Essential Afro-Latino/ Caribbean Current Events
- Thread starter Poitier
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NATU
Dios Patria y Libertad
newworldafro
DeeperThanRapBiggerThanHH
Thread is 
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The shiit about Fredrick Douglas going to the Dominican Republic on behalf of Pres. Grant post - Civil War to make it a state .........
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Speaking of Hispaniola....did anyone see Chris Rock's Top 5 movie yet..............
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.........................The shiit about Fredrick Douglas going to the Dominican Republic on behalf of Pres. Grant post - Civil War to make it a state .........
.Speaking of Hispaniola....did anyone see Chris Rock's Top 5 movie yet..............
.... a major subplot of the movie...... doing a Hollywood film on the Haitian slave uprising........the way it was presented in the movie was so clever.....I was mad and uplifted at the same time, cause of how DEEP this imagery that was being presented on screen was. The fact that most people going to see Top 5 now and watching and laughing at the hil
rious concept of movie on this subject matter, don't realize for the past 10 years or so Danny Glover, Mos Def along with a couple of other Black Hollywood types have wanted to raise money to do a film about Toussaint in Haiti...........and what has Danny Glover said time after time why he couldn't raise money from major studios/producers?? What did they say allegedly? NO ONE WANTS TO SEE A FILM WITH A BLACK HERO KILLING WHITE PEOPLE or something to that effect. That's odd b/se D'Jango proved that's not true.
Yet, the story itself is beyond racial strife................its a historical milestone in the history of the Americas......in the context of the basic historical motif of when the underdog rises up......every Braveheart clone type movie shows the exact same thing over and over, the underdog beats that ass...............simple.........yet Hollywood won't recognize this impactful moment.......instead, fostering race as an excuse not to put something like this into production.
Chris Rock masterfully parodies/satirizes the box office expectations of those same Hollywood producers Danny Glover speaks of in Top 5
To be fair, he may be right .....hell the line for the Tyler Perry movie was around the corner and his movie had like 5 people for his movie about in there on one screen...
. The reality is kinda scary......but it still needs to be made....
rious concept of movie on this subject matter, don't realize for the past 10 years or so Danny Glover, Mos Def along with a couple of other Black Hollywood types have wanted to raise money to do a film about Toussaint in Haiti...........and what has Danny Glover said time after time why he couldn't raise money from major studios/producers?? What did they say allegedly? NO ONE WANTS TO SEE A FILM WITH A BLACK HERO KILLING WHITE PEOPLE or something to that effect. That's odd b/se D'Jango proved that's not true.Yet, the story itself is beyond racial strife................its a historical milestone in the history of the Americas......in the context of the basic historical motif of when the underdog rises up......every Braveheart clone type movie shows the exact same thing over and over, the underdog beats that ass...............simple.........yet Hollywood won't recognize this impactful moment.......instead, fostering race as an excuse not to put something like this into production.
Chris Rock masterfully parodies/satirizes the box office expectations of those same Hollywood producers Danny Glover speaks of in Top 5
To be fair, he may be right .....hell the line for the Tyler Perry movie was around the corner and his movie had like 5 people for his movie about in there on one screen...
. The reality is kinda scary......but it still needs to be made.... End.
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KravenMorehead™
Barrel Brothers.®
actually downloaded those vids in the OP awhile back
Shifting Dynamics for Cuba’s Dissidents
Leer en español (Read in Spanish) »
By THE EDITORIAL BOARDDEC. 27, 2014
Photo
Members of Ladies in White, an opposition group, at a protest in Havana this month. Credit Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
The words were scrawled in graffiti on a street near the house of the Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá a few years before his suspicious death in 2012. “In a plaza under siege, dissidence is treasonous.”
Over the decades, Cuba’s authoritarian government has relied on that convenient argument to exert pervasive control over the lives of its citizens and keep opposition movements from gaining enough traction to threaten the state. The message was unmistakable: As long as the United States was intent on toppling the island’s leaders and meddling in the country’s affairs, Cubans, as a matter of national sovereignty, had to close ranks. The era that began this month when President Obama and President Raúl Castro of Cuba announced an end to more than 50 years of enmity between their governments is a watershed moment for Cuba’s diverse and courageous opposition movement.
Under Communist Party rule, Cubans endure the austerity of living under a stagnant, centrally planned economy. Their access to the Internet is severely limited and censored. The island’s official press is wholly subservient to the state. Outside the rigid mechanisms of the party, Cubans have few substantive vehicles to challenge their leaders.
In 1998, at the end of a decade of hunger and deprivation triggered by the collapse of Havana’s longtime patron, the Soviet Union, Mr. Payá undertook an audacious mission. Relying on a Cuban law that ostensibly allowed groups of 10,000 or more eligible voters to propose new laws, Mr. Payá gathered, by some estimates, more than 25,000 signatures from Cubans who endorsed sweeping democratic reforms, including free elections, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press and a less-regulated economy.
In 2002, Cuba’s National Assembly responded to Mr. Paya’s initiative, known as the Varela Project, by amending the Constitution to make the island’s socialist, one-party system “irrevocable.” The following year, Cuban authorities jailed scores of dissidents and independent journalists during a period of intense repression known as the Black Spring. The crackdown, which took aim at many leaders of Mr. Payá's movement, largely escaped global attention.
Continue reading the main story
In 2010, the Cuban government agreed to release many political prisoners in a deal brokered by the Catholic Church, on the condition that they move to Spain. Mr. Payá died in a car crash in 2012 in Cuba that many human rights activists suspect was staged by the authorities.
A few of the released prisoners, including José Daniel Ferrer, a fiery lieutenant in Mr. Payá's movement, refused to leave the island. Mr. Ferrer now leads the Patriotic Union for Cuba, the most visible and outspoken opposition group on the island. In a recent interview in Havana, Mr. Ferrer said his eight years in prison gave him time to reflect on why Cuba’s democratic movements had failed in the past and how they might one day prevail. Historically, he said, Cuban activists have often been seen by their compatriots as hapless victims of an oppressive state. “These people inspire pity, not a desire to follow them,” said Mr. Ferrer, who is based in Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second-largest city. “We’re trying to avoid reaching people with speeches of losers.”
Mr. Ferrer says his goal is not the type of sudden, dramatic overthrow of the Castro government that many Cuban exiles have historically favored. Rather, he said, Cuba’s opposition movement must become sufficiently empowered to get a seat at the table.
“We need to become large enough to force the regime to negotiate,” Mr. Ferrer said, acknowledging that it will take time to get enough Cubans to believe that siding with the opposition is worth the risks. “No one wants to bet on the horse that’s losing the race.”
Photo
José Daniel Ferrer Credit Alexandra Garcia/The New York Times
Despite decades of economic deprivation and government oppression, the vast majority of Cubans have been unwilling to join, or openly support, opposition movements. It is easy to understand why. Cuba’s shrewd intelligence service has managed to penetrate those movements over the years and make it hard for opposition leaders to join forces. And it has effectively cast dissidents as greedy agents of Western plots in a deeply nationalistic nation that for many years was, in fact, the target of covert American plots.
While the tactics used against dissidents are not nearly as brutal as they were a decade ago, they remain insidious. Prominent opposition leaders are attacked by the official media. Activists are often detained temporarily to keep them from attending meetings and to remind them — and their neighbors — that they are being watched. State surveillance is widely assumed to be so pervasive that diplomats blast music whenever they want to have a conversation about sensitive issues. Wary Cubans pop out the batteries of their cellphones if they want to speak privately, fearing that the state’s extensive army of domestic spies can listen in on virtually anyone at any time.
On a very basic level, said Elizardo Sánchez, who is known as the dean of Cuba’s human rights activists, political activism requires a level of zeal that many Cubans lack. “Life is so hard that people don’t have time to think in political terms,” he said. “Everything from finding food, transportation and medicine takes so much time.”
After the announcement of the rapprochement between Washington and Havana this month, a handful of prominent activists and civil society leaders issued a joint statement outlining four sensible requests. They call for the unconditional release of all political prisoners. Under the deal Mr. Castro and Mr. Obama announced, the Cuban government pledged to free 53 of them. The activists also demand that Havana abide by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the Cuban government has ratified. The statement — signed by Mr. Ferrer and the popular dissident blogger Yoani Sánchez, among others — asks that the Cuban government formally recognize civil society leaders who are at odds with the state. Finally, they argue that the state must be open to constitutional reforms that will eventually lead to free, democratic elections.
Whether Cuba’s opposition movement will be empowered by the thaw in relations with the United States or suffer intensified repression will depend largely on the support activists receive from the international community. As Cuba becomes more accessible to Americans, including Cubans who are dual citizens, the government in Havana, feeling vulnerable in the face of a flood of investment, increased travel and a less-regulated flow of information, may well seek to redouble its efforts to stifle dissent.
For decades, Latin American governments have coddled, or appeased, the Castro regime because confronting it would be interpreted as an endorsement of Washington’s harshly punitive policy toward the island. By changing that policy, Mr. Obama has removed that concern, which should allow leaders from democratic nations to support the principles Cuban activists have put forward. The leaders of Latin America’s largest economies, in particular, can be strong champions of Cuba’s opposition leaders at the Summit of the Americas in Panama in April.
Despite a traditional reluctance to meddle in other countries’ internal affairs, President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico and President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil should speak up unequivocally for democratic values that are embraced by most nations in the Americas. As a former political prisoner, a leftist and the leader of one of Cuba’s main trading allies, Ms. Rousseff would arguably carry the most weight.
If Cuban dissidents and civil society leaders are allowed to participate in the summit meeting, as Washington has advocated, Ms. Rousseff may well be speaking to the future leaders of a democratic Cuba.
Leer en español (Read in Spanish) »
By THE EDITORIAL BOARDDEC. 27, 2014
Photo
Members of Ladies in White, an opposition group, at a protest in Havana this month. Credit Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
The words were scrawled in graffiti on a street near the house of the Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá a few years before his suspicious death in 2012. “In a plaza under siege, dissidence is treasonous.”
Over the decades, Cuba’s authoritarian government has relied on that convenient argument to exert pervasive control over the lives of its citizens and keep opposition movements from gaining enough traction to threaten the state. The message was unmistakable: As long as the United States was intent on toppling the island’s leaders and meddling in the country’s affairs, Cubans, as a matter of national sovereignty, had to close ranks. The era that began this month when President Obama and President Raúl Castro of Cuba announced an end to more than 50 years of enmity between their governments is a watershed moment for Cuba’s diverse and courageous opposition movement.
Under Communist Party rule, Cubans endure the austerity of living under a stagnant, centrally planned economy. Their access to the Internet is severely limited and censored. The island’s official press is wholly subservient to the state. Outside the rigid mechanisms of the party, Cubans have few substantive vehicles to challenge their leaders.
In 1998, at the end of a decade of hunger and deprivation triggered by the collapse of Havana’s longtime patron, the Soviet Union, Mr. Payá undertook an audacious mission. Relying on a Cuban law that ostensibly allowed groups of 10,000 or more eligible voters to propose new laws, Mr. Payá gathered, by some estimates, more than 25,000 signatures from Cubans who endorsed sweeping democratic reforms, including free elections, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press and a less-regulated economy.
