Yoani Sanchez Denied Permission to Attend Tonight's Maria Moors Cabot Prize Ceremony at Columbia

October 14, 2009

Tonight Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism will host the 71st annual Maria Moors Cabot Prize for outstanding reporting on Latin America and the Caribbean. New York Times veteran Anthony DePalma, O Globo columnist Merval Pereira and Christopher Hawley, Latin America correspondent for USA Today and The Arizona Republic will be present to collect their awards, which include a $5,000 honorarium. However Cuban blogger and dissident Yoani Sánchez, who was awarded a special mention from the awards committee won’t be there. Sánchez confirmed on Monday that Cuban authorities denied her request to travel to New York to accept the prize. 

The Generación Y author has won international accolades for the blog she founded in 2007. In 2008 she won Spain’s prestigious Ortega y Gasset prize for digital journalism; later that year Time distinguished her as one of the year’s 100 most influential people. Her blog is translated into 15 languages and receives over 1 million visitors per month.

She is the first blogger to receive recognition from the Cabot Prize Board, which describes her writing as "...a pitch-perfect mix of personal observation and tough analysis which conveys better than anybody else what daily life ― with all its frustrations and hopes ― is like for Cubans living their lives on the island today.”

Ms. Sánchez describes her frustration at not being allowed to leave Cuba to accept the award more eloquently than anyone else could:

“All these difficulties to get permission to leave evoke for me the words of …Carlos Aldana. In an interview in 1991 for the Spanish magazine Cambio 16, the former number three in power in Cuba said: 'This year Cubans will be able to travel abroad freely.' Only it didn’t specify if we were going to do it on the wings of our imaginations and if it would be in a year containing twelve months or nearly two decades.”

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Press Freedom Under Attack in Honduras

July 16, 2009

More than two weeks after a military coup ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, a superficial calm has returned to the country: protests have slowed and the interim government has repealed the curfew in place since June 28.    

However complaints of censorship and mistreatment toward members of the foreign and local press continue to surface.

A series of arrests, a media blackout and attempts at censorship have been denounced by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Reporters without Borders, Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and other human rights groups.

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New Magazine Highlights Nicaragua's Thriving Arts Scene

May 27, 2009

Ask anyone for good investment tips, and they’re unlikely to suggest going in to the magazine business. So for a pair of young designers to front $10,000 of their own savings for a new print publication—that is a sign of confidence in their product.

Hecho magazine is the brainchild of Christopher Sataua, 27, and Oliver Best, 31, U.S. graphic designers who have been living in Nicaragua since 2005 and 2007, respectively. The bilingual, bi-monthly Managua-based glossy delves into Nicaragua’s underground arts and music scene with reviews, travelogues, interviews, and photo essays. The publication places a heavy emphasis on design and its appeal spans from Nicaraguans living in Nicaragua and abroad to the country’s large, English-speaking ex-pat community.

One of the feature articles for the first issue (which came out in February) profiles Bluefields Sound System, a collective of musicians from the often-ignored Caribbean coast, and reflects the publication’s dedication to broadening its scope beyond Managua. “Most people we talk to here say Managua’s the cultural center, but when we traveled [beyond Managua] we started meeting musicians, painters, and [discovering new] art galleries. That opened up a world to us.” The magazine has also profiled international artists living in Nicaragua, including Jean Marc Calvet, a French-born, Granada-based painter, and Martín Perna, a U.S. saxophonist who is living and recording music in Bluefields.

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Colombian Reporter Jenny Manrique Gives a Voice to Victims of Political Violence

April 3, 2009

The folding of several important newspapers throughout the U.S. has caused many to lament the “end of journalism” as we know it, and has left many would-be journalists to pursue other career paths. Jenny Manrique is not one of those would-be journalists. Her fearless, investigative reporting on topics such as post-traumatic stress disorder among political refugees and Boston’s asylum-seeking Colombian community has attached faces and names to the often-forgotten victims of political violence in her native Colombia and elsewhere in the region.

