few speak the language of the other,"  Eizenberg, catcher, third baseman and center fielder of EMASS team told OnCuba. Another detail: the Americans host in their own places Cubans when they play in Boston. According to Gary Siegel, host of two visitors, "on the ground...

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant became famous for his disquisitions on the "thing in itself" and the "thing for itself", but his theories lost credibility as he never had an epistemological orgasm by venturing into "the thing for Cubans ..." What is the Thing? Cuban documentary filmmaker Juan Carlos Travieso throws the question to common folks and academics , girls and actresses, philosophers and even a poet who used to be called Antonio Lopez, until he wrote the poem "The Thing" and then nothing was the same. Seriously ... Have you ever wondered what the thing is? Is it a heritage of Cubans? At least its multiple variants are Cuban: the “move” got tough, the daily “up” included in the typical greeting “what’s up?’ Anyway, Travieso honored his surname and gives us a fun approach to this national institution, unfathomable and multifaceted, in the independent documentary ¨Que cosa?¨ that could soon be seen in theaters of Havana. ¨Que cosa? ¨ is the result of an idea born four years ago in Gibara, which took life in the early 2013; it is a searing and plural look to the everyday absurdity in Cuba, indefinite but real, which mystery Travieso tries to...

Leo Brouwer defends that of "a man who has a friend has it all" because his did not leave him when most needed. For example, thanks to his friendship with Paco de Lucia that world champion flamenco guitarist will play again in Cuba after 26 years from his previous concert. And thanks to his friendship with other Cuban music legends like Juan Formell and Silvio Rodriguez, the Paco concert is a go. And you you can bet on it. Brouwer himself confirmed on the eve of perhaps the most awaited moment of the festival that bears his name: the recital of Paco de Lucia and his team, which includes the legendary dancer Antonio "Farruquito" Fernandez, singer Antonio Flores and bassist Alain Pérez, a Cuban that if has worked for nine years with the king of flamenco, "he must have something" Brouwer says... he added it will be unique ensemble, with piano insertion included. In the press conference everyone expected that at any moment appeared a sort of flamenco David Carradine Paco de Lucia is, but we were disappointed. However, Brouwer said his guest was happy to be in Cuba, and that he had noted it. Therefore he invited us to...

Reading e.e. cummings is a challenge because the good poet liked to experiment with shapes, punctuation and even vocabulary. That editors always put his initials in lowercase in a way you lived up to his anarchy in writing, expressed in the formal fragmentation of his verses. Take that to something as mathematical as music enhances the merit of the British Sue Herrod, who put to e.e. cummings poems for the concert Up into the silence, which people attending the presentation of her DVD this weekend in Chaplin Cinema, arguably the best sound place throughout Cuba, enjoyed. The projection of the audiovisual material that won two 2013CUBADISCO awards- highlighted between the parallel activities of V Leo Brouwer Festival of Chamber Music, not only because it allowed live again one of the best shows of last year, but it was the first DVD recorded in Cuba with 5.1 surround sound It all started in 2002 when she took a Cummings poem as a musical exercise, and fell in love with the style. B y 2004 she already had 13 songs for piano and voice, and recorded with Diana Fuentes a demo with six pieces, which won a prize. Shortly after Diana became...

Pablito Milanes, one of the pillars of the Cuban Nueva Trova movement, was hospitalized in Buenos Aires, Argentina, victim of pancreatitis that forced him to postpone his concert at the legendary Gran Rex. The author of classics like Yolanda and Para Vivir got food poisoned and had to be taken to a hospital. Milanes was also scheduled to perform at the edition of the 53 Festival Musical September in the northern city of Tucuman. At 70 years of age, the Cuban troubadour must rest for 24 hours following the admission, on Thursday. His recital at Rex is now on Saturday, if he feels healthy, organizers said. Pablito had just arrived in Argentina to present his album Renaissance, in which he is reunited with rhythms of Cuban music such as son, guaguancó, changüí, the Danzon, La Guajira and conga. In an interview days ago he had complained about the superficiality of contemporary music. "Weak, shallow, lacking poetry, feelings and technique" were some of the epithets that he dedicated to contemporary trends. This is an author who has been characterized as much by singing poetry as to speak his mind, not afraid to get wet both artistically and intellectually, even if this...

