| June 2009 | The Buena Vista Artists of Today | by Shauna Intelisano |
I met Dixon on my first trip to Cuba, when the Buena Vista Social Club was, to me, just some Cuban band. Dixon is from the Buena Vista neighborhood in Havana from which this band takes its name. The Buena Vista Social Club was actually a pre-revolutionary gathering place for the mostly black neighborhood. It was a creative hub where artists convened; musicians made music, dancers danced and partiers partied. |
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| June 2008 | Cuban cabarets—Socialism and sensuality! | by Christopher P. Baker |
The lights go down... as a troupe of near-naked showgirls in silver thigh-high boots and glowing chandeliers atop their heads appears at the back of the auditorium. Their see-through fishnet body suits drip with silver baubles that dangle like still-wet tiny fishes, and they strut down the aisle like sex washing up from the sea. |
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| July 2008 | Viva Cuba Beisbol | by Byron Motley and Kit Krieger |
In Havana, the local “Industriales” team are gods. They are the New York Yankees of Cuban baseball. Whether celebrated or loathed, there’s no getting around the fact that team Industriales is the islands most successful franchise. Point proven by the fact that in the post-revolutionary Castro era of baseball, the Industriales have reigned supreme and have practically had a monopoly as the winners of the most of the Cuban World Series classics |
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| Feb 2008 | Street food - Feeling hungry? | by Beatriz Llamas |
A young girl walking down the street dressed in her school uniform—short mustard or burgundy skirt, and white blouse—braided hair, trainers, backpack and licking a popsicle or an ice-cream cone is an everyday scene in Havana. The same as for a distinguished-looking gentleman, one elbow on a window sill or a small stand sipping his coffee from a thimble-sized cup. Or the mulatta who walks slowly swaying her hips and biting a pizza pie enclosed in a piece of manila paper. |
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| Feb 2008 | Rain, Rain, go away | by Juliet Barclay |
Habaneros hate rain and can be cast into depression by what any British person, accustomed as one is to endless meteorological variations on the theme of wetness, would consider a mere caprice. The slightest hint of impending rainfall can keep the city’s entire workforce at home and no demur whatsoever is made by their bosses if workers fail to appear on a wet day. The very notion of venturing out of the house in the rain is seen as dangerous madness, likely to bring on agues, seizures, fevers and a whole range of obscure disorders.. |
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| Jan 2008 | Cigar smoking in Havana—A visitor's Guide— | by Amir Simoney |
For an introduction to Cuban cigars where better to start than the Partagás cigar factory (520 Industria St., behind the Capitolio) in Havana? Cigars have been produced here since 1845 and the tour will create an appreciation for the art of cigar making that will last long after your return home. Even non-smokers are bound to exit impressed and with a greater understanding of the lure of the cigar. This is also the place to sample the goods; just before you exit to the street veer left through the wooden door into the store aptly named La Casa Del Habanos, probably the most famous cigar store in the world. |
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| Jan 2008 | Finca Alcazar: Cuba’s last private farm -a relic of the past or a glimpse of the future? | by Stephen Gibbs |
"Two days ride and you are still on my property" is a boast you might hear quite frequently from South American landowners. But not in Cuba. Although this island was once famous for its huge ranches, many of which were in American hands before the revolution, those days are long gone. |
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| Dec 2007 | Detroit dowagers – running on a wing and a prayer | Christopher P. Baker |
Driving through Holguín province recently I passed an antediluvian automotive abuelo, dead as a dinosaur, stopped in the middle of the road in the middle of nowhere. Time itself seemed to have stopped on the carretera midway between Bayamo and Vequitas. The curvaceous Chevy Bel-Air stared me down with its acres of bechromed grinning grillwork. Its hood was propped open while two men peered into the engine. |
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| Jan 2008 | Roberto Gottardi's National art school: Paradise lost? | by Silvia Gomez |
There has never been in Cuba in the last decades a more controversial project than the National Art School (ENA), begun in 1961 and never completed due to a lack of ideological and aesthetic understanding, as well as a shortage of materials. Considered by its most enthusiastic advocates a symbol of the audacity and the will to experiment that should characterize contemporary architecture, its harshest critics tend to consider it as an aesthetic boom, not without elitism and devoid of any subsequent significance. |
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| Jan 2008 | Deborah Andollah—Yemaya's daughter | by Silvia Gomez |
When Cuba’s record-breaking apnea diver Déborah Andollo tossed seven coins into the sea before plunging into its waters, it was not a publicity stunt or an eccentricity. Hundreds of thousands of her compatriots...Déborah was asking the Mother of the Seas, Yemayá, for permission to enter her kingdom because it is said that her anger is implacable and her punishments terrible. Yemayá not only allowed this young woman to penetrate her realm, but seemingly bound her forever to her silent, deep world. |
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| Dec 2007 | Eduardo Pimentel—Havana's yoga master | by Silvia Gomez |
In Cuba – and Havana in particular - yoga equals Eduardo Pimentel Vázquez.