Manrique, 28, is the 2008-2009 Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow, an award established by the International Women’s Media Foundation given to one woman each year to focus “exclusively on human rights journalism and social justice issues.” The recipient of the award, which was founded in honor of a Boston Globe reporter who died in Iraq in 2003, spends nine months as a research associate in residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for International Studies and interns both at the Boston Globe and The New York Times.

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Latin American Film Industry May Receive Boost in the Global Recession

February 13, 2009

In the last few months conventional wisdom has said that all bets are off when it comes to investments. While most sectors of the economy are starving for cash and credit, Latin American film makers are hoping to attract foreign investors looking to lower costs by investing in non-U.S. projects.

Andres Calderón, executive producer at Dynamo capital, was in New York last week to test that hypothesis. Calderón, who worked as an investment banker for eight years before joining the Colombian production firm Dynamo, is hoping that the credit crunch affecting Hollywood will provide new opportunities for Latin American movie makers.

“There’s no money in Hollywood, so [investors] are thinking of ways to do more with Colombia and Latin America. One way to reduce budgets is to shoot in places that are cheaper to shoot,” he said, estimating production costs in Colombia to be between 30 and 40 percent cheaper in Colombia.

The film industry in general has become considered a relatively safe investment. According to The New York Times: “Wall Street, real estate, the art market — all of those other supposedly stable investment areas — are now such a mess that Hollywood is one of the safer places you can park money. Although the movie business has been hurt along with nearly every other industry, it’s proving far more resilient to recession than most.”

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New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music Showcases Latin American Composers

January 29, 2009

Audiences in the U.S. and Europe are used to Latin music tours consisting of hip-shaking pop stars and traditional Latin music in the forms of salsa, cumbia, and samba etc. But a new generation of Latin American composers are making headlines across the globe with classical music that resonates beyond borders and brings new sounds to symphonies worldwide. This week one place to take in this wave of Latin music is Brooklyn: this Saturday, the borough’s world-renowned Brooklyn Academy of Music will be hosting some of the region’s greatest musical talents at the Brooklyn Philharmonic’s Nuevo Latino festival.

Saturday’s programming will be conducted by BP’s music director Michael Christie and will feature Gabriela Lena Frank, Enrico Chapela and Paul Desenne, three of the regions “rising star” composers who will come together for the first time to share some of their sounds with Brooklyn.

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Jamaica: Defending Human Rights in a Country with One of the World’s Highest Homicide Rates

December 17, 2008

Jamaica reported 1,500 homicides last year. In such environments of high insecurity, citizens’ rights often take a back seat to in the demand for government action and security. Carolyn Gomes, the executive director and co-founder of Jamaicans for Justice, has emerged as an outspoken leader for defendant’s rights, dedicating specific attention to exposing and lowering the incidence of extrajudicial killings, which JFJ estimates to number around 1,250 between 2000 and 2007.

Last week, Dr. Gomes and six other activists were awarded the UN Human Rights Prize for demonstrating firm commitment to the advancement of human rights worldwide.

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Skating a lo Cubano

November 26, 2008

The Cubans are behind.

Given the shortage of equipment, skills training from outside the island and lack of public space, it is no wonder that Cuban skaters are not keeping up with their counterparts abroad.

The Havana skate community is estimated to hover around 400 to 500. There is one skate park on the entire island; most skating is done freestyle, or on makeshift installations in public spaces. There are no skate shops in Cuba, although there's a rumor that some of the island's surf shops do sell skateboards. Still, at around $40 a pop, skateboards can represent three to four months of wages for the average Cuban.

Puerto Rican mural artist Sofia Maldonado is joining a growing effort to bridge the divide between the Cuban skating community and the rest of the world. Maldonado, 24, launched her most recent collection, Tropical Storm in May 2008 at the Magnan Emrich gallery in New York shortly after receiving her Masters in Fine Arts from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. She launched the outline for her next project Skate My Patria, last weekend  in New York at PINTA; the Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art Fair.

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