Latin America & The Caribbean

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Speaking Freely Volume 5: Hugo Chávez (2008)
March 8, 2013 3 min. read

Now that one of Latin America’s most controversial figures has died, it is interesting to look back at his actions, actions that will reverberate in the western hemisphere for some time to come. This is a short piece (about 52 minutes) that is clearly a love letter from the maker, Cinema Libre Studio. The whole […]

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Finish line in sight for post-Castro Cuba
February 27, 2013 2 min. read

After 54 years of leadership by one Castro brother or the other, current Cuban President Raúl Castro announced on Sunday that his current five-year term would be his last — thus providing a firm date for the end of Castro rule in Cuba while holding himself to a standard he has oft-repeated: senior officials should […]

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The Devil’s Miner (2005)
February 22, 2013 3 min. read

“The mountain that eats men.” That is what Cerro Rico (“rich mountain”) is called. The mountain in Potosi, Bolivia has yielded a tremendous amount of silver since the Spanish empire began mining it hundreds of years ago. This documentary follows the daily life of 14 year-old Basilio Vargas, who works long shifts in the silver […]

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Censoring Speech in Haiti’s Most Celebrated Agora (part one) – Haiti
February 20, 2013 11 min. read

  During a live interview aired on Radio Scoop FM  (107.7) 48 hours before Haiti’s carnival festivities, President Michel Martelly dispelled all rumors surrounding band selections for Cap-Haitien’s 2013 Carnival possession. “It was I, who personally decided to exclude bands from the carnival parade,” declared the president. “The decision to exclude bands, such as Brothers Posse […]

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Port-au-Prince Caves under International Pressure to Hold Overdue Elections
February 7, 2013 5 min. read

Reacting to a United Nations Security Council’s Jan. 28, 2013 press release that cilled on the Haitian government to hold free, fair, inclusive and credible senatorial and municipal elections that are 14-months overdue, Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe reiterated his administration’s determination to organize elections this year, an exercise the note stressed “Is important to maintain […]

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The Long Road Back
February 4, 2013 3 min. read

My mother was born in Havana on December 11, 1953, into a solidly middle-class Cuban family. After years of self-driven study and hard work, my grandfather Celestino had been able to launch a successful car import business that allowed him and my grandmother to raise and support a family. They lived on the second story […]

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Kita Nago to Urge Unity among Haitians, Moving Haiti Forward
January 31, 2013 4 min. read

“Ki bwa li ye, bwa sa; ki bwa li ye, bwa sa,” sang euphoric young men and women, floating in a sea of people embarked on a lengthy pilgrimage to unity. At the end of the unprecedented grassroots movement in Northern city Ouanaminthe — Kita Nago — a half-ton tree trunk that symbolizes Haiti, would have, on […]

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Cuba, Chavez, and the Turn of the New Year
January 1, 2013 4 min. read

Fidel Castro’s long-declining health and the high average age of his successors are well-worn topics in Cuba discussions. As we turn the page on 2012, Cuba watchers and Cubans alike are now discussing the health of the leader of a different country: Venezuela. Hugo Chávez recently suffered still new complications from his cancer surgery, and […]

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ARGENZUELA
December 24, 2012 4 min. read

Argenzuela — an invented word that has been on the minds and lips of Argentines for the past year; the jokes that Argentina is following an eerily similar path to that of Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela are no longer funny. The fact that the man who almost single-handedly has destroyed the former economic juggernaut of Venezuela […]

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Super Storm Sandy Exposed Haiti’s Failed Reconstruction
November 30, 2012 6 min. read

Transforming Haiti into a consumer nation, ultimately meant that a short-supplied world would force its population into mass starvation, a recurring nightmare Haitians are currently experiencing amid the recent global food crisis, which caused a wave of sporadic protests to erupt throughout the country last month. Rampant inflation sent food prices hovering well beyond the […]

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What lies ahead: Cuba and Obama’s second term
November 21, 2012 3 min. read

In the recent U.S. election, Cuban-Americans voted for President Obama in record numbers, reflecting in a most convincing way the demographic shift that we have already been watching for years: newer immigrants and younger Cuban-Americans do not prioritize a hard-line U.S. policy toward Cuba, or do not support it at all. In fact, on November […]

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The Socialist Origins of Technocratic Chile
October 29, 2012 4 min. read

In 1971 Stafford Beer, a renowned British academic, proposed to make Chile the world’s first cybernetic country. In essence, this meant that Chile’s entire economy would be run by a centralized computer network; real time data from hundreds of public utilities, banks, and industrial manufacturers would be rendered into optimal allocations of electricity, automatically set […]

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