#che-guevara-legacy-removal

#che-guevara-legacy-removal

There are politics in my songs, but not propaganda, says the musician, who receives EL PAIS on Wednesday at the Ojala studios in Havana. He speaks of the government's orthodox and closed vision in the economic sphere, and of his commitment to a less rigid socialism.

She explained that she was facing bureaucratic hurdles in obtaining her degree to qualify as a senior technician in dental prosthetics. And, even with the diploma, it would be difficult to survive on a monthly salary of 3,000 pesos (about $6). In Cuba, she said, you have to be a magician to survive the nonexistent transportation, the inflation, the corruption, [or] the fact that the country is operating with a currency that not everyone can access.

This is not a simple administrative issue, but a renewed attempt by the center-right government of Rodrigo Paz to sweep aside the memory of the world's most famous guerrilla fighter, who was assassinated in the Bolivian village of La Higuera in 1967. Since Bolivia's Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) lost power to the new government last year, several attempts have been made to rid the country of Guevara's legacy.

Cuba's government said Thursday night that it would release 51 people from the island's prisons in an unexpected move. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the release in the upcoming days stems from a spirit of goodwill and close relations with the Vatican. The government did not identify who it would release, except to say that 'all have served a significant part of their sentence and have maintained good conduct in prison.'

they won't sit with novices or enthusiastic tourists visiting Calle Ocho, the heart of the disapora in Miami, to admire the nostalgic murals of Cuban exile, but rather be able to play one-on-one with their own kind, those who know Little Havana, people who left Cuba and helped build a city on the swamp that was Miami, who spend long hours thinking about what a return would be like and who never stop talking about politics.

At a time when geopolitical certainties of old are crumbling away, it has become the go-to quote to make sense of the current moment in all its seeming senselessness. The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters is a line attributed to the former Italian Communist party leader Antonio Gramsci. Over the last two months alone, it has been quoted and often mangled by a rightwing Belgian prime minister, a leftwing British political leader, an Irish central banker and in the title of the most recent BBC Reith lecture, given by the author Rutger Bregman.

The Trump administration's exercise in armed regime change in Venezuela should have come as no surprise. The U.S. naval buildup in the Caribbean and the attacks on defenseless boats off the Venezuelan coast - based on unproven allegations that they contained drug traffickers - had been underway for more than three months. By the end of December 2025, in fact, such strikes on boats near Venezuela (and in the Eastern Pacific) had already killed 115 people.

Cuban state media outlet Cubadebate said the blackout was caused by a fault at the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant, located about 100km (62 miles) east of Havana, which cut electricity from Pinar del Rio in the far west of the country to the eastern Las Tunas province. In all, two-thirds of the country, including Havana, were left without power, according to the national electric company UNE, which said it was working to restore services.

A few blocks from Revolution Square, in a former shantytown in Havana, Dr. Omitsa Valdes holds her consultations. It's a dusty, dilapidated place where she tells patients they must bring their own syringe and medication from home. But if a general checkup is needed, including urine and blood tests, Dr. Valdes is even more direct: If you can get it done yourself, I'll write the order.

Among the rebels who, on December 8, entered Damascus and put an end to almost 14 years of conflict and the Assad family regime one of the cruellest and longest-lasting in the Middle East was one who spoke Spanish with a slight Caribbean accent. Dr. Bachar Alkaderi, a graduate of the University of Medical Sciences of Havana, specializing in general and thoracic surgery, became, through the twists of fate and history, a revolutionary commander.

Mexico's defense of Cuba hasn't been limited to President Sheinbaum's daily press conferences. Prominent Morena figures from parliamentary spokespeople to party president Luisa Alcalde have publicly aligned themselves with Havana. Within Morena, a broad and sometimes divided political family, the party's more orthodox or nostalgic left wing has embraced the Cuban crisis as an ideological cause and is pushing for even closer ties with Havana.