In 2002, Cuba’s National Assembly responded to Mr. Paya’s initiative, known as the Varela Project, by amending the Constitution to make the island’s socialist, one-party system “irrevocable.” The following year, Cuban authorities jailed scores of dissidents and independent journalists during a period of intense repression known as the Black Spring. The crackdown, which took aim at many leaders of Mr. Payá's movement, largely escaped global attention.
Continue reading the main story
In 2010, the Cuban government agreed to release many political prisoners in a deal brokered by the Catholic Church, on the condition that they move to Spain. Mr. Payá died in a car crash in 2012 in Cuba that many human rights activists suspect was staged by the authorities.
A few of the released prisoners, including José Daniel Ferrer, a fiery lieutenant in Mr. Payá's movement, refused to leave the island. Mr. Ferrer now leads the Patriotic Union for Cuba, the most visible and outspoken opposition group on the island. In a recent interview in Havana, Mr. Ferrer said his eight years in prison gave him time to reflect on why Cuba’s democratic movements had failed in the past and how they might one day prevail. Historically, he said, Cuban activists have often been seen by their compatriots as hapless victims of an oppressive state. “These people inspire pity, not a desire to follow them,” said Mr. Ferrer, who is based in Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second-largest city. “We’re trying to avoid reaching people with speeches of losers.”
Mr. Ferrer says his goal is not the type of sudden, dramatic overthrow of the Castro government that many Cuban exiles have historically favored. Rather, he said, Cuba’s opposition movement must become sufficiently empowered to get a seat at the table.
“We need to become large enough to force the regime to negotiate,” Mr. Ferrer said, acknowledging that it will take time to get enough Cubans to believe that siding with the opposition is worth the risks. “No one wants to bet on the horse that’s losing the race.”
Photo
José Daniel Ferrer Credit Alexandra Garcia/The New York Times
Despite decades of economic deprivation and government oppression, the vast majority of Cubans have been unwilling to join, or openly support, opposition movements. It is easy to understand why. Cuba’s shrewd intelligence service has managed to penetrate those movements over the years and make it hard for opposition leaders to join forces. And it has effectively cast dissidents as greedy agents of Western plots in a deeply nationalistic nation that for many years was, in fact, the target of covert American plots.
While the tactics used against dissidents are not nearly as brutal as they were a decade ago, they remain insidious. Prominent opposition leaders are attacked by the official media. Activists are often detained temporarily to keep them from attending meetings and to remind them — and their neighbors — that they are being watched. State surveillance is widely assumed to be so pervasive that diplomats blast music whenever they want to have a conversation about sensitive issues. Wary Cubans pop out the batteries of their cellphones if they want to speak privately, fearing that the state’s extensive army of domestic spies can listen in on virtually anyone at any time.
On a very basic level, said Elizardo Sánchez, who is known as the dean of Cuba’s human rights activists, political activism requires a level of zeal that many Cubans lack. “Life is so hard that people don’t have time to think in political terms,” he said. “Everything from finding food, transportation and medicine takes so much time.”
After the announcement of the rapprochement between Washington and Havana this month, a handful of prominent activists and civil society leaders issued a joint statement outlining four sensible requests. They call for the unconditional release of all political prisoners. Under the deal Mr. Castro and Mr. Obama announced, the Cuban government pledged to free 53 of them. The activists also demand that Havana abide by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the Cuban government has ratified. The statement — signed by Mr. Ferrer and the popular dissident blogger Yoani Sánchez, among others — asks that the Cuban government formally recognize civil society leaders who are at odds with the state. Finally, they argue that the state must be open to constitutional reforms that will eventually lead to free, democratic elections.
Whether Cuba’s opposition movement will be empowered by the thaw in relations with the United States or suffer intensified repression will depend largely on the support activists receive from the international community. As Cuba becomes more accessible to Americans, including Cubans who are dual citizens, the government in Havana, feeling vulnerable in the face of a flood of investment, increased travel and a less-regulated flow of information, may well seek to redouble its efforts to stifle dissent.
For decades, Latin American governments have coddled, or appeased, the Castro regime because confronting it would be interpreted as an endorsement of Washington’s harshly punitive policy toward the island. By changing that policy, Mr. Obama has removed that concern, which should allow leaders from democratic nations to support the principles Cuban activists have put forward. The leaders of Latin America’s largest economies, in particular, can be strong champions of Cuba’s opposition leaders at the Summit of the Americas in Panama in April.
Despite a traditional reluctance to meddle in other countries’ internal affairs, President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico and President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil should speak up unequivocally for democratic values that are embraced by most nations in the Americas. As a former political prisoner, a leftist and the leader of one of Cuba’s main trading allies, Ms. Rousseff would arguably carry the most weight.
If Cuban dissidents and civil society leaders are allowed to participate in the summit meeting, as Washington has advocated, Ms. Rousseff may well be speaking to the future leaders of a democratic Cuba.
“People think that, because I’m a funk singer, I can’t seek something for my life”: Young funkster wants to study Medicine
MC Thaysa during a show
Note from BW of Brazil: We’ve all heard the cliche phrase, “I’m only doing this temporarily to get through college”. It’s a phrase that’s usually uttered by a person who’s doing something they’re not proud to be doing but are willing to do it only long enough to improve their lives or get to the next level of life. Of course, some people really mean and manage to move on, but many others, for any number of reasons, end up stuck in the life they meant to occupy only temporarily. We’re hoping the former is the case for this young lady.
Last year, we brought you the story of the Rio-based funk group Bonde das Maravilhas that scored a huge hit with their song “Aquecimento das Maravilhas”. The style known is funk has long been critically panned by many sectors of Brazilian society even though it has recently crossed over, been “blingified” and some would argue, even appropriated. Along with other critiques of the style, the girls of Bonde had to also deal with the fact that they are all so young. In the Brazilian imagery, young black girls are destined to be poor, ignorant baby factories who will never improve their situation in life and thus when Bonde came along, the criticism was harsh.
Today’s story could show the other side of the story. One of the girls from this group has made it known that she intends to go to college and study Medicine. Best wishes to her! As most Brazilians know, Medicine is one of the most difficult areas to gain acceptance in college programs. Still today, the field is overwhelmingly white.
Bonde das Maravilhas singer now studying for the vestibular in Medicine
Alexandre Araújo – Expresso
The routine of shows of the funk group Bonde das Maravilhas will change next year. And it has nothing to do with the world of music, quite to the contrary. MC Thaysa, the lead singer of the group, will enter high school and wants to take the vestibular (college entrance) for Medicine, taking another step to realizing her dream of being a pediatrician.
For the next three years her full focus will be on her on studies, she talked to the manager and the other members for the changes to happen in their agenda. A show during the week, for example, will only happen on the nights before holidays or national holidays. Thaysa ensures that the decision was supported by all.
MC Thaysa wants to be a pediatrician
“Currently, I study with my notebook. I take the material during travels on the tour, and when I come back, I ask questions and take the tests. It was all discussed with the directors,” said the 16-year old, who lives in São Gonçalo, and attends a private school in Niterói (Rio de Janeiro state)
Thaysa also hopes to finish with an existing prejudice in society:
“I chose Medicine because, before Bonde, I had no health insurance and saw that they wouldn’t do complete treatment. And love children. I want to unite the two. Many ask if I’m sure. People think that, because I’m a funkeira (funk singer), I can’t seek something for my life,” lamented Thaysa, who is currently single.
Source: Extra
MC Thaysa during a show
Note from BW of Brazil: We’ve all heard the cliche phrase, “I’m only doing this temporarily to get through college”. It’s a phrase that’s usually uttered by a person who’s doing something they’re not proud to be doing but are willing to do it only long enough to improve their lives or get to the next level of life. Of course, some people really mean and manage to move on, but many others, for any number of reasons, end up stuck in the life they meant to occupy only temporarily. We’re hoping the former is the case for this young lady.
Last year, we brought you the story of the Rio-based funk group Bonde das Maravilhas that scored a huge hit with their song “Aquecimento das Maravilhas”. The style known is funk has long been critically panned by many sectors of Brazilian society even though it has recently crossed over, been “blingified” and some would argue, even appropriated. Along with other critiques of the style, the girls of Bonde had to also deal with the fact that they are all so young. In the Brazilian imagery, young black girls are destined to be poor, ignorant baby factories who will never improve their situation in life and thus when Bonde came along, the criticism was harsh.
Today’s story could show the other side of the story. One of the girls from this group has made it known that she intends to go to college and study Medicine. Best wishes to her! As most Brazilians know, Medicine is one of the most difficult areas to gain acceptance in college programs. Still today, the field is overwhelmingly white.
Bonde das Maravilhas singer now studying for the vestibular in Medicine
Alexandre Araújo – Expresso
The routine of shows of the funk group Bonde das Maravilhas will change next year. And it has nothing to do with the world of music, quite to the contrary. MC Thaysa, the lead singer of the group, will enter high school and wants to take the vestibular (college entrance) for Medicine, taking another step to realizing her dream of being a pediatrician.
For the next three years her full focus will be on her on studies, she talked to the manager and the other members for the changes to happen in their agenda. A show during the week, for example, will only happen on the nights before holidays or national holidays. Thaysa ensures that the decision was supported by all.
MC Thaysa wants to be a pediatrician
“Currently, I study with my notebook. I take the material during travels on the tour, and when I come back, I ask questions and take the tests. It was all discussed with the directors,” said the 16-year old, who lives in São Gonçalo, and attends a private school in Niterói (Rio de Janeiro state)
Thaysa also hopes to finish with an existing prejudice in society:
“I chose Medicine because, before Bonde, I had no health insurance and saw that they wouldn’t do complete treatment. And love children. I want to unite the two. Many ask if I’m sure. People think that, because I’m a funkeira (funk singer), I can’t seek something for my life,” lamented Thaysa, who is currently single.
Source: Extra
What do you mean by “Caribbean” anyway?
23 DEC
by Michael Nelson
Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Author, U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
Ironically, while thoroughly entertaining myself elbow-deep in Guyanese pepper-pot, I received a work request over the weekend to address the issue of Caribbean identity. I also became aware of a heated on-going debate on our blog as to how we should define and boundary the concept of “the Caribbean” – past colonial affiliations; imaginary lines in the deep blue sea; economic and trading blocks; shared post-colonial democratic experiences of African, Asian, and European descendants in small, mostly island states etc.
First, let’s helicopter up to 5,000 feet. Regional identity definitions are always going to be problematic if you are looking for anything more substantive than who is in my geographical neighborhood. Our socio-historic needs for nationalistic separatism and intra-regional comparison tend to play key roles in blocking our view of regional inclusion. Don’t believe me? Try asking our neighbors to the south and west what “Latin American” really means. Similar colonial affiliations to the Spanish Kingdom you say? Tell that to Brazil, Suriname, Belize, Guyana and French Guiana – not to mention the existing indigenous nations who do not abide by immigrant territory demarcations. The same challenges arise with other regional affiliations around the world, including Europe. So with that we can jedi mind-trick ourselves into the understanding that our lack of consensus does not make us disorganized, ill-educated or otherwise less-than inhabitants in other parts of the world.