Now Cuban private realtors will no longer be illegal, will be renamed estate agents and enter the glorious army of self-employed, non-state sector, or whatever you call it throughout the island ... What it was previously done surreptitiously and mysteriously, is now legal and if you want so loudly proclaim "here, the house of your dreams is here ..." Cuba's Official Gazette published the approval of this and other 17 activities, for a total of 201 trades authorized for private initiative. As with previous tradesthey just legalized something that had been here for a while, with its own rules and great returns. In particular real estate agent’s work had gained traction after liberalization almost two years of the sale of homes in Cuba. And how could it be different, when a broker usually receives 10 percent of the transaction amount, in some cases figures in the thousands of dollars. The service includes finding homes, bureaucratic procedures and the occasional bribe, the dreaded "fines", inevitable in this highly precarious sector in Cuba. To get a timid idea of what may prove to be a barter of homes in Cuba  you could watch what Juan Carlos Tabio masterfully filmed 30 years ago...

Forget trying croquettes made out of giraffe neck, and if you want them wear a pith helmet and go on safari to Africa, because the story that they had been stolen from a National Zoo was just that: a story... One of the most colorful current gossips in Cuba-because here there are many all the time- stated that besides the long-neck mammal they had made disappear four monkeys and a pony, at a ceremony that will make David Copperfield himself envious, but here there are  wizards that can make disappear whatever they want. I grabbed a phone and searched in its pages the listed phones for the National Zoo and its illustrious predecessor, the one on 26 Street. At first I had to swear that I was not pulling his leg, that I was a journalist and wanted to know if the rumor was true. After a silence, he dryly assured me it was a lie. In the 26 Zoo, he told me, there hadn’t been giraffes in ages... As there is Havana of diurnal animals of which we have no idea, I suspected that maybe if the animals were gone, trafficked to some farm of a nouveau rich, or...

Rectifying is wise, and apparently they did it. In a telephone conversation with OnCuba, Cuban musician Robertico Carcassés said that they were already reversing the sanction imposed by the Ministry of Culture for his catharsis in concert on September 12 at the Anti-imperialist Tribune in Havana. The suspension of the pianist and his Interactivo band of all public spectacles generated a series of questions from music heavyweights, from Silvio Rodriguez to the group Calle 13, and when asked if he believed that this impact could reverse the veto, Robertico said “that reversal is already underway.” "I have never ceased being optimistic," the 41-year-old artist simply said, who also thanked the support that he also felt through turmoil which generated his words, mostly amplified by the subsequent suspension. Still unknown whether he will return this week to his usual space at the Bertold Brecht Theater, soon Robertico will accompany Silvio his weekend concerts in neighborhoods of Santiago de las Vegas and El Chico, invited by the author of Ojala. Thus the soap opera that now entertains the virtual Cuba will end because ordinary Cubans didn’t care or simply did not know. Anyway, it is confirmed that small-town, big hell... From time...

Perhaps not more than in other years, but certainly they were heavyweights: Cuban cinema today mourn the death of Daniel Diaz Torres who thickens the list of national cultural personalities who have passed away in this 2013. A cancer took him in no time, and at 64 ceased to exist one of the most prolific, trenchant and committed filmmakers of his time, who could at least say goodbye with that public success "Ana's film" one of preferred ones in the last Havana Film Festival. Upon learning of the death, OnCuba contacted his colleague and friend Manolo Pérez Paredes, the most recent winner of the National Film Award: "We had a long friendship. He was my assistant director on El Hombre de Maisinicú and Rio Negro, and later, when he was director, we used to exchange scripts and opinions. I was with him for all the hype generated by Alicia en el Pueblo de las Maravilla, as well as the ICAIC creation groups ". For a while people in the trade were commenting about his illness, long and painful as obituaries that are afraid of the word cancer, but still the reaction in the building of 23 and 12 has been...

Leo Brouwer prefers to celebrate his colleagues before better than kissing his own reflection in the mirror every morning, reminding himself how good he is. Perhaps because he knows he is great, and because he also has many friends, he can afford to bring to the chamber music festival named after him monsters that fill stadiums, by the modest price of their friendship. "If I had to pay what they charge-what they are worth-I would have to start robbing banks," Brouwer joked in a marathon press conference interrupted by jokes and incidental, in the usual counterpoint between the musician and his wife, the director and general producer of the event, Isabelle Hernandez. She always refers to him as "The Master" and he invariably refers to it as "The Chief". They are, according to Brouwer, like a yin and yang that complement each other in public and private, with the ultimate aim of promoting the work of an imperative of Cuban culture, especially the music and not just his: classical music. In that endeavor, Leo Brouwer Festival of Chamber Music plays a key role, and the results are evident in the quantum leap from his proposal: from four concerts in 2009...

