All posts by: Agnes Koleman

Happy Birthday, Fidel

My parents always taught me to pay respect to any elderly person I meet on the street, regardless of whether they were well-dressed or poor beggars asking for alms. The number of years that they had lived inspired admiration and love. I’m old now myself and I have realized that there are differences between old […] Read more

Payá: with P for a President

It’s Monday, July 23. Oswaldo Paya Sardinas has been dead since yesterday. Agents of the government had promised that this would happen and had even carried out several attacks against him, which he survived without actually noticing. By and large, it seems that there won’t be a Nobel Peace Prize winner in Cuba unless Fidel […] Read more

London 2012: The Door to Freedom

Thousands of Cubans are dreaming of becoming elite athletes these days. Yet, their desire to join the ranks of the best athletes of the planet is not motivated by the ambition to win a gold medal or to set a new record, leaving half the world drop-jawed. In fact, their longing could be better described […] Read more

Hostages

Over again, the equation has failed. Once and again, there will be no swap or anything like that. The five Cuban spies will continue serving their long sentences in North-American jails while the American businessman Alan Gross, arrested in Havana on December 3, 2009, will have to find new strength to keep alive the hope […] Read more

Praying to Ratzinger behind the bars of the revolution

The prison guards had a radio on. It was a small transistor radio – an obsolete thing like everything else in the Police Station of La Regla, a town across the Havana bay. The interrogation offices were decorated in an antiquated style typical for Soviet-like political propaganda: Pictures of the assault on the Moncada Barracks, […] Read more

Cuba and Europe: Affinities and Disparities

“This is the most beautiful land that human eyes have ever seen.” These were the first impressions of the Italian admiral Christopher Columbus when he beheld the land, which is now known as Cuba, from the deck of his ship in his first journey, whose purpose was to discover new lands. The paradise-like vegetation made […] Read more