Notwithstanding our new appreciation of our own discord, let’s take a more grounded look by way of a definition that I find to be useful and appropriate on Wikipedia:
“The Caribbean is a region that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean), and the surrounding coasts … The Caribbean islands, consisting of the Greater Antilles on the north and the Lesser Antilles on the south and east (including the Leeward Antilles), are part of the somewhat larger West Indies grouping, which also includes the Lucayan Archipelago (comprising the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands) north of the Greater Antilles and Caribbean Sea. In a wider sense, the mainland countries of Belize, Guyana, and Suriname may be included.”
For geographical reasons, I particularly appreciate the distinction between the more focused delimitation of the Caribbean and the broader view of the West Indies. For purposes of the English-speaking islands, when we start to take account of historical and economic considerations, it allows us to understand how the West Indies and the Caribbean have become interchangeable.
Remember the West Indies Federation? Established in 1958, the Federation comprised ten nations: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, the then St Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, Saint Lucia, St Vincent and Trinidad and Tobago. Although it only lasted for five years, it was one of the preliminary formations of British pan-Caribbean identity and shared visioning – the three campus University of the West Indies (UWI) being its most notable legacy.
Fast-forward through the wave of Caribbean independence and Treaties of Chaguaramas to the modern-day Caribbean Community (CARICOM), you will find a wider grouping of countries with a shared understanding of how similar historical, political and economic contexts play a role in the development of a regional identity.
Therefore, it is not coincidence that The Bahamas[1], Belize, Guyana, Haiti and Suriname are also CARICOM member states. Furthermore, Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, and Turks and Caicos Islands, all constitute associate member countries of CARICOM.
Does this mean that CARICOM has an all-encompassing formula that captures every peculiarity of each member state while establishing a common thread through all Caribbean/West Indian states? Well, of course not. However, what’s important about its membership, and those in multilateral development institutions, is that it establishes agency of citizens in the region to define the most appropriate affiliation and regional identity as they see fit.
As an economic development practitioner, there’s nothing more comfortingly clear than that.
[1] The Bahamas is only a member of CARICOM but is not part of the Caribbean Common Market.
http://blogs.iadb.org/caribbean-dev-trends/2014/12/23/mean-caribbean-anyway/
23 DEC
by Michael Nelson
Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Author, U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)Ironically, while thoroughly entertaining myself elbow-deep in Guyanese pepper-pot, I received a work request over the weekend to address the issue of Caribbean identity. I also became aware of a heated on-going debate on our blog as to how we should define and boundary the concept of “the Caribbean” – past colonial affiliations; imaginary lines in the deep blue sea; economic and trading blocks; shared post-colonial democratic experiences of African, Asian, and European descendants in small, mostly island states etc.
First, let’s helicopter up to 5,000 feet. Regional identity definitions are always going to be problematic if you are looking for anything more substantive than who is in my geographical neighborhood. Our socio-historic needs for nationalistic separatism and intra-regional comparison tend to play key roles in blocking our view of regional inclusion. Don’t believe me? Try asking our neighbors to the south and west what “Latin American” really means. Similar colonial affiliations to the Spanish Kingdom you say? Tell that to Brazil, Suriname, Belize, Guyana and French Guiana – not to mention the existing indigenous nations who do not abide by immigrant territory demarcations. The same challenges arise with other regional affiliations around the world, including Europe. So with that we can jedi mind-trick ourselves into the understanding that our lack of consensus does not make us disorganized, ill-educated or otherwise less-than inhabitants in other parts of the world.
Notwithstanding our new appreciation of our own discord, let’s take a more grounded look by way of a definition that I find to be useful and appropriate on Wikipedia:
“The Caribbean is a region that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean), and the surrounding coasts … The Caribbean islands, consisting of the Greater Antilles on the north and the Lesser Antilles on the south and east (including the Leeward Antilles), are part of the somewhat larger West Indies grouping, which also includes the Lucayan Archipelago (comprising the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands) north of the Greater Antilles and Caribbean Sea. In a wider sense, the mainland countries of Belize, Guyana, and Suriname may be included.”
For geographical reasons, I particularly appreciate the distinction between the more focused delimitation of the Caribbean and the broader view of the West Indies. For purposes of the English-speaking islands, when we start to take account of historical and economic considerations, it allows us to understand how the West Indies and the Caribbean have become interchangeable.
Remember the West Indies Federation? Established in 1958, the Federation comprised ten nations: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, the then St Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, Saint Lucia, St Vincent and Trinidad and Tobago. Although it only lasted for five years, it was one of the preliminary formations of British pan-Caribbean identity and shared visioning – the three campus University of the West Indies (UWI) being its most notable legacy.
Fast-forward through the wave of Caribbean independence and Treaties of Chaguaramas to the modern-day Caribbean Community (CARICOM), you will find a wider grouping of countries with a shared understanding of how similar historical, political and economic contexts play a role in the development of a regional identity.
Therefore, it is not coincidence that The Bahamas[1], Belize, Guyana, Haiti and Suriname are also CARICOM member states. Furthermore, Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, and Turks and Caicos Islands, all constitute associate member countries of CARICOM.
Does this mean that CARICOM has an all-encompassing formula that captures every peculiarity of each member state while establishing a common thread through all Caribbean/West Indian states? Well, of course not. However, what’s important about its membership, and those in multilateral development institutions, is that it establishes agency of citizens in the region to define the most appropriate affiliation and regional identity as they see fit.
As an economic development practitioner, there’s nothing more comfortingly clear than that.
[1] The Bahamas is only a member of CARICOM but is not part of the Caribbean Common Market.
http://blogs.iadb.org/caribbean-dev-trends/2014/12/23/mean-caribbean-anyway/
In.
Cuba’s Art Scene Awaits a Travel Boom
By VICTORIA BURNETTDEC. 29, 2014
HAVANA — Kadir López was working in his studio at his elegant home here when the doorbell rang. It was Will Smith and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.
“I had no idea they were coming,” said Mr. López, whose work incorporates salvaged American signs and ads that were torn down after Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.
About an hour and $45,000 later, Mr. Smith had bought “Coca Cola-Galiano,” an 8-by-4-foot Coca-Cola sign on which Mr. López had superimposed a 1950s photograph of what was once one of the most bustling commercial streets in Havana.
A year later, recalling the event, Mr. López is still happily incredulous.
“Where else in the world does Will Smith turn up on an artist’s doorstep?” he said.
As collectors, art connoisseurs and institutions eagerly gear up to travel toCuba after President Obama’s decision to loosen the economic embargo, the art scene that awaits them is sui generis: a world whose artists are cut off from supplies and the Internet and, at the same time, celebrated by a coterie of international buyers whose curiosity and determination brought them to Cuba long before talk of a thaw.
Photo
Santiago Rodríguez Olazábal's “Cosa sencilla,” at Galería Habana.CreditLisette Poole for The New York Times
Cuban artists — from the most established to those still studying at the Higher Institute of Art — receive visits from institutions like the Bronx Museum of the Arts and the Museum of Modern Art and from visitors. Many of the visitors are wealthy intellectuals who travel to Cuba on “people-to-people” trips that are permitted under the embargo.
“The phenomenon is very unusual,” said Carlos Garaicoa, an artist who works with photography and sculpture and splits his time between Havana and Madrid.
He added, “I doubt it happens anywhere else.”
That pipeline of art lovers is about to grow, predicts Alberto Magnan, whose Chelsea gallery Magnan Metz specializes in Cuban art. Mr. Magnan, who is currently in Havana, received 25 calls from collectors on Dec. 17, after President Obama announced that the two countries would move to restore diplomatic ties. He is now booked through March with Cuba visits.
“It’s absolutely crazy,” he said.
Even though Americans can visit Cuba under rules dating to 2009 that allow “purposeful travel” intended to foment contact with Cubans, many shied away, Mr. Magnan said.
“It’s a hassle,” he said, referring to the need to get a license from the American government and pay for works without using an American credit card.
Now, however, “they’re saying, ‘I want to go before everyone else does,’ ” he added.
Steve Wilson, a Louisville, Ky.-based collector with Mr. Magnan in Havana, snapped up eight pieces, mainly by young artists, with price tags between $1,500 and $15,000 on Sunday night at the Fábrica de Arte Cubano, an art space in a converted factory.
Mr. Wilson, a founder of 21c Museum Hotels, which house contemporary artworks, said he hoped the diplomatic opening would allow him to organize residencies for Cuban artists in the United States and vice versa — maybe even open a 21c in Havana.
“I love the fact that more people will be able to come and see this work,” he said.
Since the 1990s, the Cuban government has given extra freedom to artists, who are viewed as a pillar of the country’s cultural prestige, allowing them to travel and keep a large share of their income.
Some worry that artists will begin to produce like mad in anticipation of a boom.
“If 500 collectors turn up all of a sudden, quality will go down,” said Roberto Diago, 43, whose artworks explore the issue of slavery and race in Cuba and sell for between $2,000 and $30,000. Mr. Diago said he had “lost count” of the number of studio visits to his 1920s mansion in a sleepy Havana suburb.
Still, a lot of artists are barely known, especially outside Havana, saidSandra Levinson, a founder of the Center for Cuban Studies in New York. Other than Magnan Metz, she said, only a handful of galleries in Miami and one or two on the West Coast are focused on Cuban art.
“I think there’s still a lot to be discovered,” said Ms. Levinson, who successfully spearheaded a lawsuit against the Treasury Department in 1991 to allow Americans to bring art home from Cuba. Ms. Levinson was in Cuba when the news of the détente broke and members of her party were “buying and buying and buying,” she said.
Jonathan S. Blue, a Louisville financier who caught the Cuban art bug from Mr. Wilson and has a dozen Cuban pieces whose prices ranged from $2,500 to $300,000, said he would waste no time when he returned to Cuba for the fifth time next week.
“I think the time between seeing a piece I like and the decision to purchase will be decreased,” he said, laughing.
Mr. Blue, whose Cuban works include a vinyl record made of tightly coiled eight-track cassette tape by Glenda León, an artist based in Havana and Madrid, and two sculptures by Alexandre Arrechea, including “Sherry Netherland,” a looped, scarlet steel sculpture of the opulent Fifth Avenue apartment hotel, said that part of the charm was getting to know Cuban artists and navigating hurdles.
“If you walk into a gallery in Mexico City and say, ‘I want that in my apartment on Monday,’ it’ll be there,” he said. “It doesn’t work like that in Cuba.” He added, “The challenge makes it that much more interesting.”
But for Luis Miret, director of Galería Habana, the most prestigious of about a dozen state-owned galleries in Havana, those hurdles are a drag. Currently, anything shipped from Havana to the United States — only 90 miles away — has to go through a third country, such as Panama or Britain. Mr. Miret calculates that air cargo fees from Havana to Miami would be about 70 cents a kilo (roughly 2.2 pounds); he pays about $6.70 a kilo to send things via London.