Known throughout the island for his national yoga television program, Eduardo has managed to convince many Cubans that the practice of this age-old discipline, which dates back to 2nd century BC India, may be a channel for the self-knowledge and mind-body harmony that humans have long pursued in the name of faith, philosophy or science.
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| Nov 2007 | The word on the street | by Argelio Santiesteban |
Humpty Dumpty said to Alice, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." And the same goes for Cubans whose unrestrained, rich colloquial language flourishes side by side with Spanish. |
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| Nov 2007 | Gilberto Valladares: Havana's most artistic barber | by Silvia Gomez |
Loquacious - as are all good barbers - Gilberto Valladares (Papito) speaks at the same speed and enthusiasm as his hands handle the scissors. However, his conversation doesn’t involve homeruns made by his favourite baseball team or inappropriate comments about the beautiful woman who lives just across the street. Neither does he attempt to captivate his clientele by talking of the merits of a new hair dye that will soon hit the market or how many litres of silicone a certain movie star has in her body. |
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| Sep 2007 | Ramon Silverio and his beautiful Mejunje | by Sue Herrod |
El Mejunje is nothing less than a revelation for many visitors to Cuba. Located in the little visited town of Santa Clara it shows a little seen side of Cuban culture with energy, aplomb and style |
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| Sep 2007 | Being LGBTQ in Cuba – gold at the end of the rainbow? | by Sue Herrod & Ivonne Chapman |
It very much depends on who you talk to as to what impression you get about being LGBTQ in Cuba today…Watch Christian Liffers´ provocative new documentary, Dos Patrias, Cuba y La Noche (Two Homelands, Cuba and the Night) - out this week in the US - and you’ll be ready to cut your wrists. But sit listening to Mariela Castro Espín - daughter of Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother and Cuba’s next leader - speak impassionedly at Havana’s International Culture and Development conference last June (2007), and you’d have been moved to tears. |
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| Aug 2007 | Ismael de la Caridad—Clothes for everyone | by Silvia Gomez |
When in 2003, at the Casa de la Obra Pía in Old Havana, the Arte y Moda fashion show took place, one of the most stunning designs was Peacock Woman, a creation by Ismael de la Caridad based on one of Zayda del Río's paintings. Still today, this spectacular gown by the renowned Cuban fashion designer is a referent when it comes to translating contemporary Cuban visual art into the codes of the catwalk. |
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| Nov 2006 | Holy Smoke Heavenly Habanos | by Juliet Barclay |
The unique contemplative pleasure of smoking a Havana cigar should never be taken lightly. Whilst the lucky few indulge in this luxury on an enviably regular basis, they never allow familiarity to breed contempt. However many cigars one smokes, one never tires of the gentlemanly—or ladylike—anticipation of extracting one’s chosen cigar from the humidor. Gently, one tests it between one’s fingers and catches the first whiff of that splendid scent. |
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| Feb 2007 | Havana: an intensely inhabited city | by Daniel Barclay |
Visitors to the Cuban capital frequently remark on how busy the city seems to be, how the life of the city is inescapable and either delightful or irritating, depending on their disposition and expectations as a tourist in a socialist Caribbean island. The fabric of the city is often crumbling, yet Cuban life goes on with a kind of cheerful self-absorption and confidence despite (or because of?) the lack of material trappings and 'advances' that we are used to in western cities |
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| Feb 2007 | Havana's Renaissance | by Juliet Barclay |
The restoration of Old Havana is internationally acclaimed as one of the world’s most innovative and exciting projects of urban renaissance. It is all more the remarkable for the context in which it is taking place: Cuba’s ongoing struggle to establish itself as a political and economic force to be reckoned with. |
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| Feb 2007 | Havana Blue | by Juliet Barclay |
Beneath the centuries of multi-coloured limewash in Old Havana’s eighteenth century mansions, archaeologists often discover elaborate and beautiful mural paintings in which an exquisite powdery blue predominates. This has come to be known as ‘Havana Blue’ and the colour is still used all over the city, gently echoing the triumphant azure of the Cuban sky. |
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| Jan 2007 | Deco Darlings Walter Massaguer 1930's | by Juliet Barclay |
BATHING beauties, cocktail queens and languorous muses created by Conrado Walter Massaguer graced the covers of Social, the famous magazine published in Cuba from 1916 to 1933. |
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| Jan 2007 | Cuban Cuisine traditions and innovations | by Beatriz Llamas |
When Spaniards first arrived in Cuba in 1492 they encountered indigenous people who lived by hunting, fishing, gathering and the cultivation of cassava, yams, maize and black beans. As a result of the new illnesses and living conditions brought in by the colonisers, the original Cuban Indians eventually became all but extinct and crops that had been previously grown gave way to new ones brought from Spain. The only dish that has been handed down from that time is casabe, a round thin cake made from cassava which is grated, dried, pounded and cooked. |
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| Dec 2006 | Pick up lines Cuban style (Piropos) | by Juliet Barclay |
Cubans are world champion flirts and it’s usually done with such style that one struggles not to become putty in their hands. Calling out piropos to passing women is a time-honoured Havana tradition. Piropos are nothing like the tacky remarks that northern women have to put up with. OK, they’re macho, but it’s hard to resist smiling at the most of them and men know that the wittier the piropo, the more satisfactory the result is likely to be. |
