Photographs | Entre los Cubanos

Ripsime Biyazyan

For my undergraduate senior comprehensive thesis, I traveled to Havana, Cuba for three weeks to study the effect that dissident bloggers have on the international community with the purpose of placing more pressure on Cuba to liberalize. I was accompanied by my maternal grandfather, with whom I spent a lot of time, considering there was no internet and no one else we knew on the island. He passed away about a month later due to a heart attack. I am incredibly lucky to have spent the time with him, as he showed me that the pristine lives that the happy Cubans led were pure bliss. I am glad I was able to give him one last adventure, and for that, I dedicate my work—my photos and my thesis—to him.

I won my grant to Cuba the day former President Barack Obama announced that he would lift the tourism blockade in April 2015, almost neatly aligning with the Armenian Genocide Centennial. I went to Cuba on the premise of an American student taking a photojournalism class, but the parallels I saw with my family’s experience as Armenians in the final days of the crumbling Soviet Union were noteworthy: from the cold political environment to the warm hospitality of strangers, Cuba was a beautiful life-changing experience, both as an Armenian and as an American.