Mr. Miret recently lost a three-year battle to recoup $17,000 that Galería Habana wired to an account in Miami to pay for a booth at a Colombian art fair. The funds were confiscated by the Treasury Department.
“How can it be that I am allowed to publish an ad in Art Forum, but I can’t pay to participate in an art fair?” he said in his small office at the gallery. “I don’t get it.”
And while Cuban artists enjoy special attention from foreign art lovers, few islanders have the income to buy art, said Adrián Fernández, 30, who set up a studio with fellow artists Frank Mujica, 29, and Alex Hernandez Dueñas, 32, last year.
All three received a free nine-year art education, he said, but, now that they are working, there is very little in the way of grants from the government or from foundations.
Indeed, they are an example of the odd contradictions facing artists: The three, whose works sell for between $500 and $8,000, are represented by a Belgian gallery Verbeeck-Van Dyck, and each has a solo show there next year. Their studio is in a spacious house in an upscale neighborhood — they got a deal from a divorcing couple; they wouldn’t say how much they paid. But they have to bring everything they need, from track lighting to graphite to canvasses, from abroad. And, as he sat in an Ikea armchair on a recent rainy morning, Mr. Fernández confessed, “We are all still living with our parents.”
Several artists said that a market where they would sell a majority of their work through galleries would benefit them. Often wealthy visitors — as opposed to collectors — bought works that the artist then lost track of, they said, which would make putting together a retrospective difficult. Prices, they said, would become more transparent and more stable.
Another thing that will change if the number of collectors rises, Ms. Levinson said, is that artists will become less accessible.
“Most artists don’t like to sell their own work,” she said. “Cubans are more open to it than most people, but they’ll feel they have to have an agent.”
She added: “They can’t spend all their time meeting foreigners who bob into their studios. They have to be able to find time to work.”
If that ever happens, Mr. Garaicoa said, it will be a sign of maturity.
“Sometimes there are visits where, if I am not here, they don’t want to come,” he said. “I would hope that the approach to Cuban artists becomes about the art itself.”
A version of this article appears in print on December 30, 2014, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Cuba’s Art Scene Awaits a Travel Boom. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
By VICTORIA BURNETTDEC. 29, 2014
HAVANA — Kadir López was working in his studio at his elegant home here when the doorbell rang. It was Will Smith and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.
“I had no idea they were coming,” said Mr. López, whose work incorporates salvaged American signs and ads that were torn down after Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.
About an hour and $45,000 later, Mr. Smith had bought “Coca Cola-Galiano,” an 8-by-4-foot Coca-Cola sign on which Mr. López had superimposed a 1950s photograph of what was once one of the most bustling commercial streets in Havana.
A year later, recalling the event, Mr. López is still happily incredulous.
“Where else in the world does Will Smith turn up on an artist’s doorstep?” he said.
As collectors, art connoisseurs and institutions eagerly gear up to travel toCuba after President Obama’s decision to loosen the economic embargo, the art scene that awaits them is sui generis: a world whose artists are cut off from supplies and the Internet and, at the same time, celebrated by a coterie of international buyers whose curiosity and determination brought them to Cuba long before talk of a thaw.
Photo
Santiago Rodríguez Olazábal's “Cosa sencilla,” at Galería Habana.CreditLisette Poole for The New York Times
Cuban artists — from the most established to those still studying at the Higher Institute of Art — receive visits from institutions like the Bronx Museum of the Arts and the Museum of Modern Art and from visitors. Many of the visitors are wealthy intellectuals who travel to Cuba on “people-to-people” trips that are permitted under the embargo.
“The phenomenon is very unusual,” said Carlos Garaicoa, an artist who works with photography and sculpture and splits his time between Havana and Madrid.
He added, “I doubt it happens anywhere else.”
That pipeline of art lovers is about to grow, predicts Alberto Magnan, whose Chelsea gallery Magnan Metz specializes in Cuban art. Mr. Magnan, who is currently in Havana, received 25 calls from collectors on Dec. 17, after President Obama announced that the two countries would move to restore diplomatic ties. He is now booked through March with Cuba visits.
“It’s absolutely crazy,” he said.
Even though Americans can visit Cuba under rules dating to 2009 that allow “purposeful travel” intended to foment contact with Cubans, many shied away, Mr. Magnan said.
“It’s a hassle,” he said, referring to the need to get a license from the American government and pay for works without using an American credit card.
Now, however, “they’re saying, ‘I want to go before everyone else does,’ ” he added.
Steve Wilson, a Louisville, Ky.-based collector with Mr. Magnan in Havana, snapped up eight pieces, mainly by young artists, with price tags between $1,500 and $15,000 on Sunday night at the Fábrica de Arte Cubano, an art space in a converted factory.
Mr. Wilson, a founder of 21c Museum Hotels, which house contemporary artworks, said he hoped the diplomatic opening would allow him to organize residencies for Cuban artists in the United States and vice versa — maybe even open a 21c in Havana.
“I love the fact that more people will be able to come and see this work,” he said.
Since the 1990s, the Cuban government has given extra freedom to artists, who are viewed as a pillar of the country’s cultural prestige, allowing them to travel and keep a large share of their income.
Some worry that artists will begin to produce like mad in anticipation of a boom.
“If 500 collectors turn up all of a sudden, quality will go down,” said Roberto Diago, 43, whose artworks explore the issue of slavery and race in Cuba and sell for between $2,000 and $30,000. Mr. Diago said he had “lost count” of the number of studio visits to his 1920s mansion in a sleepy Havana suburb.
Still, a lot of artists are barely known, especially outside Havana, saidSandra Levinson, a founder of the Center for Cuban Studies in New York. Other than Magnan Metz, she said, only a handful of galleries in Miami and one or two on the West Coast are focused on Cuban art.
“I think there’s still a lot to be discovered,” said Ms. Levinson, who successfully spearheaded a lawsuit against the Treasury Department in 1991 to allow Americans to bring art home from Cuba. Ms. Levinson was in Cuba when the news of the détente broke and members of her party were “buying and buying and buying,” she said.
Jonathan S. Blue, a Louisville financier who caught the Cuban art bug from Mr. Wilson and has a dozen Cuban pieces whose prices ranged from $2,500 to $300,000, said he would waste no time when he returned to Cuba for the fifth time next week.
“I think the time between seeing a piece I like and the decision to purchase will be decreased,” he said, laughing.
Mr. Blue, whose Cuban works include a vinyl record made of tightly coiled eight-track cassette tape by Glenda León, an artist based in Havana and Madrid, and two sculptures by Alexandre Arrechea, including “Sherry Netherland,” a looped, scarlet steel sculpture of the opulent Fifth Avenue apartment hotel, said that part of the charm was getting to know Cuban artists and navigating hurdles.
“If you walk into a gallery in Mexico City and say, ‘I want that in my apartment on Monday,’ it’ll be there,” he said. “It doesn’t work like that in Cuba.” He added, “The challenge makes it that much more interesting.”
But for Luis Miret, director of Galería Habana, the most prestigious of about a dozen state-owned galleries in Havana, those hurdles are a drag. Currently, anything shipped from Havana to the United States — only 90 miles away — has to go through a third country, such as Panama or Britain. Mr. Miret calculates that air cargo fees from Havana to Miami would be about 70 cents a kilo (roughly 2.2 pounds); he pays about $6.70 a kilo to send things via London.
Mr. Miret recently lost a three-year battle to recoup $17,000 that Galería Habana wired to an account in Miami to pay for a booth at a Colombian art fair. The funds were confiscated by the Treasury Department.
“How can it be that I am allowed to publish an ad in Art Forum, but I can’t pay to participate in an art fair?” he said in his small office at the gallery. “I don’t get it.”
And while Cuban artists enjoy special attention from foreign art lovers, few islanders have the income to buy art, said Adrián Fernández, 30, who set up a studio with fellow artists Frank Mujica, 29, and Alex Hernandez Dueñas, 32, last year.
All three received a free nine-year art education, he said, but, now that they are working, there is very little in the way of grants from the government or from foundations.
Indeed, they are an example of the odd contradictions facing artists: The three, whose works sell for between $500 and $8,000, are represented by a Belgian gallery Verbeeck-Van Dyck, and each has a solo show there next year. Their studio is in a spacious house in an upscale neighborhood — they got a deal from a divorcing couple; they wouldn’t say how much they paid. But they have to bring everything they need, from track lighting to graphite to canvasses, from abroad. And, as he sat in an Ikea armchair on a recent rainy morning, Mr. Fernández confessed, “We are all still living with our parents.”
Several artists said that a market where they would sell a majority of their work through galleries would benefit them. Often wealthy visitors — as opposed to collectors — bought works that the artist then lost track of, they said, which would make putting together a retrospective difficult. Prices, they said, would become more transparent and more stable.
Another thing that will change if the number of collectors rises, Ms. Levinson said, is that artists will become less accessible.
“Most artists don’t like to sell their own work,” she said. “Cubans are more open to it than most people, but they’ll feel they have to have an agent.”
She added: “They can’t spend all their time meeting foreigners who bob into their studios. They have to be able to find time to work.”
If that ever happens, Mr. Garaicoa said, it will be a sign of maturity.
“Sometimes there are visits where, if I am not here, they don’t want to come,” he said. “I would hope that the approach to Cuban artists becomes about the art itself.”
A version of this article appears in print on December 30, 2014, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Cuba’s Art Scene Awaits a Travel Boom. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
The dump that holds the secrets of the disappeared
By Linda PresslyMedellin
Once the murder capital of the world, the Colombian city of Medellin, has been transformed into an attractive and vibrant city. But on the outskirts there is a dump where people say the truth lies buried - the bodies of dozens of people who were "disappeared" in years of bloody civil conflict.
Margarita Selene Restrepo stares out over the corrugated roofs of Comuna 13 - one of Medellin's poorest and most violent districts. From here, a few steps from her home, she can see a huge, deforested, earthen scar on the hillside opposite. In Spanish it is known as la escombrera - the dump. And Margarita can just make out areas recently fenced off with flimsy green plastic.
"Every day when I look across there it causes me such a lot of sadness. If she's there, she's so close. Yet at the same time, she's so far away."
Margarita is talking about her daughter, Carol Vanesa Restrepo. She was 17 when she disappeared in October 2002, and her mother believes her remains are buried in a disused part of the tip. She hopes that one day soon they will be exhumed.
And she is vigilant - every day she checks to make sure no more waste is deposited anywhere near the green cordons.
For many years, Comuna 13 was under the sway of left-wing guerrilla groups. The state had little influence here, but Operation Orion - launched just before Carol Vanesa disappeared - would change that.
“Start Quote
They came in indiscriminately on the pretext of getting rid of the guerrillas”
Jeihhco
"The state decided it had to take back control of Comuna 13," says Jenny Pearce, professor of Latin American politics at the University of Bradford.
"But the way they did it seems to have been in alliance with paramilitary groups. And the paramilitaries subsequently went in and 'disappeared' at least 200-300 people from the area. So the bodies at la escombrera are the victims of what can only be called a state crime."
Locals remember the operation and its aftermath as a period of "absolute terror".
