I'm back now. Beginning to feel the peculiarities of a Cuba that in my three-month absence has barely changed.

The Internet Forum has allowed us to feel like citizens of the world, to share experiences with those who live in different situations but, in essence, surprisingly similar ones.

They are the children of the satellite dish, fed with the illicit and used to the other side of information or misinformation. They have grown up with the remote control in their hands and, with a simple click, they access the prohibited every day.

In a country where a washing machine costs an entire year's salary, we can't talk about women's emancipation.

I vowed never to return to Cuba until the country of my birth was free -- an unlikely proposition given the strong grip of the Cuban government on virtually all aspects of life on the island. Ms. Sanchez has changed my view on the future of Cuba.

I've asked myself many times what led and so many other people in the world to see Cubans inside and outside the Island as two separate worlds. How was it that a government, a party, a man in power, claimed the right to decide who should claim our nationality and who should not?

I cringe again on hearing of the harsh lives of these activists -- I again put myself in their place. And who puts themselves in ours? Who unravels this myth in which we are trapped?

In reality I was trying to look at and find my own country through the eyes of the Mexicans. And I found it. An Island reinterpreted and multiple, but close; one that raises passions in everyone and leaves no one unscathed.

The first surprise was at the entrance, where the woman who was selling tickets had the courtesy to let me pass free, due to the fact -- she explained -- that I came from Cuba.

The big difference is that I don't feel I'm permanently marked with the red badge of the outlaw, the whistle that surprises me in something clandestine, the constant sensation that whatever I do or think could be prohibited.

The picketing of the extremists who blocked the showing of Dado Galvao's film in Feria de Santana was something more than the sum of unconditional supporters of the Cuban government.

Wearing tight clothes, short and with a skinny build, the Frenchman Alain Robert scaled the façade of the Habana Libre Hotel on Monday. With some 27 floors and over 400 feet high, this building has one of the best views over the city.

Since assuming the highest office in the nation in 2008, questions have surrounded Raul Castro's few trips abroad. This time the controversy ranged from cheering people to critics demanding the General be put on trial.

Two years after arriving on Cuban soil, at a cost of $70 million and a thousand miles in length, the long fiber-optic serpent started to work. We had to learn, as so often happens, through the foreign media.

I will say what I think of my country and of the absence of freedoms we Cubans suffer. No passport will function as a gag for me, no trip as bait.

Decree-Law No. 302 significantly simplifies the paperwork required to leave the country, and also reduces the costs. However, doubts about how the reform will be implemented in practice feed rumors and speculation.

An old wooden suitcase of the kind still tucked away in many Cuban homes. The night warm, beautiful, still with some Christmas lights hanging from ...

For the first time I heard the music of Meme Solís without hiding. The only thing missing was him singing it.

This 2013, when so many await the implementation of Immigration and Travel Reform, could become a year where we say "goodbye" many times.

I have the impression that for Cubans the next twelve months will not be fatal. Looking ahead, I can predict they will be full of moments of change and great times.

I get up in the morning and tell myself, "It's all over, it was just a dream." But after a while the phone rings and someone tells me that Antonio Rodiles remains in custody, accused of resisting an arrest as arbitrary as it was unjust.

I will be there when they open the doors to decide which Cubans can board a plane and which will continue under the "insular imprisonment." And my suitcase will be at my side.

I have accumulated 20 negatives in just five years to my requests to travel. Twenty times I have tried to leave my country and just received a "no" as a response from the Cuban authorities.

By the time they told me I was "being transferred to Havana," I could barely raise my eyelids and my tongue was practically hanging out of my mouth from the effects of prolonged thirst. However, I felt that I had won.

The sweat of the three women who put me into a police car still sticks to my skin and in my nostrils. Huge, hulking, ruthless, they took me into a windowless room where the broken fan only blew air towards them.