All posts by: Tania Díaz Castro

Tania Díaz Castro (*1939) is co-founder of National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba. For over two decades she was reporter for official magazines. In 1980's she spent 18 months in jail for joining Human Rights Party.

Two Very Similar Historical Eras

The book entitled Cuban Press and the Machado Era written by Edel Lima Sarmiento, a pro-regime Cuban journalist, was published in 2014 by the Ciencias Sociales publishing house in Havana. Yet, taking into account the current situation of freedom of the press on the island, the title of the book should perhaps read Cuban Press and the Castro […] Read more

Julian del Casal, the great cuban poet

A few days ago, someone brought to my memory one of the Cuban personalities of the nineteenth century who influenced the most of my adolescence: the poet Julián del Casal. The author of one of the top works of Cuban literature, born in 1863, died one night in October in 1893, while laughing out loud […] Read more

Jazz won the fight against Castroism

My memory, which is worth millions of pesos and is subversive, remembers it with a luxury of details. There was the triumph of “the bearded ones” in the Sierra Maestra, and then everything, except for communist ideas, started to be forbidden… even jazz, but not for its musical chords, of course. The Castro brothers saw […] Read more

The Portrait of Nelson

26-year-old Nelson Rodríguez Leiva was executed in the La Cabaña fortress in 1971. The same fate awaited his soulmate friend, Angelito de Jesús Rabí. A century earlier, the poet Juan Clemente Zenea was shot dead at the same place. It was of no help that Nelson was a teacher who conducted a literacy mission in […] Read more

The Most Censored Cuban President

Despite the fact that the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro had never paid due respect to any of the Cuban presidents, the one he most despised and criticised was Don Tomás Estrada Palma (1835-1908). Unscrupulously, he had even torn down his statue on the Avenida de los Presidentes in 1961, disregarding the fact that Estrada Palma was […] Read more