"There were more than 1,000 men from the state's forces, two helicopters and more than 800 paramilitaries," says Jeihhco, the founder of a cultural centre in Comuna 13. "They came in indiscriminately on the pretext of getting rid of the guerrillas."
When the army withdrew after four days, the paramilitaries became the new lords and masters of Comuna 13. Carol Vanesa Restrepo and two of her friends have not been seen since.
Families of the disappeared - women like Margarita - have been calling for la escombrera to be excavated for more than a decade. Now the city's government has begun technical assessments of part of the site identified by a former paramilitary commander, known by his alias, Movil 8.
"He grew up in Comuna 13, so he knew the area well and was able to identify places he thought bodies had been dumped by using landmarks like trees and electricity pylons," says Jorge Mejia Martinez of the Medellin mayor's office, who is overseeing plans to excavate the site.
Excavating the site is complicated and parts of the dump are still used for construction waste
There is uncertainty about the number of people buried beneath the tons of earth and rubble collected from building sites and dumped here. It is believed some were discarded here before the killings in 2002, and that the paramilitaries were not the only perpetrators.
Find out more
Listen to Linda Pressly's report on Assignment on BBC World Service on Thursday 1 January or catch up later on iPlayer
"The story began much earlier with the left-wing guerrillas," says Martinez.
"Other criminal groups have been active too, and bodies may have been brought from other parts of the city, and even from the wider region."
Some even believe the disposal of human remains is still continuing.
Medellin became the most murderous city on the planet in the days of Pablo Escobar - the man who industrialised the processing and export of cocaine in the 1970s.
But Escobar's Medellin Cartel didn't disappear when he died in a police shootout in 1993. It mutated. Its associates - and their successors - became paramilitaries who fought guerrillas and continued trafficking drugs. They also reinforced existing criminal organisations. And they formed new ones.
Graffiti criticising the military and paramilitary operations in Comuna 13 is common
Though Medellin's homicide rate is at one of its lowest points for three decades, the number of forced disappearances has increased, says Fernando Quijano, director of Corpades, an institute that monitors violence in the city.
To a visitor, though, Medellin now feels very safe. The transport system includes a state-of-the-art metro system, and cable cars. There are tech hubs, museums, dozens of new schools, and also library parks. Comuna 13 is home to the Parque Biblioteca San Javier - a vast, airy multi-level, multi-purpose building. It is a place for study, cultural events, and education - a meeting point for the community.
The transformation of the city has been called the "Medellin Miracle", and there is much pride at what has been achieved. At the heart of the urban philosophy is the aim of including the excluded, a desire to bring governance to districts like Comuna 13, and connect people to the city.
Cable cars now connect hilly areas of Medellin that used to be hard to get to
Covered escalators also make the hilltops of Comuna 13 easier to reach
"People come to Medellin to see those buildings that we defined and created," says Sergio Fajardo, who was mayor of the city when it underwent much of this transformation, and is now governor of the larger Antioquia region.
"Those buildings gave our people hope that things could happen, that elegant things could happen, and that the most beautiful places could be where they lived. That's a message of dignity, and it's powerful."
The Parque Biblioteca San Javier is one of the new developments
Yet, despite these improvements, la escombrera with its secrets still concealed, looms over Medellin. And, as Fajardo says, there are "many escrombreras" throughout Colombia.
Over nearly six decades, almost a quarter of a million people have been killed in the country's civil conflict - the majority of them civilians. In Medellin, numerous people have a story of violence and loss.
At the city's Parque de la Vida ("park of life") building, part of the University of Antioquia, a group of women have gathered weekly for the last seven years. They meet and they sew. The women make dolls. And each of the figures represents a loved-one killed or disappeared.
Maria Lucely Durango has stitched her son, a 17-year-old murdered in 2011 when he crossed the invisible line in his neighbourhood that marked rival gang territory. She has dressed Juan Felipe Henao Durango in a graduation gown - the representation of a son who would never fulfil his promise.
Joining the sewing circle has been valuable therapy for the women, and helped them accept their bereavements. Often their stories are a demonstration of how cruelly indiscriminate the violence of Colombia's civil conflict has been: one mother lost a son to left-wing guerrillas, and a son and a daughter to the paramilitaries - the armed groups acting in opposition to those guerrillas. But most of the women who attend the group lost their loved-ones in paramilitary operations.
Maria Lucely Durango with a doll of her son Juan Felipe Henao Durango
Continue reading the main story
1/8
So will the families of the disappeared of la escombrera see their loved-ones disinterred? Three areas for excavation have so far been identified by Movil 8.
"In areas one and two, we're recommending that the excavation goes ahead," says the engineer who has been assessing the site, Gabriel Jaime Cardon Londono.
"In area three, we don't think it would be safe because it would mean digging down a lot deeper - about 25m. Any kind of movement of the earth here would be much more dangerous."
There are not only physical challenges. The cost could be prohibitive - $4m or $5m according to an estimate made in 2010.
"We hope it will be possible to reduce that figure," says Jorge Mejia Martinez. "But whatever the cost, the decision of the mayor's office is to unearth the truth that is hidden here."
The stone reads: To the victims of forced disappearance of Comuna 13 of Medellin at the hands of the Bloque Cacique Nutibara [paramilitaries]. So we don't forget them.
For Jenny Pearce la escombrera is illustrative of how Colombia has experienced violence over many decades.
"It's emblematic of impunity, of the lack of a rule of law that says to people you can't murder someone, throw them on to a rubbish tip and get away with it. La escombrera shows the layers and layers of violence from all armed groups going back decades. There are people who want to show the city's overcome its worst decades - of course, Medellin wants to move on. But until the past is addressed, and there's security that people can trust, that's difficult."
Margarita Selene Restrepo lives at one of the highest points of Comuna 13. It is a very steep climb. But it has been made easier in part by another Medellin innovation - an escalator that has replaced 350 of the steps that rise almost vertically. Now, that part of the journey to Margarita's home takes just four minutes, compared to the hour it might have taken before. She is not impressed. For Margarita, investment in the city's infrastructure highlights the lack of commitment to victims like her.
"If the government cared about us, they would have done something about la escombrera," she says.
If the exhumation goes ahead, there is at least a chance Margarita will find out what happened to her daughter that day in October 2002.
By Linda PresslyMedellin
Once the murder capital of the world, the Colombian city of Medellin, has been transformed into an attractive and vibrant city. But on the outskirts there is a dump where people say the truth lies buried - the bodies of dozens of people who were "disappeared" in years of bloody civil conflict.
Margarita Selene Restrepo stares out over the corrugated roofs of Comuna 13 - one of Medellin's poorest and most violent districts. From here, a few steps from her home, she can see a huge, deforested, earthen scar on the hillside opposite. In Spanish it is known as la escombrera - the dump. And Margarita can just make out areas recently fenced off with flimsy green plastic.
"Every day when I look across there it causes me such a lot of sadness. If she's there, she's so close. Yet at the same time, she's so far away."
Margarita is talking about her daughter, Carol Vanesa Restrepo. She was 17 when she disappeared in October 2002, and her mother believes her remains are buried in a disused part of the tip. She hopes that one day soon they will be exhumed.
And she is vigilant - every day she checks to make sure no more waste is deposited anywhere near the green cordons.
For many years, Comuna 13 was under the sway of left-wing guerrilla groups. The state had little influence here, but Operation Orion - launched just before Carol Vanesa disappeared - would change that.
“Start Quote
They came in indiscriminately on the pretext of getting rid of the guerrillas”
Jeihhco
"The state decided it had to take back control of Comuna 13," says Jenny Pearce, professor of Latin American politics at the University of Bradford.
"But the way they did it seems to have been in alliance with paramilitary groups. And the paramilitaries subsequently went in and 'disappeared' at least 200-300 people from the area. So the bodies at la escombrera are the victims of what can only be called a state crime."
Locals remember the operation and its aftermath as a period of "absolute terror".
"There were more than 1,000 men from the state's forces, two helicopters and more than 800 paramilitaries," says Jeihhco, the founder of a cultural centre in Comuna 13. "They came in indiscriminately on the pretext of getting rid of the guerrillas."
When the army withdrew after four days, the paramilitaries became the new lords and masters of Comuna 13. Carol Vanesa Restrepo and two of her friends have not been seen since.
Families of the disappeared - women like Margarita - have been calling for la escombrera to be excavated for more than a decade. Now the city's government has begun technical assessments of part of the site identified by a former paramilitary commander, known by his alias, Movil 8.
"He grew up in Comuna 13, so he knew the area well and was able to identify places he thought bodies had been dumped by using landmarks like trees and electricity pylons," says Jorge Mejia Martinez of the Medellin mayor's office, who is overseeing plans to excavate the site.
There is uncertainty about the number of people buried beneath the tons of earth and rubble collected from building sites and dumped here. It is believed some were discarded here before the killings in 2002, and that the paramilitaries were not the only perpetrators.
Find out more
Listen to Linda Pressly's report on Assignment on BBC World Service on Thursday 1 January or catch up later on iPlayer
"The story began much earlier with the left-wing guerrillas," says Martinez.
"Other criminal groups have been active too, and bodies may have been brought from other parts of the city, and even from the wider region."
Some even believe the disposal of human remains is still continuing.
Medellin became the most murderous city on the planet in the days of Pablo Escobar - the man who industrialised the processing and export of cocaine in the 1970s.
But Escobar's Medellin Cartel didn't disappear when he died in a police shootout in 1993. It mutated. Its associates - and their successors - became paramilitaries who fought guerrillas and continued trafficking drugs. They also reinforced existing criminal organisations. And they formed new ones.
Though Medellin's homicide rate is at one of its lowest points for three decades, the number of forced disappearances has increased, says Fernando Quijano, director of Corpades, an institute that monitors violence in the city.
To a visitor, though, Medellin now feels very safe. The transport system includes a state-of-the-art metro system, and cable cars. There are tech hubs, museums, dozens of new schools, and also library parks. Comuna 13 is home to the Parque Biblioteca San Javier - a vast, airy multi-level, multi-purpose building. It is a place for study, cultural events, and education - a meeting point for the community.
The transformation of the city has been called the "Medellin Miracle", and there is much pride at what has been achieved. At the heart of the urban philosophy is the aim of including the excluded, a desire to bring governance to districts like Comuna 13, and connect people to the city.
"People come to Medellin to see those buildings that we defined and created," says Sergio Fajardo, who was mayor of the city when it underwent much of this transformation, and is now governor of the larger Antioquia region.
"Those buildings gave our people hope that things could happen, that elegant things could happen, and that the most beautiful places could be where they lived. That's a message of dignity, and it's powerful."
Yet, despite these improvements, la escombrera with its secrets still concealed, looms over Medellin. And, as Fajardo says, there are "many escrombreras" throughout Colombia.
Over nearly six decades, almost a quarter of a million people have been killed in the country's civil conflict - the majority of them civilians. In Medellin, numerous people have a story of violence and loss.
At the city's Parque de la Vida ("park of life") building, part of the University of Antioquia, a group of women have gathered weekly for the last seven years. They meet and they sew. The women make dolls. And each of the figures represents a loved-one killed or disappeared.
