In the quiet hour of 4 a.m., University of Havana meteorology professor Armando Caymares was working alone at his desk when he was jolted by a phone call. A familiar voice scratched through the hazy connection. It was Gladys Rubio, a Cuban-American tropical storm analyst at the National Hurricane Center in Miami: Hurricane Michael was tracking toward Cuba, she verified. It’s time to get ready….
Just off of Avenida 23, one of Havana’s busiest streets, lies a small shop, its storefront minimally decorated like most others in communist Cuba. The interior is organized like a small jewelry store, with a glass countertop display case separating patrons from a woman in a lab coat, darting in and out from the back room….
African influences are often lost when listening to Latin music. Cuban rhythms would be empty of the clave and the drums without the creativity, imagination and strength of the Yorùbá people who were forced to leave their homes as slaves. Today, those sounds still beat as the heart of the island….
They remember being ushered away from their parents with dozens of other children. They remember the room of glass that made a few feet feel like miles. They remember waving goodbye to their parents, unsure of the next time they would meet….
The days of riding bicycles through Cuban neighborhoods abruptly ended for Consuelo Isaacson when her family had to leave their home in the midst of the Cuban Revolution in 1960. …
At Organoponico Vivero Alamar farm just outside of Havana, where rows of fruits and vegetables soak up the early spring sun on a recent Wednesday, a simple red-stemmed mint plant is under the 24-hour surveillance of a security guard and watchdog….
On the unassuming calle Galiano in Centro Havana, hundreds of people are impatiently waiting before the doors of the Teatro América. from all corners of Havana….
As climate change worsens, the world’s coral reefs continue to fail at staggering rates. But in Cuba, years of strict environmental regulations have given these ecosystems a fighting chance….
Phil Chiampa and his wife Toni Lyn have been coming to El Oriental de Cuba for decades, but they worried they may have lost “the best Cuban food that we’ve ever had” when an arsonist set fire to the restaurant in 2005. …
Hip hop music was born in the United States but Cubans have always loved a good beat. Now young artists are trying to create their own following, which isn’t always easy in a country known for salsa, rhumba and jazz….