If some time ago I feared that the bad programming on the TV was actually a sneaky strategy to stimulate or encourage reading or increase of births, now I think a program against hypertension could be behind the disappearance of salt in certain parts of the Havana municipality of Vedado, and a little farther ... The possibility of Havana "without salt" disturbed me, and I went out to see how real the deficit was. Several grocery stores’ clerks denied the rumor, assuring that quarterly installments, one kilogram for every two consumers-were sold in a timely manner, and they were already expecting the allocation for the final months of the year. One even told me that the in the out-of-ration book outlets, where the pound goes for five pesos, they had more than enough salt, although other sources assured me that was not like that, that in Parraga and Los Pinos didn’t lack only salt but matches too. This confirms what that one thing says the drunk and the bartender another. For clerks, the guilt is on the consumer that doesn’t rationalize, or waits till he runs out of salt to go out and get some. And that may be true....

People used to call Jaime Sarusky "El Tigre" both for his nose for a good story and not to release it till he was able to give every single detail since he was, above all a seducer, or at least had a reputation as such. His colleague and friend of the years, Pedro de la Hoz, tells us that there was some mysterious aura around his love life, fueled by his jovial being and charisma. Well, early this morning the Tiger took his last breath: apparently died of natural causes, since no one has said otherwise. Of Jewish descent, Sarusky will be buried in the Hebrew Cemetery in Guanabacoa . Thus died a "writer formidable", as Marta Rojas, his companion of time first in Revolution and later  Granma newspaper summarized him, of which Sarusky was founder and first head of the culture department. "He was very cultivated but humble, investigated with great eagerness. One of his latest obsessions were the invented names that proliferated in Cuba in recent years. He was a lover of baseball, and seeing the name of the players he came to investigate them and found some hilarious creations ". Rojas, recognized as the reporter for the...

The Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC) has a new chairman: sources close to the institution, which is undergoing a restructuring process confirmed to OnCuba that the hitherto vice president Robert Smith replaced in office the poet and writer Omar Gonzalez . For months there was speculation about the cessation of Gonzalez as ICAIC president for health reasons, and the designation of who was considered his right hand could be seen as a continuation of his administration, initiated after the resignation of the late Alfredo Guevara, one of its founders. Journalist and Casa de las Americas award winning, Gonzalez was appointed Deputy Minister of Culture in 1989, and then headed the National Council of Plastic Arts, the Cuban Book Institute and ICAIC, since the beginning of this century. Robert Smith of Castro served until now as vice president for information and head of the Cubacine portal. He has a degree in Psychology from the University of Havana, and has been a distributor and film promoter, sales manager, organizer of national and international festivals, and often participate in press conferences and activities organized by the Information Center of the institution. His arrival at the top of ICAIC raises some...

César Valdés announced that he retires because "they opened fire on referees ," and my first reaction was to wonder why the hell I was doing journalism, where the national sport is not baseball, but to blame us for all ... The "enough" from the head of the Cuban baseball umpires adds fuel to the revolutionary sport whose gossip behind the scenes currently generate more news than their results as such. And the exit of a type with the rank of Cesar is very eloquent... Since he threw up the Tintorero de Marianao in that game against the Orioles, a reaction that had conflicting interpretations on both sides, César Valdés began to gain prestige and prominence on the baseball, to the point that they were soft with him when he used his hands, literally, with a journalist who questioned his performance. That's how passionate he is with his stuff this burly big man, ruddy, who was born in San Juan de los Yeras and lives in Santa Clara, where he  is explaining a decision that not only takes many by surprise, but that still leaves more orphan the worst props for a championship with the quality that everybody would like....