Maria Lucely Durango has stitched her son, a 17-year-old murdered in 2011 when he crossed the invisible line in his neighbourhood that marked rival gang territory. She has dressed Juan Felipe Henao Durango in a graduation gown - the representation of a son who would never fulfil his promise.
Joining the sewing circle has been valuable therapy for the women, and helped them accept their bereavements. Often their stories are a demonstration of how cruelly indiscriminate the violence of Colombia's civil conflict has been: one mother lost a son to left-wing guerrillas, and a son and a daughter to the paramilitaries - the armed groups acting in opposition to those guerrillas. But most of the women who attend the group lost their loved-ones in paramilitary operations.
Continue reading the main story
1/8
So will the families of the disappeared of la escombrera see their loved-ones disinterred? Three areas for excavation have so far been identified by Movil 8.
"In areas one and two, we're recommending that the excavation goes ahead," says the engineer who has been assessing the site, Gabriel Jaime Cardon Londono.
"In area three, we don't think it would be safe because it would mean digging down a lot deeper - about 25m. Any kind of movement of the earth here would be much more dangerous."
There are not only physical challenges. The cost could be prohibitive - $4m or $5m according to an estimate made in 2010.
"We hope it will be possible to reduce that figure," says Jorge Mejia Martinez. "But whatever the cost, the decision of the mayor's office is to unearth the truth that is hidden here."
For Jenny Pearce la escombrera is illustrative of how Colombia has experienced violence over many decades.
"It's emblematic of impunity, of the lack of a rule of law that says to people you can't murder someone, throw them on to a rubbish tip and get away with it. La escombrera shows the layers and layers of violence from all armed groups going back decades. There are people who want to show the city's overcome its worst decades - of course, Medellin wants to move on. But until the past is addressed, and there's security that people can trust, that's difficult."
Margarita Selene Restrepo lives at one of the highest points of Comuna 13. It is a very steep climb. But it has been made easier in part by another Medellin innovation - an escalator that has replaced 350 of the steps that rise almost vertically. Now, that part of the journey to Margarita's home takes just four minutes, compared to the hour it might have taken before. She is not impressed. For Margarita, investment in the city's infrastructure highlights the lack of commitment to victims like her.
"If the government cared about us, they would have done something about la escombrera," she says.
If the exhumation goes ahead, there is at least a chance Margarita will find out what happened to her daughter that day in October 2002.
Nilma Lino Gomes, the first black woman to be dean of a federal university, assumes role of Minister of Racial Equality Polices of Federal Government
Note from BW of Brazil: In the coverage of racial issues in Brazil, the governmental organ known as SEPPIR is bound to come up. It is the official branch of the Brazil’s Federal Government that deals with promoting policies that facilitate racial equality. The very existence of such as organ was a major step a decade ago in a Brazil that for most of the 20th century denied that the nation even had a racial problem. SEPPIR and its current minister, Luiza Bairros, has featured in a number of posts on the blog and we expect that the organ will also be featured as the new minister assumes her new role.
Nilma Lino Gomes, who will take over this great responsibility, is another important name in the dissection of the racial issue and the struggle for racial equality in the past few decades. While she assumed an historic post last year, this writer’s first introduction to Gomes was her groundbreaking works on the connections between black hair, racism and black identity in Brazil. Her 2006 book, Sem perder a raiz: corpo e cabelo como símbolos da identidade negra (Without Losing the Root: body and hair as symbols of black identity), peeled and exposed yet another layer of how racism and blackness function in a country that would have Brazilians and non-Brazilians alike believe that these sorts of problems didn’t exist. It arguably remains the benchmark for the study of black hair and identity almost a decade later.
Nilma Lino Gomes to become the new minister of the Secretariat for the Promotion of Racial Equality
Courtesy of G1, UFMG and Afropress
Nilma Lino Gomes
Nilma Lino Gomes, professor at the Faculdade de Educação (FaE or Faculty of Education), was announced by President Dilma Rousseff as the future minister of the Secretaria de Políticas de Promoção da Igualdade Racial (Secretariat of Policies for the Promotion of Racial Equality). The announcement was made Tuesday night, December 23rd. At the time, the president announced the names of 12 other ministers.
Since April 2013, Nilma exercised the function of dean at the Universidade da Integração Internacional da Lusofonia Afro-Brasileira (Unilab or University of International Integration of Afro-Brazilian Lusophonia (Unilab), which aims to contribute to the integration of Portuguese-speaking countries. Gomes was the first black woman to hold the rectory of a federal university in the country. The future minister is not affiliated with any political party. Before, the professor had coordinated the Affirmative Action Program of UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais) between 2002 and 2013.
An educator and master in teacher from UFMG, Nilma has a doctorate in social anthropology from USP (University of São Paulo) and a post-doctorate in sociology from the University of Coimbra. In the academia, her research focused on the confluence of topics such as diversity, ethnic-racial relations, education, teacher training, educational policies, social inequality and social movements, with an emphasis on the actions of the Movimento Negro Brasileiro (black Brazilian movement).
Between 2004 and 2006, she presided over the Associação Brasileira de Pesquisadores Negros (ABPN or Brazilian Association of Black Researchers) and since 2010 was part of the Câmara de Educação Básica do Conselho Nacional de Educação (Board of Basic Education of the National Council of Education), where she participated in the national technical commission of diversity for issues related to the education of Afro-Brazilians.
For Nilma, a woman and black, the choice of her name for the post of minister reflected as a “place of representation” of socially marginalized groups in spaces of leadership, a consequence of a process of struggles and battles for democracy and for a committed citizenship with the ethnic diversity of Brazil. The office reiterates its “responsibility as a public servant, and also a political responsibility,” she says.
According to the future minister, Brazilian racism has been in evidence, which has enabled more forceful actions to combat it. In this sense, her role will focus not only on the fight against racial discrimination, but also other forms of discrimination such as gender. “The organ is intended to alert, re-educate society, showing the legal and juridical ways to solve problems of discrimination, in dialogue with the Movimento Negro and other social movements – and with the government,” she emphasizes.
Complex task
Nilma recognizes that the Secretariat of Policies for the Promotion of Racial Equality is “a complex task” and that her work “will not be easy.” In this sense, the professor indicates what will be her position at the head of the secretariat at the beginning of her term. “I’ll seek a good liaison with other colleagues of the ministry so we can make an intersectional, transversal policy. This is one of the Secretariat’s objectives.”
Nilma also states that she will seek to get familiar, along with the current Minister Luiza Helena Bairros, with the current projects of the Secretariat. Bairros has been in office since the start of President Dilma Rousseff’s first term in 2011. “I need to know the main challenges of the folder and only then draw new paths and at the same time, give continuity to the policies that are working,” she says.
The new minister of the Secretariat of Policies to Promote Racial Equality takes office on January 1. The Secretariat for the Promotion of Racial Equality Policy was established on March 21, 2003, in the first term of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The date in which it was instituted marks the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, established by the United Nations (UN).
The date recalls the massacre at Sharpeville, which occurred on March 21, 1960, when 20,000 blacks protested in Johannesburg, South Africa, against the Pass law, which obliged them to carry ID cards, specifying the places where they could circulate. This happened. On that day, the South African army fired on the crowd, leaving 69 dead and 186 injured.
Nilma Lino in SEPPIR meets expectations of black movement, says Hélio Santos
Professor Hélio Santos supports the selection of Gomes
Professor Hélio Santos, one of the intellectual and activists of most prestige of the Movimento Negro, said that the choice of professor Nilma Lino Gomes by President Dilma Rousseff, to replace the sociologist Luiza Bairros in SEPPIR, “fully met the expectation of the independent Movimento Negro.”
“My position was exactly that. President Dilma responded in an absolutely correct way. Disrespectful would be for her to put SEPPIR into this partisan fury that has been the dispute of positions and occupation of the ministries,” he said.
Gomes will replace outgoing Minister Luia Bairros on January 1, 2015
Santos, one of the activists having closer proximity to the PSDB leaders such as former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and the former governor and current senator from São Paulo, José Serra, had said in an interview with Afropress, that the non maintenance of Luiza Bairros, in the office, would mean a “disrespect of the president to the black population.” During the election campaign, contrary to expectations, he declared his vote for the PT (Workers Party) in the race against PSDB Senator Aécio Neves.
Consistency
He said he saw in the choice of the current dean of UNILAB, much consistency on the part of the president. “Both are women, both are academics, they are portraits of the Movimento Negro. Both are doctors in their areas, Nilma in Pedagogy, and Luiza in Anthropology. They are known and recognized. President Dilma did what I expected. I said that there were diverse men and women. I am very satisfied. That optimism of mine continues. President Dilma did what she should have done: respected the black community,” he added.
Hélio highlighted the fact that the new minister doesn’t come from the dimension of any segment, except the black segment. “She doesn’t come from the party context. In the case of the black population, I can’t say that the option is technical, but political, and of the best quality. The partisan Movimento Negro stayed out of this history. The choice of President Dilma, frees us of the partisan fury for positions, respects us and more than that (because respect is an obligation) it values us,” he said.
Lines of action
Considering speculation that his name would be among the first in the first step of the new Minister’s team (“This idea hasn’t the slightest grounding. It has great chance at being a rumor, aiming at bad faith”), Hélio Santos, said that the action the new minister, in his opinion, should be directed to three major fronts: strengthening the quota policy on access to higher education; induction to the states and municipalities to adopt affirmative action policies in the public service, as occurred in São Paulo by the City government and the State Government; and funding of initiatives, not only business, but institutional, in the field of media, for example.
“We all have a thousand ideas: I think there are many things that we don’t consolidate: we must consolidate affirmative action in the universities. The universities of Maranhão and Bahia, in neither of the two are there a precise monitoring of cotistas (quota students). At the Federal University of Paraná, just over half of the vacancies are occupied. Most of the vacancies go to the social segment. The role that SEPPIR still can’t do is inducing public policies,” he said.
Know how
On the initiatives of the Governments of São Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad (PT), São Paulo Governor Geraldo Alckmin (PSDB), he considered that quotas in public service were born from “on its own initiative”. “SEPPIR has to offer a know-how; induce large municipalities and states to develop public policies,” he added.
“This third front it’s already passed a little, I believed that the minister Luiza Bairros would get into this, but there is still time. In other words, money, capital, investment in black initiatives, I think of radio stations, I think a lot in the media; I think they are natural areas,” he finalized.
Source: G1, UFMG, Afropress
Note from BW of Brazil: In the coverage of racial issues in Brazil, the governmental organ known as SEPPIR is bound to come up. It is the official branch of the Brazil’s Federal Government that deals with promoting policies that facilitate racial equality. The very existence of such as organ was a major step a decade ago in a Brazil that for most of the 20th century denied that the nation even had a racial problem. SEPPIR and its current minister, Luiza Bairros, has featured in a number of posts on the blog and we expect that the organ will also be featured as the new minister assumes her new role.