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| Dec 2006 | Cuban Chaos Theory Eyelashes flutter in Havana | by Juliet Barclay |
A hot Havana afternoon… the surface of the bay is like a gleaming sheet of glass and castles of cumulonimbus inch imperceptibly across the sky. The wall of the Malecon is draped with sleepy figures. Dogs drowse in the shade of the crumbling porticoes. Nothing stirs; the sweltering air is utterly still. But as you lie on the sun-baked wall, frying in the blue and gold afternoon, sinking voluptuously down through the layers of silence towards sleep |
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| Dec 2006 | Havana´s magic circus | by Juliet Barclay |
In the western suburbs of Havana stands a series of extraordinary buildings in a bizarre collection of styles from Modernist to Neobaroque to Hollywood Hacienda. These were the grand old pre-Revolutionary social clubs where exclusive sailing and rowing races were held and where rich, glamorous women in Channel sailor suits posed with their borzois for photographs which were later published in Havana’s society journals. |
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| Nov 2006 | Hemmingway haunts Havana | by Juliet Barclay |
Whether in his favourite bars, at his secluded country house or among the fishermen and boat builders of Cojimar, Hemingway’s presence in Havana is still almost tangible. |
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| Oct 2006 | Baseball – a national obsession | by Charlie Thompson |
It takes a lot for the streets of Old Havana to go silent, for the normal hum of activity to diminish to a barely audible whisper. The World Classic Baseball Final played on March 20, 2006 in front of a crowd of 42,696 in San Diego was one such event. It was viewed in virtually every home in Cuba and transfixed the nation. On Obispo (the main thoroughfare of Old Havana) security guards discreetly listened to the match through their ear-pieces as the few people that were still out and about hurried to get somewhere they could see the game. |
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| June 2006 | Detroit’s finest still rolling | by Richard Bebbington |
In the early 1950s Detroit dominated the world as the unchallenged leader of the world car industry. Long before the notion of French and Japanese white knights riding to the rescue, Detroit designers were producing innovative and beautiful cars. Cuba was often used as a testing ground for new designs, models and styles and many of the cars and trucks first brought to the island in the early 1950’s are not only still here but still in working use. |
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| 2005 | Harlistas | by Tracey Eaten |
Sergio Morales says his wife, Miriam, isn't the jealous type. And that's a good thing because there's another "woman" in his life: His beloved 1946 Harley-Davidson motorcycle. He has kept the battered red machine running for more than three decades with little more than sweat, ingenuity and homemade spare parts. |
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| 2003 | The Piano tuner | by Tracey Eaten |
Armando Gomez is suddenly a subversive. And only an act of God, or George Tracey Eaten Bush, will allow him to attend the piano tuners convention in Dallas this week. Gomez laughed at first when U.S. authorities refused his travel visa.
"What am I? A Taliban?" the Havana piano technician said. |
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| 2004 | Marrying a Cuba | by Tracey Eaten |
Ted Oswick has heard the tales of woe. Older men venture into Cuba and marry young, beautiful women, only to be dumped once they get back home. But he said he's sure his romance with a Havana maid is for real. |
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| Feb 2009 | Art Deco in Havana | by Silvia Gomez |
Given a cold reception by Cuban architects and investors, art nouveau would not leave a significant imprint on the island’s architecture. Confined mainly to domestic buildings of the petite bourgeoisie and the middle class, with outstanding examples in stately homes such as Masía L’Ampurda, designed by Catalan architect Mario Rotllant in the suburban district of Víbora, and a few commercial buildings, it is hardly seen in public or religious buildings because its voluptuous flowing lines and stylized natural forms were considered foreign or perhaps irreverent. |
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| Oct 2007 | Out of tune but well in accord - tinkering with the old ivorories of Havana |
by Sue Herrod |
One very sunny day last year, in March (2007), a small party from Ireland descended on Havana laden with radio mics, cameras, sound people, leather, felt and wire. Cameras, leather, felt and wire, I can hear you asking, brows, naturally, a little furrowed? Well…could be a country crafts series, or... what about a late night, one-off, tropical bondage short? Actually, no. Rest easy. |
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| Aug 2007 | Formula 1 World Champion kidnapped in Havana | by Richard Bebbington |
No, this striking news headline doesn’t refer to Michael Schumacher nor to Fernando Alonso but to the iconic five times F-1 World Champion from Argentina, Juan Manuel Fangio. On the eve of the 1958 Cuban Grand Prix in Havana a student group supporting revolutionary Fidel Castro in his struggle against the Cuban President and dictator Fulgencio Batista, kidnapped the reigning ( ? ) World Champion. |
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| Jan 2010 | Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington | by Ann Louise Bardach |
The first obituaries for Fidel Castro were published in December 1956. It was then that the government of President Fulgencio Batista duped a gullible UPI correspondent named Francis McCarthy into reporting that Fidel Castro, and his brother Raúl, had been killed in an ambush. In fact, the 29-year-old leftist rebel leader was hiding out in the Sierra Maestra mountains. |
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