News stories by Leonardo Padura Fuentes

HAVANA, Jan 21 (IPS) - All Cubans, on either side of the Florida Straits, but in places like Spain, France or Greenland – where there must be a couple of Cubans - as well felt it was a historic moment that included each and every one of us, when U.S. President Barack Obama announced on Dec. 17 the normalisation of relations after half a century of hostility.

HAVANA, Nov 06 (IPS) - For the Cuban economy, the year 2014 is set to start with the opening of the first installations in the Special Economic Development Zone in the upgraded Mariel port, 70 km west of Havana.

Today, weighed down with mundane concerns, Cubans seem to expect more from their own ability and initiative and far less from the impending visit of the Pope than they did from John Paul II's visit fourteen years ago, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban author and journalist whose novels have been translated into more than fifteen languages.

Cuba may be the only country in the world whose citizens have, for half a century now, not been allowed to freely acquire a car or a home. Indeed the very words have a very different connotation on the island, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into more than fifteen languages.

Cuba may be the only country in the world whose citizens have, for half a century now, not been allowed to freely acquire a car or a home. Indeed the very words have a very different connotation on the island, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into more than fifteen languages.

After a long wait and numerous postponements, the Cuban Communist Party has decided to hold its sixth congress in April 2011. The last was held in 1997, more than 13 years ago, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into more than fifteen languages. His most recent work is The Man Who Loved Dogs.

Cuba's official newspaper and organ of the Communist Party recently published a story that stunned the populace: in a country where the lack of food has become endemic and causes the people dire economic hardship, tonnes of agricultural products were left to rot outside the city of Havana because there were neither the containers nor the vehicles nor the organisational capacity to transport them, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a dozen languages.

It was a news item that naturally filled me with admiration: one of the world's busiest and most overworked men, US president Barack Obama, was taking a week-long vacation on the island of Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts. But his rest would be that of an active and intelligent man: it included 2000 pages of reading. The authors on Obama's list shared a common feature: they are all American, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a dozen languages.

It was a news item that naturally filled me with admiration: one of the world's busiest and most overworked men, US president Barack Obama, was taking a week's vacation on the island of Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts. But his rest would be that of an active and intelligent man: it included 2000 pages of reading. But the authors on Obama's list shared a common feature: they are all American and they all write in English, the dominant language of expression of their multi-cultural and multi-ethnic country, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a dozen languages.

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