If you live in Cuba and feel that increasingly more relatives, friends and acquaintances are leaving the country, your assessment is right. Statistics back your opinion. According to a report of the Field Operations Office of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 50,082 Cubans arrived in the North American nation in the fiscal year of 2016 (Sept. 30, 2015 to Sept. 30, 2016), a figure 17.2 percent higher than the previous period. During the fiscal year of 2015, 40,155 Cubans arrived in the United States. They were almost double the 24,278 who arrived in 2014, and much more than the 13,000 who arrived in 2013 and 12,000 in 2012. In short, more than 139,000 Cubans have arrived through illegal means to U.S. borders between 2012 and 2016. The flow of persons to the U.S. this year was tinged by the crisis in Central America, when the government of Nicaragua decided to close in November 2015 the south border of its territory. Even so, the Costa Rican and Panamanian authorities arranged for the sending of thousands of Cubans to El Salvador and Mexico, where they were able to continue their journey. A series of factors, regulatory as well as subjective, have...

The vast majority disregard that fact that paying for a tattoo is technically illegal in Cuba, according to the country’s current laws, which is why numerous tattoo parlors have been shut down, mainly in Havana. Representatives from the Department of Managing Inspectors (DIS) in Havana have confronted artists in their studios, with the express order to shut down. Fearing seizures and fines, proprietors have either close up shop or continue to operate illegally. Nonetheless, many clients and lovers of the artistic manifestation question the persecution, asking why can’t I have tattoo? “Its not a recent ban, its simply that it was never permitted,” said lawyer Alberto Castro García, who together with his colleague Carlos Manuel Díaz has provided legal council to those affected. “The government published a list of self-employment options in the Official Extraordinary Gazette #27 of September 26, 2013, and tattooing doesn’t appear among the authorized activities. Anything not included in the document instantly falls in to the sphere of illegality.” Said legislation explicitly excludes tattooing. Limitations are outlined under the activity of painter-sign maker: “creating signs of any kind, size and color, on objects or surfaces, excluding a person’s skin.” This legal technicality deprives dozens of tattooists,...

(The names and details of those involved have been changed to protect their identity.) The business that has been set up around la bolita in Cuba – a lottery draw which, next to cock fights, is the most popular illegal game on the island – has a defined and stable structure that allows it to operate efficiently. Two draws are made every day: one at 2:15 pm and the other 8:15 pm. The information is published on the Internet, accessed through illegal cable connections or obtained at short-wave radio stations. The people we interviewed use the results of the Miami lottery. To convert the lottery results to the numbers selected in Cuba, the first number of the results “up north” is eliminated. The following two numbers are considered set numbers, and the consecutive pairs of numbers as the secondary numbers. For instance, if the results were 423 57 80, the 23 would be considered the set number, while 57 and 80 would be considered secondary numbers. The combination of set and secondary numbers (23-57 and 23-80) is known in Cuba as the parle. Though prices vary across different neighborhoods, they tend to have similar values. Secondary numbers are paid at...

When Henry Morrison Flagler saw through the window the 100,000 people who went to meet him at the station, he didn’t know he had only 1 year, 3 months and 27 days to live. Son of a time when humanity became gigantic in nature, the man tried to tame the waves and belittle the sea. On his bedside table, a map with a railroad linking New York with Key West, and then from Key West and Havana was drawn. When the project began, in the early twentieth century, many christened it as "The Chimera of Flagler". Metaphorically, some people think that a train is always a moving island. Perhaps it was due to the analogy of the enclosure, or dependency on external supplies, or to paraphrase Virgilio Piñera by "the damn circumstances of a railroad everywhere around us". The truth is that the famous express that would New York with Havana rose that comparison to implausible levels. For over 20 years, there was the route known as "Havana Special": the passenger bought a ticket in the Big Apple, and without leaving the car even for a moment, again touched land in Havana two days later. The tour could also be...

John Hemingway, grandson of the famous writer Ernest Hemingway, recognized the wise decision of President Barack Obama to normalize relations with Cuba, especially due to the cultural ties and economic potential offered by the island.

At the time of farewell, idols nod slightly, look at the public that acclaims them and undertake the final journey to nowhere. The last moment of glory embraces the first breath of decay. Then they cannot be separated from each other. When Braudilio Vinent was coming down from his immaculate altar when his fastball became a toy, many fans begged him to retire as a way to save himself. Braulio, perhaps proud- undaunted, replied that as long as he was the best pitcher of the East, his throne would remain gravitating ball land ... Until one day the time settled accounts with him and dragged him nearly crippled to the dugout. Then he could only youngsters who never rose to his height. Alicia Alonso, unlike the mythical athlete, remained untouchable in her Parnassus to the last function. When she could no longer see even the lights on the scene, photographers chased her for years, both in the Bolshoi and in the Paris Opera, longing for the fall that would put their pictures on the front page of newspapers around the world. Alicia mocked each, and at 70 years she came to her house, the Gran Teatro de La Habana, to...

Asthma was squeezing his lungs, but the doctor could not see his bluish face. Rather, the wan light of the match made him look rosy. The healthy image was only diluted by the constant and nervous panting of the patient. In the white walls of the doctor´s office -then looked like an opaque cream - the undulating shadow of the nurse revealed a clumsy haste. It could not be different: how accurately mark the extent of the plunger into the night, lit only by a match and almost touching the patient breathing hectically just a couple of feet away? That is how Doctor Miriam Alvarez Viltres remembers one of her first night shifts at the Carlos Manuel Portuondo polyclinic, in the Havana municipality of Marianao, back in 1991. Then she was a recent graduate doctor with a baby in her arms. In addition to the often all night ups, she should fulfill her daily duties as head of the medical office of “Tierna Infancia” Child Daycare Center also in this town. Fate wanted Miriam to begin her working life in the same year the Special Period in Cuba began. The coolers full of ice cream, beef and condensed milk for...

For the last 30 years, she wakes up next to the same man. Every morning, the "good-day" kiss, the nightgown caressing the skin, the toc-toc of slippers towards the kitchen, the coffee making. In the room, while feeling the bubbling on the stove, her husband stretches the wrinkled sheets, arranges the pillows at the foot of the head and gently places the bedspread as a craftsman. When finished, a coin can roll from side to side without the restraint of a bend. M Maura González Dorrego and Israel Dovales, Isra as everyone knows him -share life long before marriage; before even the courtship they held for six years. It all started in a pre-university boarding school in the Sandino municipality of Pinar del Rio, on the western end of the island. Then, she was a petite teenager and he a shy young man with black hair. It was also the fall of 1976. Two years passed before the first kiss: after an "innocent" playfulness of students, their faces were so close that it was impossible not to join lips. The "friendship" had already taken a new path. But is guilty a river when it runs to the sea? Thirty-six years...

She is just a few steps from me, but she fades away when I try to reach her as in a surrealist film. I hear her voice and I hear her walking down the stairs; however, I cannot see her as I go down. I try to hurry but that’s in vain. I cannot keep up her pace so I give up. A rehearsal by the Cuban National Ballet has just ended and I go after Anette Delgado as a mad man through the facilities of the company. I’m preparing an article on their forthcoming performances; though I don’t even know what to ask her, I wish to know the dancer. A few minutes ago I had seen her rehearsing and I didn’t recognize her at first: generally from where I applaud her performances it is not possible to distinguish the faces on the stage. Yet, it is impossible not to notice the presence of such elegant figure in the aesthetic universe, even though I’m not a connoisseur. Such combination of gentleness and energy is already a show. On the stage, she is phlegmatic, but coquette; delicate but spectacular; empathic and at the same time distant, as Walter Benjamin qualified...