Tag: Cuba

Herman Marks, a drifter from Milwaukee, took a boat to Cuba with nothing but a Colt .45 revolver and $400 in cash. His plan? To join the revolution.

“…female Cuban crocs, who might normally struggle to find a mate from their own small population, suddenly encounter exotic suitors of an appealing size and shenanigans ensue.”

Two baseball teams — one from the tough streets of West Oakland and the other from Havana — decide to play each other. When they meet in Cuba, a Berkeley documentary filmmaker captures it all.

Alex Vadukul tells the story of Brin­-Jonathan Butler, a successful boxing writer who’s extensively documented boxing in Cuba, only to become part of the story by teaching the sport in New York’s Central Park.

During World War II Hemingway organized a private spy network, which he jokingly called the Crook Factory, and gathered information about Nazi sympathizers on the island. But in a secret, 124-page report on Hemingway, the FBI—which feared his personal prestige and political power—expressed resentment at his amateur but alarming intrusion into their territory, and unsuccessfully […]

This week, we’re proud to feature a Longreads Member Exclusive from Alma Guillermoprieto and The New York Review of Books. Born in Mexico City, Guillermoprieto has covered Latin America for NYRB since 1994, and she has also written for The New Yorker, The Guardian and the Washington Post. Today’s feature, “A Visit to Havana,” is […]

A reporter spends a winter in Cuba and takes a look at life in a post-Fidel era, which is changing gradually for some, but not fast enough for others who are still looking to escape to the U.S.: ‘Viva Cuba Libre,’ Eduardo muttered, mimicking a revolutionary exhortation we’d seen emblazoned high on an outdoor wall. […]

A writer takes a trip to visit his wife’s family. What has changed in the country over the years, and what hasn’t: For obvious reasons, the actual Cuban peso is worth much less than the other, dollar-equivalent Cuban peso, something on the order of 25 to 1. But the driver said simply, ‘No, they are […]

A story of love and revolution in Cuba. William Morgan was a free-spirited American drawn to Cuba to help Castro fight, only to grow disenchanted with his embrace of communism: One day in the spring of 1958, while Morgan was visiting a guerrilla camp for a meeting of the Second Front’s chiefs of staff, he […]

The complicated business of helping Cuban baseball talent find their way to the U.S., and eventually the Major League: At some point — either before leaving Cuba or postdefection — every player needs a baseball agent. The seedier practitioners of this trade are often called buscónes, or searchers. Sometimes they bully clients into paying. ‘I’ve […]

An interview with Cuban director Fernando Pérez on life, art and making movies in Cuba: Fernando Pérez: I have one place in the world that I live in, where I was born, and that’s Havana. If you ask me why, I wouldn’t know, but then, that’s why I make films. In Cuba and specifically in […]