Nilma Lino Gomes, who will take over this great responsibility, is another important name in the dissection of the racial issue and the struggle for racial equality in the past few decades. While she assumed an historic post last year, this writer’s first introduction to Gomes was her groundbreaking works on the connections between black hair, racism and black identity in Brazil. Her 2006 book, Sem perder a raiz: corpo e cabelo como símbolos da identidade negra (Without Losing the Root: body and hair as symbols of black identity), peeled and exposed yet another layer of how racism and blackness function in a country that would have Brazilians and non-Brazilians alike believe that these sorts of problems didn’t exist. It arguably remains the benchmark for the study of black hair and identity almost a decade later.
Nilma Lino Gomes to become the new minister of the Secretariat for the Promotion of Racial Equality
Courtesy of G1, UFMG and Afropress
Nilma Lino Gomes
Nilma Lino Gomes, professor at the Faculdade de Educação (FaE or Faculty of Education), was announced by President Dilma Rousseff as the future minister of the Secretaria de Políticas de Promoção da Igualdade Racial (Secretariat of Policies for the Promotion of Racial Equality). The announcement was made Tuesday night, December 23rd. At the time, the president announced the names of 12 other ministers.
Since April 2013, Nilma exercised the function of dean at the Universidade da Integração Internacional da Lusofonia Afro-Brasileira (Unilab or University of International Integration of Afro-Brazilian Lusophonia (Unilab), which aims to contribute to the integration of Portuguese-speaking countries. Gomes was the first black woman to hold the rectory of a federal university in the country. The future minister is not affiliated with any political party. Before, the professor had coordinated the Affirmative Action Program of UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais) between 2002 and 2013.
An educator and master in teacher from UFMG, Nilma has a doctorate in social anthropology from USP (University of São Paulo) and a post-doctorate in sociology from the University of Coimbra. In the academia, her research focused on the confluence of topics such as diversity, ethnic-racial relations, education, teacher training, educational policies, social inequality and social movements, with an emphasis on the actions of the Movimento Negro Brasileiro (black Brazilian movement).
Between 2004 and 2006, she presided over the Associação Brasileira de Pesquisadores Negros (ABPN or Brazilian Association of Black Researchers) and since 2010 was part of the Câmara de Educação Básica do Conselho Nacional de Educação (Board of Basic Education of the National Council of Education), where she participated in the national technical commission of diversity for issues related to the education of Afro-Brazilians.
For Nilma, a woman and black, the choice of her name for the post of minister reflected as a “place of representation” of socially marginalized groups in spaces of leadership, a consequence of a process of struggles and battles for democracy and for a committed citizenship with the ethnic diversity of Brazil. The office reiterates its “responsibility as a public servant, and also a political responsibility,” she says.
According to the future minister, Brazilian racism has been in evidence, which has enabled more forceful actions to combat it. In this sense, her role will focus not only on the fight against racial discrimination, but also other forms of discrimination such as gender. “The organ is intended to alert, re-educate society, showing the legal and juridical ways to solve problems of discrimination, in dialogue with the Movimento Negro and other social movements – and with the government,” she emphasizes.
Complex task
Nilma recognizes that the Secretariat of Policies for the Promotion of Racial Equality is “a complex task” and that her work “will not be easy.” In this sense, the professor indicates what will be her position at the head of the secretariat at the beginning of her term. “I’ll seek a good liaison with other colleagues of the ministry so we can make an intersectional, transversal policy. This is one of the Secretariat’s objectives.”
Nilma also states that she will seek to get familiar, along with the current Minister Luiza Helena Bairros, with the current projects of the Secretariat. Bairros has been in office since the start of President Dilma Rousseff’s first term in 2011. “I need to know the main challenges of the folder and only then draw new paths and at the same time, give continuity to the policies that are working,” she says.
The new minister of the Secretariat of Policies to Promote Racial Equality takes office on January 1. The Secretariat for the Promotion of Racial Equality Policy was established on March 21, 2003, in the first term of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The date in which it was instituted marks the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, established by the United Nations (UN).
The date recalls the massacre at Sharpeville, which occurred on March 21, 1960, when 20,000 blacks protested in Johannesburg, South Africa, against the Pass law, which obliged them to carry ID cards, specifying the places where they could circulate. This happened. On that day, the South African army fired on the crowd, leaving 69 dead and 186 injured.
Nilma Lino in SEPPIR meets expectations of black movement, says Hélio Santos
Professor Hélio Santos supports the selection of Gomes
Professor Hélio Santos, one of the intellectual and activists of most prestige of the Movimento Negro, said that the choice of professor Nilma Lino Gomes by President Dilma Rousseff, to replace the sociologist Luiza Bairros in SEPPIR, “fully met the expectation of the independent Movimento Negro.”
“My position was exactly that. President Dilma responded in an absolutely correct way. Disrespectful would be for her to put SEPPIR into this partisan fury that has been the dispute of positions and occupation of the ministries,” he said.
Gomes will replace outgoing Minister Luia Bairros on January 1, 2015
Santos, one of the activists having closer proximity to the PSDB leaders such as former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and the former governor and current senator from São Paulo, José Serra, had said in an interview with Afropress, that the non maintenance of Luiza Bairros, in the office, would mean a “disrespect of the president to the black population.” During the election campaign, contrary to expectations, he declared his vote for the PT (Workers Party) in the race against PSDB Senator Aécio Neves.
Consistency
He said he saw in the choice of the current dean of UNILAB, much consistency on the part of the president. “Both are women, both are academics, they are portraits of the Movimento Negro. Both are doctors in their areas, Nilma in Pedagogy, and Luiza in Anthropology. They are known and recognized. President Dilma did what I expected. I said that there were diverse men and women. I am very satisfied. That optimism of mine continues. President Dilma did what she should have done: respected the black community,” he added.
Hélio highlighted the fact that the new minister doesn’t come from the dimension of any segment, except the black segment. “She doesn’t come from the party context. In the case of the black population, I can’t say that the option is technical, but political, and of the best quality. The partisan Movimento Negro stayed out of this history. The choice of President Dilma, frees us of the partisan fury for positions, respects us and more than that (because respect is an obligation) it values us,” he said.
Lines of action
Considering speculation that his name would be among the first in the first step of the new Minister’s team (“This idea hasn’t the slightest grounding. It has great chance at being a rumor, aiming at bad faith”), Hélio Santos, said that the action the new minister, in his opinion, should be directed to three major fronts: strengthening the quota policy on access to higher education; induction to the states and municipalities to adopt affirmative action policies in the public service, as occurred in São Paulo by the City government and the State Government; and funding of initiatives, not only business, but institutional, in the field of media, for example.
“We all have a thousand ideas: I think there are many things that we don’t consolidate: we must consolidate affirmative action in the universities. The universities of Maranhão and Bahia, in neither of the two are there a precise monitoring of cotistas (quota students). At the Federal University of Paraná, just over half of the vacancies are occupied. Most of the vacancies go to the social segment. The role that SEPPIR still can’t do is inducing public policies,” he said.
Know how
On the initiatives of the Governments of São Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad (PT), São Paulo Governor Geraldo Alckmin (PSDB), he considered that quotas in public service were born from “on its own initiative”. “SEPPIR has to offer a know-how; induce large municipalities and states to develop public policies,” he added.
“This third front it’s already passed a little, I believed that the minister Luiza Bairros would get into this, but there is still time. In other words, money, capital, investment in black initiatives, I think of radio stations, I think a lot in the media; I think they are natural areas,” he finalized.
Source: G1, UFMG, Afropress
Singapore’s Lesson for Jamaica
http://www.caribjournal.com/2014/12/29/singapores-lesson-for-jamaica/#
Singapore is an island city-state in Southeast Asia. It was founded by Britain as a trading colony in 1819. Lee Kuan Yew became its first Prime Minister in 1959. Four years later, Singapore joined the Malaysian Federation, but was asked to leave in 1965.
After separation from the Malaysian Federation, it became a sovereign republic. Without a regional alliance, facing hostile neighbours and the imminent departure of the British armed forces, its very existence was in jeopardy.
Lee Kuan Yew concluded that: “…we had to make extraordinary effort to …do things better and cheaper than our neighbours, because they wanted to bypass us and render obsolete our role as entrepôt and middleman for the trade of the region.”
In the Competitiveness of Small Nations: What Matters? , authors Densil Williams and Beverly Morgan note that Caribbean islands have economic structures, history, and institutions similar to Singapore in the 1960’s. Singapore subsequently surpassed their development.
With respect to Jamaica, Singapore is presently one of the three global logistics hubs: the others being Dubai and Rotterdam. Jamaica plans to become the fourth global logistics hub: serving Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the U.S. Gulf and east coasts.
In the Logistics and Supply Chain Management page of the current website of Singapore’s Economic Development Board (EDB), Changi Airport is featured prominently for global connectivity. The story behind the development of this airport could prove instructive to Jamaica’s Logistics effort.
Changi International Airport was formerly the Royal Air Force Changi Airbase. On departure of British forces, abandoned airfields would typically be used for light industry or agriculture. But, Lee Kuan Yew thought neither use suited Singapore. Instead, he negotiated the early access of EDB to this airbase.
Nevertheless, the airport was almost never built. An airport at Paya Lebar was in use prior to the oil crisis in 1973, but it was considered inadequate for the future growth of Singapore’s aviation sector without significant expansion.
A British aviation consultant had recommended that a second runway should be built at the Paya Lebar Airport, and completed by 1978. This they concluded “would entail the lowest land acquisition costs and require the least resettlement”. But, the Serangoon River would have to be diverted.
After the oil crisis, a second study was commissioned: this time by U.S. consultants, who concurred with the British consultants that a second runway should be built at the Paya Lebar Airport. They also warned that construction of two runways at Changi Airbase could not be completed by 1978.
Lee Kuan Yew was unconvinced. He constituted a committee to reconsider the Changi relocation. This committee also supported the recommendation of the aviation consultants that the airport should not be relocated to Changi, an additional runway should be built at the Paya Lebar Airport.
Finally, Lee Kuan Yew asked the Chairman of the Port of Singapore to chair a second committee to re-examine the Changi relocation. Their conclusion was that an additional runway at Paya Lebar could not be completed before 1984, because allowance was needed for the proper compaction of the river bed.
The first runway of the Changi International Airport was completed and opened in 1981. The second runway was completed in1984. When completed, it was Asia’s largest airport. Three decades later, it is still one of Asia’s largest cargo airports.
In the words of Lee Kuan Yew, Changi Airport “helped Singapore become the hub airport of the region”. It involved resettlement and demolition of hundreds of buildings, exhuming graves, clearing swamps and reclaiming land from the sea.
Currently, one of its three terminals is being expanded. The construction of this 134,000 square meter building dubbed the “Jewel Airport Expansion”, which will also be connected to the two other terminals, is scheduled for completion in 2018
In Jamaica, circumstances are similar to what existed prior to the Changi relocation. Kingston’s Norman Manley International Airport (NMIA), originally called the Palidoes Airport, was built in 1948. But, its expansion is confined by the narrow Palisadoes peninsular on which it is located.
Though located close to the Port of Kingston, the Port Authority of Jamaica has designated the former Vernamfield Airbase as the next cargo airport. Vernamfield is a 55 km flight distance from NMIA. The property is located at Portland Bight in Southern Clarendon.