Let’s call a spade a spade, and when it comes to chicken…the El Aljibe restaurant’s secret sauce is a mystery for even the most discerning connoisseur; at this little piece of countryside in the heart of residential Havana, it makes the difference between a delicious chicken meal and a veritable culinary treasure…. El Aljibe’s chicken is part of a fraternity of hospitality to which other Cuban legacies belong, such as the Floridita daiquiri. You could search for its aroma and taste on other menus, but the real “chicken al Aljibe,” the one that has enthralled major politicians, inspired poets and musicians, and feted champions, can only be found at this outdoor restaurant, or ranchón, which has reigned in the Miramar district for the last 20 years. With a history as rich as its menu, El Aljibe is proud of its simplicity; its only sophistication lies in its excellent service and its desire for diners to come and discover everyday gourmet cuisine: home-cooked goodness from Cuba’s countryside. Roast chicken with white rice and “sleepy” black beans, salad, and tuber vegetables, served in generous helpings for eating like there’s no tomorrow…. Apart from El Aljibe’s staff, nobody knows what kind of wonderful...

Alvarez Guedes just made his worst joke: he died ... The humor, the relaxation, the Cuban choteo are mourning. At 86, at his home in Kendall, a suburb of Miami, Guillermo Alvarez Guedes died surrounded by his family. He never had any use for the Guillermo to be recognized ... When doing the history of Cuban humor, Alvarez Guedes will have a guaranteed space, among other reasons, because he had a grace to make jokes that if told by others will be disgusting, but told by him it was impossible not to laugh. Even in years when we had to listen to him in an almost clandestine way, in cassettes copied to infinity, in worn-out by use and abuse tapes, that we parched together with nail polish.  A typical Cuban joker, even without seeing him you felt in those recordings the complicity of who makes stories of relaxation at a meeting of friends, as the most natural thing in the world. It looks like it was something genetic, because her sister Eloisa was also a storyteller with an unsurpassed comic talent. While listening to him since I have come to reason, I came to put a face to Alvarez Guedes...

Darwin Fornes is not too sure that creativity has to do with the times, while recognizing that circumstances do influence, and the current ones helped him realize an interesting idea: the Chamakovic Project ... An effective neologism that combines the very Cuban "chamaco" with Russian patronymic "kovic", the very name of the project proposes a sentimental journey to the childhood of several generations of Cubans, especially those marked by maligned-and now longed-"Russian cartoons "... Volk and Zayats (The wolf and the hare), Rex the dog, the insufferable Checkered Ears, Bolek and LOLEK and those two children sitting back to back in our old elementary books, televisions jump Caribbean Krimm and the tanktop and selling handmade crates at the trade Chamakovic Art in La Rampa. The René Portocarrero printing workshop produced this Darwin’s idea, inspired by the popularity those cartoons still have and they were not all exactly Russians. It all began when Darwin joined a Facebook group that shared images of those characters, and found that they still even provoked emotions. I thought that nostalgia could work, because it worked on me. It's a whole social and generational phenomenon, there are blogs, communities, icons, and even surprise eggs have a...

The Cuban filmmaker Marina Ochoa confessed to OnCuba she is wary of certain films that are conceived from a supposed gender when in fact suffer from a "hell of sexism". These "false prophets" and certain obsolete mechanisms inherited from socialism came under attack by the founder of what was born as Mediatheque of Cuban filmmakers, and now works to grow as an association with everything... From the outset, she said that "there is a feminine look in the audiovisual, characterized by a transgressive thought that there has to be at the tremendous, perhaps more refined. Yet there are many filmmakers whose reference patterns are works done by men, and tend to imitate them unconsciously. Humberto Solas, being a man, had that gender perspective, but now there are even asexual works ... "she says. All comes from a biological difference that affects even the social constructions of our role, Marina tells me vehemently, but she is careful to give me examples by name. "If you tear apart most contemporary productions you realize that there is a lot of sexism, with the desire to do something with a gender perspective. You cannot betray your essence, you can learn and improve, but some...

As he leans on the dark, 118-year-old bar, the bronze Hemingway seems to looking sardonically at all of the pilgrims who enter Floridita bar and restaurant, drawn by the mysticism of the legendary “Papa.” They come from all over the world on the Hemingway trail, and an aspiring writer might hope to find his or her muse in the cocktail immortalized by the immortal adventurer: the daiquiri. From the corner where sculptor José Villa Soberón placed him to observe the locale, the bronze figure seems to blend in with all the other regulars. One of these days, his tormented soul will be reincarnated out of an irrepressible desire to once again order his version of the daiquiri: no sugar or lemon, a dash of grapefruit juice and a double shot of rum, the personal medicine of a diabetic who lived fearlessly…. Floridita had existed for more than a century by the time Ernest Hemingway’s romance with the place was born. Behind the bar, Constantino Ribalaigua was holding court on that day in 1928 when the novelist came in looking for a bathroom. After attending to his needs, Hemingway decided to beat the heat and wet his whistle on his first...

