Iconoclastic Young Filmmakers Look at Real Issues in Cuba

Lighting up dark areas of Cuban society with youthful vigour, Muestra Joven (the Young Cinema Exhibition), a local independent film event, reached its 10th anniversary characterised by experimentation and subjects that are both complex and invisible in the national media.

CUBA: Varadero’s Architectural Charm Threatened by Tourism

Important architectural works from the Modern movement in Cuba appear to be doomed as a result of the expansion of massive hotel complexes, which threaten to take over the landscape in Varadero, this country's most famous beach resort.

CUBA: Integrated Farming to Help Reach Food Sovereignty

Based on their own experience, Luisa García and Jorge Medina, whose farm in Cuba produces a variety of food that feeds them year-round, said they have no doubt that food sovereignty can be achieved in their country and in the rest of Latin America.

RIGHTS-CUBA: Tension on Anniversary of Hunger Striker’s Death

The first anniversary of the death of Cuban dissident Orlando Zapata, after an 85-day hunger strike, was marked by the usual tensions between internal dissident sectors, supporters of the government of President Raúl Castro, and Cuban authorities.

Q&A: “Art Can Transform Small Aspects of Society”

For the first time, Cuba's National Fine Arts Prize was awarded to a member of the country's "80s generation": René Francisco Rodríguez, whose work crops up in the most unexpected places in urban communities, and who finds it hard to relinquish the "utilitarian character of art."

EDUCATION-CUBA: The Sharp Edge of Change

Tougher entrance exams for higher education, to be applied in the next academic year in Cuba, are worrying families who see getting into university as a major achievement for their children.

CUBA: Looking for Roots Across the Ocean

Their tanned skin is weathered by years of sun, and their voices preserve traces of accents from different parts of Spain.

RIGHTS-CUBA: Few Advances, Besides Release of Prisoners

A dissident group in Cuba described the human rights situation in the country as "very unfavourable," although it recognised that the number of people prosecuted or imprisoned for "political motivations" has gone down in the last 12 months.

CUBA: Shock at Deaths and Corruption in Psychiatric Hospital

The trial of staff at the Havana Psychiatric Hospital for the deaths of 26 patients who died of cold and neglect revealed a dark chapter in an institution that was once a shining symbol of Cuba's much lauded health care system, and drew reactions of shock and criticism.

Cuba Bumped from Human Development Index over Missing Data

When the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) formulates its annual Human Development Index (HDI), it uses several socioeconomic indicators - including life expectancy, gross national income and literacy - to rank member states and also measure quality of life in these countries.

Cuba Calls Easing of US Restrictions “Limited” Move

The Cuban government welcomed the latest U.S. measures to ease restrictions on travel and remittances to this country, but said they had a "limited reach."

CUBA-US: No Major Progress Expected from New Immigration Talks

The Cuban capital was the venue for a new round of immigration talks between delegations from this Caribbean island nation and the United States, although no major progress towards a broader dialogue is expected, in contrast to the hopes raised when President Barack Obama took office.

US-LATAM: Disappointment May Yield to Distrust

While U.S. officials took strong exception to outgoing Brazilian President Inacio Lula da Silva's recent complaint that "nothing has changed" in Washington's relations with Latin America two years into the Barack Obama administration, many independent U.S. analysts ruefully nodded their heads.

CUBA: Opposition ‘Needs to Reflect’ on U.S. Criticisms Revealed by Wikileaks

The internal dissident movement in Cuba faces some big challenges in 2011, after ending the year with low marks from the top U.S. diplomat in Havana, according to confidential cables made public by Wikileaks, some of which were published on the official government website cubadebate.cu.

Anonymous Afro-Cubans Heroes Remembered for Posterity

Under the spreading shade of a wild fig tree in Old Havana, a small plaque now recalls the sacrifice made by five Afro-Cubans, "anonymous Abakuá who died trying to save medical students" shot by firing squad, when this island was still a Spanish colony.

CUBA: Socialism Needs More Taxes, Fewer Subsidies

Cubans are delving deeper into economic change, which means new taxes and an end to the state subsidies that for decades were a symbol of the equality so highly extolled under the Cuban Revolution.

CULTURE-CUBA: Night of One Thousand and One Texts

The legendary Scheherazade has exchanged her enthralling tales of "One Thousand and One Nights" for a compact disc with 1,001 academic articles, essays and books, giving Cubans access to materials that would otherwise be very difficult to obtain.

CUBA: Urban Tribes Prowl Havana Nights

A different city emerges on the weekends in Havana. Young people, whose faces are as strange as they are common, take possession of the city and reinvent it. They are the "urban tribes," a global phenomenon that has made its mark on Cuba.

CUBA-US: Holding Onto Hope for a Pardon of the ‘Cuban Five’

After exhausting the legal appeals process in the United States, family members and human rights groups in Cuba are calling for a solidarity campaign to convince President Barack Obama to pardon the five Cuban agents who have spent the last 12 years in U.S. prisons.

Cuba Commutes Sentences; Only One Person Still on Death Row

Human rights activists are pleased with the decision by Cuba’s Supreme Court to commute to 30 years in prison the death sentences of two Salvadoran men convicted of terrorism. But dissidents continue to call for complete abolition of the death penalty.

CUBA: Drag Queens and Volunteers Promote Safe Sex

Margot Parapar gets plenty of laughs from the audience with this joke: "Now the human body is divided into five parts: head, trunk, upper and lower limbs, and condom." Using his female stage name, Cuban drag queen, comedian and health promoter Oliver Alarcón includes HIV/AIDS prevention messages in his shows.