The stories

Ballet: Cuba's Enduring Revolution
Prima ballerina Alicia Alonso and the National Ballet of Cuba
by Ana Campoy
Researcher: Anar Desai

The lights are dim and the red velvet curtain's up. Hundreds of expectant eyes stare at the bare stage. They know he's coming—they read his name on the program — but a split second later, Rolando Sarabia still takes them by surprise.

Balseros, Cuba's last wave and its first immigrants
By Archana Pyati
Researcher: Eddy Ramirez

They worked in an abandoned house at the edge of Guayabal, a dusty hamlet about an hour's drive from Havana. Slowly, they fit the wood and metal together to make a vessel sturdy enough to hold six passengers. When it was ready a month and a half later, they packed water, food and a few clothes for the long journey ahead of them. They kissed Hany, their 5-year-old daughter goodbye, and snapped a picture of her sleeping form, capturing the sheets and blankets tossed this way and that by her small legs. Four hours later, before the sun rose on August 21, 1994, Barbarita and Orlando sailed to Miami.

Four Women
By Alicia Roca
Researcher: Nichole Griswold

It's six. Rosa fumbles with the light switch, roosters crow somewhere in the darkness. She pulls a chair by its back and climbs on it. She jiggles the light bulb; a little to the left, then to the right. At last, it hums, flickers and emits a dim orange glow. "Hay que inventar." You have to invent, she says with a slight smile.

Spain and Cuba; A 500-year-old Affair
By Megan Lardner

Ivan, a Cuban philosophy student, still remembers the scene vividly: It was January 2001 and the Spaniards had descended on central Havana, draped in robes like royalty from the 1500s. In the lead, three men in a horse-drawn carriage rolled leisurely along the tree-lined Paseo del Prado to the clattering rhythm of hooves. Behind them, a troop of Spaniards fanned out along the street, throwing candy to Cuban children. With the kids in fast pursuit, the entourage glided past crumbling colonial homes and emerged in front of the Spanish Cultural Center's newly refurbished seafront mansion. There the crowd thickened and the candy supply ran low. People began to push and grab excitedly, trampling some children in the midst of the confusion.

Cuba 2001
By Juliana Barbassa

Heat waves rising from the cracked pavement make the red flower print on a plastic bag shimmer. A bored teenager, the third in line for a public phone, shifts impatiently, her lemon-yellow Lycra top glaring bright in the sun. Second in line, a man in a baseball cap checks her out, but settles his glance on the tourist fumbling in her huge American backpack for change, a credit card, or whatever these Cuban phones take.

"Where are you from? Spain?" he asks, without waiting for an answer.

"Where are you staying? When he finds out where, and that I'm paying $15 a night, he laughs and rolls his eyes.

"I can offer you a room for much less… Close by, a block and half, maybe two. Come see."

Welcome to Cuba.

Trinidad, For Sale
By Julian Foley
Researcher: Pedro Mosqueda

Dany is a jinitero, a hustler.

Slouching against the white, wrought iron fence of the Plaza Mayor, he watches weary, sun-burnt tourists wander in and out of a simple church the Spaniards left behind more than a century ago. A blue-bereted policeman on the corner watches too, stoic and motionless. Behind him, a fierce orange sun slips into the horizon. When its glow fades, he disappears, out of sight. On cue, Dany is in action. He calls out to a young couple: "Hi, how are you," first in English, then in Italian. A "bon jour" finally turns their heads.

Son de Camaguey
By Angel Gonzalez

Who was Carmelo Gonzalez? From what I know, he was an idealistic young man deeply involved in one of the most important events in the history of the Western hemisphere: the Cuban Revolution.

Carmelo was a revolutionary, a counter-revolutionary, and the once again part of the Revolution. Some say he despised Castro, but some say that after serving time in Castro’s prisons, he lived out his life as a committed Communist. How does Carmelo fit in our long familial tradition of war-mongering, rebellion and political involvement? That’s what I’ve come to Cuba to find out.

Cyber Libre: Cubans Log On Behind Castro’s Back
By John Coté
Researchers: Cyrus Farivar and Osvaldo Gomez

Hackers must be resourceful to survive in a Communist world, where fraying infrastructure, snarled bureaucracy and draconian security services are the norm. But cyber criminals are not simply survivors; they’re an indication that Fidel Castro is unable to control the inherently democratic world of the Internet.

Four Writers
By Ezequiel Minaya

I missed him again, this time by only ten minutes. For about four days now, I’ve been combing Havana for Pedro Juan Gutierrez; a poet, novelist and journalist. I want to talk to him about his writing, Cuban writers after the revolution and censorship. But, above all else, I want to hear his thoughts on exiled poet, Herberto Padilla.

I’ve stopped by underground libraries, the apartments of independent journalists, and even the crowded night-time hang outs lining El Malecon that Gutierrez wrote about in his latest novel, Dirty Havana Trilogy. All I’ve got to show for it is a messenger’s bag full of illegal, dissident writing, a dozen new titles from the many Havana bookstores and more offers of sex than I can afford.

Revolution is a Moment
By Olga R. Rodríguez
Reseracher: Osvaldo Gomez

Flanked by the calm and clear Caribbean ocean and the old, deafening cars, I wondered whether foreigners who had moved to the island during the 1960s remained as supportive of the Cuban revolution as Leoni was when we spoke in 1996.

I first visited Rosa Maria Almendros, a Spanish contemporary of Leoni who moved to Cuba after the triumph of the 1959 revolution.

"It was a dream come true," Almendros, sitting in her Havana apartment, says. "We knew with Castro in power it wouldn’t take long before a just society would be created."

Cuban Hip-Hop, Underground revolution
by Annelise Wunderlich
Researcher: Eve Lotter

It's a late Friday afternoon in downtown Havana and an old man in a worn-out tuxedo opens the doors under the flickering green and red neon of Club Las Vegas. A poster on the wall, its corners curling, advertises the usual cabaret fare: live salsa, banana daiquiris, beautiful women. But the people standing outside are not tourists looking for an exotic thrill. They are mostly young, mostly black, and dressed in the latest styles from Fubu and Tommy Hilfiger. And despite the $1 cover charge—steep for most Cubans—the line to get in is long.