Maybe the only place on earth where the great Ernest Hemingway could go and no one give a damn for him was the town of Piggott. Perhaps for this reason, and because his in-laws lived there; the Pope would not like visiting that corner forgotten by God in Arkansas, where villagers saw him as a vagabond ... Still at that conservative feud, Hemingway wrote much of his novel ¨A Farewell to Arms¨, and probably fragments of seven other books conceived while he was married to his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, between 1927 and 1940. It is said you do not come to Piggott by chance, but you go for something. And that something is almost always the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum, whose director, Adam Long, came to Cuba for the International Symposium on the life and work of the legendary novelist, stubborn adventurer and controversial figure... Finding Adam at the O'Farrill Palace Hotel was not difficult, perhaps because he is one of the few foreign guests not physically resembles Hemingway. Half dozen imitators of Pope are attending these conferences and lectures, as in Hemingway's version of the movie "Being John Malkovich". " For anyone who devotes his life to preserv the legacy...

They climbed to the top of the Olympus of sports, but now their feet are firmly on the ground: Mireya Luis, Raúl Diago and Javier Sotomayor have jumped into the world of business in Havana as restaurant owners, employing all of the rigor and passion that put them in the ranks of the world’s elite sports stars. Mireya won three Olympic golds in volleyball; Diago was an eight-time world champion volleyball passer; and nobody has equaled the high jump world record that Soto set two decades ago. As athletes, they were winners in everything, especially immortality. They dreamed big, worked for it, and attained glory. As businesspeople, their expectations are no less ambitious… The most spectacular of the “espectaculares morenas del Caribe” (“spectacular Caribbean girls”), as Cuba’s women volleyball players were dubbed, is a nature lover. At her home in Fontanar, she has a 350-square meter garden where she grows her own plants, with seeds from Italy. She even has cherry tomatoes. There, she finds peace when the little sprite of nostalgia for volleyball comes around. She really misses those meals with her teammates, she admits, along with the intense world of competition and tours in the era when women’s...

The International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, f ounded in 1979, emerged with the aim of recognizing and disseminating filmmaking in the region...

We are approaching a happy day. It is especially so for flower sellers. Although one of the commandments of the Cuban self-employed people is "Do never admit how well you are doing," this business is thriving, both for farmers and sellers, and even the most atheist thank God for Cuban religiosity. The Catala family has devoted itself for years to the cultivation of flowers and some fruits. They pay an average wage of 60 pesos a day, with lunch included, and still they make profits. On their farm in San Antonio they grow Japanese margarita, because they have different colors and bloom every three days. They also plant velvet, sunflowers, and have special plots for significant dates, such as mother’s day, father’s day and All Souls Day. Jesus, one of the clan, left his electrical engineering work to devote himself to floriculture He learned many secrets of this art in Güira de Melena and Alquízar municipalities that are the Eden of garlic and flowers in Western Cuba. "Not everyone has the touch," he says. It is necessary to have the know-how, but also certain conditions. For example, gladiolus seeds must be cold stored, and the Catalas have refrigerators designed to...

The new card will have visibly engraved the identification number, home address, facial photo, signature and fingerprint, and this data will also be included in a bar code.

Cuba had a man who became a legend for several reasons, among which was his wearing a blazer on his shoulders, even at the hottest of times. That man was Alfredo Guevara. He died yesterday at 87. His heart refused to go any further: he probably had worn it out for using it so much. Alfredo was a unique character, certainly surreal: can you imagine him going from being production assistant to Luis Buñuel to be tortured and then a hero of the Revolution? Perhaps in those years of loyalties forged at the edge of death, is the germ of his legend as untouchable, of a fragile-looking tough guy. I remember seeing him twice, the last just five months ago, inaugurating the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, the delirious night that Fito Paez dressed in red to sing with Van Van. That night I saw him from afar, but the first time I even spoke to him, after surviving a human avalanche at the Acapulco, to see the La Niña de tus Ojos. It looked like a San Fermin on Avenida 26. It was night, and nobody wanted to surrender. When themob stampede the doors, I rushed to...