Jimmy Roque’s Diary

This past 26th of September marked one year since the disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural School. An immense demonstration gathered over 150,000 people in Mexico City, to demand that the students be brought back alive. I had the unique and intense experience of participating.

I have just returned from Mexico and I must confess that the intensity, beauty and pain of that sister nation has marked me. I had the opportunity to visit communities in the Gran Bosque Otomi-Mexica. It was a rather peculiar experience…

I’m an anarchist and I don’t feel any desire to save the Cuban Revolution as I’ve known it. But I’m not a counterrevolutionary either. People should be free to express their ideas without facing consequences for their lives.

The rights of consumers are constantly trampled in Cuba. Currently, no customer protection law exists, though there is talk one is being developed and will be approved this year. Now a group of citizens has created the Protected Customers and Users project.

Two weeks before May 1st, one could already see people working in the vicinity of Havana’s Revolution Square as part of the preparations for International Workers’ Day. The orchestra was rehearsing, the audio system was being checked, banners were being painted and signs were being posted.

The legislative bill aimed at modifying Cuba’s current Family Code is still waiting to be delivered to the National People’s Power Assembly (Parliament). This process ought to be transparent, but, as tends to be the case in Cuba, it is at times rather confusing.

Formal relationships between people of the same sex is already a reality in several countries in our region. Despite an official discourse that occasionally seeks to appear inclusive, this has not yet been achieved in Cuba.

It’s been over two weeks since the governments of the United States and Cuba announced they were re-establishing diplomatic relations. People have written about it from many different points of view: there are agreements, disagreements and no few suspicions.

The controversial “weekly package” – a compilation of TV series, music and a wide range of digital files put together every week and distributed in Cuba through hard disks and flash drives – was once again addressed at two panel discussions.