Today, I remembered how Uruguayan poet Mario Benedetti would walk down the streets of Alamar, a proletarian neighborhood in Havana conceived to harbor the socialist New Man, with his mustachioed face, his short temper and his immense dignity.

My dear Comandante, allow me to steal a few minutes of the precious time you are devoting to Cuba’s reforms, reforms which, according to you, will be implemented “surely but not hastily”, to tell you a few things about the history of a celebration of which, apparently, you know next to nothing.

For the second consecutive year, the London-based organization Save the Children has identified Cuba as the best country in Latin America to be a mother. Reading this, I cannot but think that the author of the report must have visited a Cuba located on another planet and not the country where the mother of my children has to get up every morning.

The censors shot themselves in the foot, because the young bloggers decided to fight for their rights without foreign aid, using their own resources and securing the help of a number of Cuban bloggers, among whom they found a space to continue divulging their opinions.

Brazilian doctors objected Wednesday to the recent announcement that their government plans to hire 6000 Cuban doctors to meet the shortfall of health professionals in interior regions of the nation, reports AP.

If someone had told Cuban dissident Gilberto Martínez what would happen to him in Spain, he wouldn’t have believed it. He might have chalked the prediction to Castroite propaganda. On May 7, Spanish police evicted Martínez, 50, from the house in Alicante where he lived with his wife and three children.

Who is responsible for the fact that the issue of color isn’t mentioned in Cuban schools, that race isn’t a subject of study or research in any University syllabus, or that these questions aren’t sufficiently addressed by the media? Without a doubt, the Ministry of Education, Cuban television and the official press are responsible.

Cuba has changed a lot over these past two decades. Since the release of Strawberry and Chocolate, the only Cuban film ever to be nominated as Best Foreign Film at the Oscars, the country and its people have experienced many changes… but they haven’t been enough.

Despite efforts to bolster agricultural and livestock production and reduce food product imports, the most recent Cuban government statistics reveal that production statistics for crops not included in the sugar cane sector plummeted by 7.8 percent during the first quarter of 2013. Some of the most troublesome areas are the potato, citrus and dairy production.

Mantilla evinces the stark contrasts that characterize contemporary Cuba: there, one finds recently-constructed residences or tastefully refurbished homes, next to dilapidated, unfinished or, in some cases, ramshackle wooden houses. Many of its streets are also in a deplorable state, and some are not even asphalted. (33 photos)