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To be Cuban is to be proud—it is both our greatest gift and our biggest curse. We serve no kings, bow no heads, bear our troubles on our backs as though they are nothing at all. There is an art to this, you see. An art to appearing as though everything is effortless, that your world is a gilded one, when the reality is that your knees beneath your silk gown buckle from the weight of it all. We are silk and lace, and beneath them we are steel.
President Batista has fled the country! Long live a free Cuba! Is this freedom?
To be in exile is to have the things you love most in the world—the air you breathe, the earth you walk upon—taken from you. They exist on the other side of a wall—there and not—unaltered by time and circumstance, preserved in a perfect memory in a land of dreams.
Havana is like a woman who was grand once and has fallen on hard times, and yet hints of her former brilliance remain, traces of an era since passed, a photograph faded by time and circumstance, its edges crumbling to dust.
That’s the thing with grief—you never know when it will sneak up on you.
How can you justify the way we live? People are starving, suffering. You built your fortune on the backs of others. We all have.
Loyalty is a complicated thing—where does family fit on the hierarchy? Above or below country? Above or below the natural order of things? Or are we above all else loyal to ourselves, to our hearts, our convictions, the internal voice that guides us?
How can you dismiss something that is so fundamental to the integrity of who we are as a people, as a country? How can you dismiss something that directly affects the lives of so many?”
Batista’s policies aren’t about Cuba or what’s best for the Cuban people. They’re designed to serve Batista, to increase his wealth, his power, to keep his stranglehold on the island forever. Do we all dare to hope for more? Of course.
it’s hard to hope when all you’ve known is corruption, when your reality is rigged elections and the possibility of more of the same.
What is the cost of inaction, of turning away when atrocities are committed
The capital is littered with American casinos and hotels, populated by movie stars and gangsters treating the country as though it is their own personal playground while Cuban citizens in the provinces can’t read, don’t have access to basic necessities to meet their needs.”
It is dangerous to fight for what you believe in.
I wish there wasn’t such a sharp divide between those who have everything and those who simply yearn for a chance at more.”
“I’m proud of him for believing in something so passionately, even if it isn’t something I believe in.
How can you love someone who has taken a life? And yet— Are they really different from the men who give orders behind desks, who are equally responsible for the bloodshed even if the violence is carried out on their authority and not by their neatly manicured hands? Where do matters of right and wrong fall in times of war?
The Americans preach liberty, and freedom, and democracy at home, and practice tyranny throughout the rest of the world.
“You speak of passion, but what about companionship, mutual respect, friendship? Why do people always seize on the spark that can peter out as the measure of a relationship?”
“Terrible things rarely happen all at once,” she answers. “They’re incremental, so people don’t realize how bad things have gotten until it’s too late. He swore up and down that he wasn’t a communist. That he wanted democracy. Some believed him. Others didn’t.”
They ensure we’re so preoccupied with the daily struggle that there’s little left over for the most important one, for taking control of our future.”
That’s the thing about death—even when you think someone is gone, glimpses of them remain in those they loved and left behind.
change—meaningful, lasting change—doesn’t always come with violence and bloodshed, but with reform, however slow, however gradual.
The revolution we need now will be fought by those arguing over words, phrases, passing legislation and loosening restrictions. Men willing to sit at a table and discuss the things we’ve been afraid to address for many, many years.
“You never know what’s to come. That’s the beauty of life. If everything happened the way we wished, the way we planned, we’d miss out on the best parts, the unexpected pleasures.”
On the surface, ojalá translates to “hopefully” in English. But that’s just on paper, merely the dictionary definition. The reality is that there are some words that defy translation; their meaning contains a whole host of things simmering beneath the surface. There’s beauty contained in the word, more than the flippancy of an idle hope. It speaks to the tenor of life, the low points and the high, the sheer unpredictability of it all. And at the heart of it, the word takes everything and puts it into the hands of a higher power, acknowledging the limits of those here on earth, and the hope,
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There is no home for us in a world where we can’t speak our minds for fear of being thrown in prison, where daring to dream is a criminal act, where you aren’t limited by your own ability and ambition, but instead by the whims of those who keep a tight rein on power.
