This is not the first, but one of the few occasions when Norberto entered the internet. He is not studying in college or working on some of the privileged centers with access to the Net. Before he had done a few minutes thanks to a pirate account that his father pays in La Lisa.  The same happens with Oscar, Aldo tells us the same. They live in different ends of the capital. "It's the first time I go into it without paying; without risking with the peddlers "says Norbert. In this corner there are no peddler´s accounts. This is the corner of Alexis Leyva or Kcho, a visual artist than on January 8, 2014 reopened the doors of an ancient workshop near the Playa Bus Terminal turned into his personal studio: a Laboratory for Art. But now the space, located in the district of Romerillo, west of the city, has become a social laboratory, a small-scale trial of which public spaces designed to provide wireless Internet Wi-fi could mean in Cuba. From the corner to the universe Photo: Yoel Suárez The horn, the smog of stoic rental Chevrolets, and the constant traffic of city buses to enter or leave the...

Walking two hours under the rain was not enough. It was not enough though thighs to get tensed till paralyzing you, although the five-minute break asked you to stay one more, although reaching Machuca would have seemed a feat. It was nothing. -¡¿Do you want to call to Havana?! Well you'll have to climb that hill there... -the peasant told us-behind the banana plantation there is a huge stone. When people want to call by cell phone they go up there. It was still raining cats and dogs and the hamlet received us transformed into mud. Someone was listening to a reggaeton hit in the clinic. "That disease has even reached this place." In the distance, four or five children were kicking a ball. They turn into reddish when slipping. But that does not seem to care them, in seconds water purified their skins. "Well let´s climb that hill'. Photo: Katy Mac We had to call anyway. We had remained another day engulfed by the mountain. The river level rose as ever since we got there and the ridge our volunteer guide pointed us served as the only communication tower nearby. The clouds licked the top under an overcast sky....

The kingdom of water The irregular stony ground requires horse and boots. This strange landscape includes monolithic pieces of red basalt on the green carpet that goes from peak to peak; and far away there are also some cliffs made up by erected walls of white limestone. While climbing the mountains you reach the water kingdom. It emerges from some hidden spring on the heights that are really not that high because they are at just few hours away. Water, water and more water. It f lows into the kitchens of rustic huts through long hoses that are lost in the bush. If one day it does not reach the hut you may assume that the well is dirty, scrambled . When the water is stirred is not good for anyone. The river is emboldened and closes the paths taking animals and bridges with it like the devil takes the soul. But even without being widened the riverbed is dangerous, it keeps a perennial mystery. The courtyard of Duni, at just an hour drive from the house of Quimbo, is near the Puddle of Remolino. There, where there are a creek and river, the men of the area have bet...

From the National Highway you can distinguish the Guaniguanico Mountain Range. From the distance you can see that blue-green silhouette, and wonders what lies beyond the wall. A strange land where fairy tales are sometimes reality and peasant lives his daily life as in a foreign country... The journey to those mountains can begin in the shadow of San Cristobal Bridge. The hours pass, get diluted among the cries and the hooves of horses going towards the town. People from there, accustomed to non-schedules, wait for transportation. That is their bitter daily bread. -The truck passing around ten o’clock is broken; so it doesn’t come today, a girl says as if repeating a verse learned long ago. At quarter past eleven the crowd starts moving. Dozens of women and men put on their shoulders bags, children, suitcases. A resounding ancient truck stops under the bridge. The assault was swift. Twenty minutes later that private truck starts, crowded, up the steep road. For ten CUP causes cramps in the extremities, puts many lives on the brink of the cliffs, and undergoes the body a nauseating sauna. Anyone who has been lucky to reach a window is abstracted and put his eye...

Twenty-five years is a lifetime; my life minus one year. A quarter century without Decembers. All the time Enrique Pineda Barnet did not attend the dark rooms during the New Latin American Film Festival (FNCL by its Spanish acronym). In midst 1989 ¨La Bella del Alhambra¨ had been released via the National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC by its Spanish acronym) at Yara cinema. That was overflowing. The stairs were crowded, people dialogued with the film, spoke to the screen. The bitter Special Period was about to begin, tempers were extinguished; but something happened with La Bella ...: the audience came out excited and hugged and kissed each other in the lobby, like a new year celebration. The film brought hope before everything to fall down. Then Enrique thought: "Well, if they receive it so well, we will display it at 12 pm to receive 1990 '. This was done in all Havana cinemas and it was spectacular. In two weeks, two million viewers saw it in a country of just eleven. Nobody talked of something else. Movie fever indeed. The film brings joy, but also some noise to the memory of Enrique: a kind of kelp that...