During World War II, Britain leased Vernamfield and the Goat Islands to the United States. An airbase was constructed at Vernamfield and a Naval base at Goat Islands by 1941. Vernam Field Air Force Base, as it was called, had three runways.
The base was reduced to caretaker status towards the end of 1944, and the U.S. closed both bases in 1949, when military engagement shifted from Europe to the Pacific. This involved the removal or demolition of all of its structures.
The area has been derelict from that time. But in March 2014, the Honourable Anthony Hilton – Minister of Industry and Investment – speaking at the Northern Caribbean University, is reported as saying it is to become an “international air and sea cargo hub”.
The 1,174 hectare Vernamfield property is proposed to be a major economic driver in ”the country’s logistics revolution”. The Port of Kingston and Caymanas Special Economic Zone (CSEZ) are also proposed to be linked to Vernamfield by railway and Highway 2000.
So, major development is proposed for the area. However, the larger Portland Bight Area, which is spread over an area of 187,600 hectares, was designated a protected area by the Jamaican Government in 1999 to protect both its terrestrial and marine area.
In the Summary of the Environmental Management Scoping of the Portland Bight Area, Inclusive of the Goat Islands, it is noted that the area “is not exclusively an environmental conservatory” but is recognised as a “multi-use National Park”.
The Portland Bight Protected Area (PBPA) is actually home to a chemical lime quarry, an Ethanol Plant, the island’s main power station, power barges, and Rocky Point Port. The area has three designated fish sanctuaries, of which the Goat Islands is not included.
Unlike Singapore, Jamaica does not have hostile neighbours. But, Jamaica’s neighbours are equally intent on bypassing it as a logistics hub. Chief of which is Panama itself. It has been constructing its logistics infrastructure and operating it in advance of completing the widening of its Canal.
That strategic advantage is to be challenged by the construction of the proposed Nicaragua Canal, which would give Jamaica the advantage of having ports with direct access to both canals. Jamaica’s central geographical location also makes it equally accessible by air
Lee Kuan Yew himself epitomised development-centred leadership: first in recognising Changi’s potential, giving EDB early access to the airfield, choosing the chairman of the Port of Singapore Authority (PSA) to manage the project, and ensuring the continued improvement of the facility.
In contrast, closure of the Vernamfield and Goat Islands bases predate Changi by decades, but no one managed their transition into civilian use. Instead, the facilities were demolished and allowed to go to ruins. In fact, NMIA was being built when Vernamfield was being shut down.
Selecting PSA’s chairman to manage the relocation to Changi allowed for a multi-modal solution to the problem. In this regard, Jamaica is in good standing, because the chairman of the Port Authority of Jamaica is also managing the development of the Jamaica Logistics Hub.
Some may say Lee Kuan Yew simply disregarded all studies until he found one that suited him. But, Changi stands as proof of his visionary stewardship and legacy for Singapore’s continued pre-eminence as a global logistics hub.
Previous studies by the aviation consultants cited two problems with relocation to Changi: its higher cost and longer construction period. The latter was proven false and the former would have been more expensive in the long run, as Paya Lebar Airport could not have accommodated subsequent expansions.
With the exception of a report recommending relocation the Goat Islands Port, Jamaica has had no objection to the building of the Vernamfield Airport, although both facilities are proposed to be built in the PBPA and will be interconnected.
The report, titled “Economic Comparison of Alternatives to Building a Port on Goat Islands: Does Jamaica need to Sacrifice a World Class Conservation Site in Order to Build a World Class Port?”, concluded that Macarry Bay located outside PBPA would be a superior location to Goat Islands.
This report was undertaken by the Conservation Strategy Fund, Conservation Agreement Fund, and Niras Fraenkel Limited. It states that construction of the port at Macarry Bay was estimated to cost US$200-million less than at Goat Islands.
Macarry Bay was considered superior to Goat Islands “except with respect to its access to the road network and Kingston...”. This cost advantage is therefore questionable. The port is not meant to be a stand-alone facility but part of a multi-modal logistics hub.
Also, construction costs typically dwarf in comparison to operating expenses anyway. So, locating the port outside the PBPA simply to transport freight back and forth from the Vernamfield Airport, located within the PBPA, makes little sense and is unlikely to be cost-effective.
Like Singapore’s initial studies, this report by conservation special interest groups and a port and marine-engineering consultancy does not seem to consider the wider picture of building a world class logistics hub, not just a “World Class Port”.
A consortium of Chinese investors was once interested in developing the Caymanas Special Economic Zone (CSEZ), but required an airport. The previous government-administration was only able to propose relocation of the Tinson Pen Airfield, then adjacent to the Port of Kingston, to CSEZ.
The Vernamfield/Goat Islands initiative offers a multi-modal solution to kick-start the Jamaica Logistics Hub. Understandably, a life-cycle analysis needs to be conducted to examine all environmental and operational concerns and guide the present administration’s deliberation on this project.
For Singapore, developing Changi presented a greater environmental impact compared to Paya Lebar. Hundreds of buildings had to be demolished and occupants resettled, graves had to be exhumed, swamps cleared, and land reclaimed. But in the final analysis, Changi proved the better choice.
The truth be told, no other suitable alternative has been forthcoming outside PBPA. No one is even knocking at the door to develop a world-class eco-tourism facility in the area. So, the question is: does Jamaica really want to be the fourth global logistics hub, or not?
http://www.caribjournal.com/2014/12/29/singapores-lesson-for-jamaica/#
Singapore is an island city-state in Southeast Asia. It was founded by Britain as a trading colony in 1819. Lee Kuan Yew became its first Prime Minister in 1959. Four years later, Singapore joined the Malaysian Federation, but was asked to leave in 1965.
After separation from the Malaysian Federation, it became a sovereign republic. Without a regional alliance, facing hostile neighbours and the imminent departure of the British armed forces, its very existence was in jeopardy.
Lee Kuan Yew concluded that: “…we had to make extraordinary effort to …do things better and cheaper than our neighbours, because they wanted to bypass us and render obsolete our role as entrepôt and middleman for the trade of the region.”
In the Competitiveness of Small Nations: What Matters? , authors Densil Williams and Beverly Morgan note that Caribbean islands have economic structures, history, and institutions similar to Singapore in the 1960’s. Singapore subsequently surpassed their development.
With respect to Jamaica, Singapore is presently one of the three global logistics hubs: the others being Dubai and Rotterdam. Jamaica plans to become the fourth global logistics hub: serving Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the U.S. Gulf and east coasts.
In the Logistics and Supply Chain Management page of the current website of Singapore’s Economic Development Board (EDB), Changi Airport is featured prominently for global connectivity. The story behind the development of this airport could prove instructive to Jamaica’s Logistics effort.
Changi International Airport was formerly the Royal Air Force Changi Airbase. On departure of British forces, abandoned airfields would typically be used for light industry or agriculture. But, Lee Kuan Yew thought neither use suited Singapore. Instead, he negotiated the early access of EDB to this airbase.
Nevertheless, the airport was almost never built. An airport at Paya Lebar was in use prior to the oil crisis in 1973, but it was considered inadequate for the future growth of Singapore’s aviation sector without significant expansion.
A British aviation consultant had recommended that a second runway should be built at the Paya Lebar Airport, and completed by 1978. This they concluded “would entail the lowest land acquisition costs and require the least resettlement”. But, the Serangoon River would have to be diverted.
After the oil crisis, a second study was commissioned: this time by U.S. consultants, who concurred with the British consultants that a second runway should be built at the Paya Lebar Airport. They also warned that construction of two runways at Changi Airbase could not be completed by 1978.
Lee Kuan Yew was unconvinced. He constituted a committee to reconsider the Changi relocation. This committee also supported the recommendation of the aviation consultants that the airport should not be relocated to Changi, an additional runway should be built at the Paya Lebar Airport.
Finally, Lee Kuan Yew asked the Chairman of the Port of Singapore to chair a second committee to re-examine the Changi relocation. Their conclusion was that an additional runway at Paya Lebar could not be completed before 1984, because allowance was needed for the proper compaction of the river bed.
The first runway of the Changi International Airport was completed and opened in 1981. The second runway was completed in1984. When completed, it was Asia’s largest airport. Three decades later, it is still one of Asia’s largest cargo airports.
In the words of Lee Kuan Yew, Changi Airport “helped Singapore become the hub airport of the region”. It involved resettlement and demolition of hundreds of buildings, exhuming graves, clearing swamps and reclaiming land from the sea.
Currently, one of its three terminals is being expanded. The construction of this 134,000 square meter building dubbed the “Jewel Airport Expansion”, which will also be connected to the two other terminals, is scheduled for completion in 2018
In Jamaica, circumstances are similar to what existed prior to the Changi relocation. Kingston’s Norman Manley International Airport (NMIA), originally called the Palidoes Airport, was built in 1948. But, its expansion is confined by the narrow Palisadoes peninsular on which it is located.
Though located close to the Port of Kingston, the Port Authority of Jamaica has designated the former Vernamfield Airbase as the next cargo airport. Vernamfield is a 55 km flight distance from NMIA. The property is located at Portland Bight in Southern Clarendon.
During World War II, Britain leased Vernamfield and the Goat Islands to the United States. An airbase was constructed at Vernamfield and a Naval base at Goat Islands by 1941. Vernam Field Air Force Base, as it was called, had three runways.
The base was reduced to caretaker status towards the end of 1944, and the U.S. closed both bases in 1949, when military engagement shifted from Europe to the Pacific. This involved the removal or demolition of all of its structures.
The area has been derelict from that time. But in March 2014, the Honourable Anthony Hilton – Minister of Industry and Investment – speaking at the Northern Caribbean University, is reported as saying it is to become an “international air and sea cargo hub”.
The 1,174 hectare Vernamfield property is proposed to be a major economic driver in ”the country’s logistics revolution”. The Port of Kingston and Caymanas Special Economic Zone (CSEZ) are also proposed to be linked to Vernamfield by railway and Highway 2000.
So, major development is proposed for the area. However, the larger Portland Bight Area, which is spread over an area of 187,600 hectares, was designated a protected area by the Jamaican Government in 1999 to protect both its terrestrial and marine area.
In the Summary of the Environmental Management Scoping of the Portland Bight Area, Inclusive of the Goat Islands, it is noted that the area “is not exclusively an environmental conservatory” but is recognised as a “multi-use National Park”.
The Portland Bight Protected Area (PBPA) is actually home to a chemical lime quarry, an Ethanol Plant, the island’s main power station, power barges, and Rocky Point Port. The area has three designated fish sanctuaries, of which the Goat Islands is not included.
Unlike Singapore, Jamaica does not have hostile neighbours. But, Jamaica’s neighbours are equally intent on bypassing it as a logistics hub. Chief of which is Panama itself. It has been constructing its logistics infrastructure and operating it in advance of completing the widening of its Canal.
That strategic advantage is to be challenged by the construction of the proposed Nicaragua Canal, which would give Jamaica the advantage of having ports with direct access to both canals. Jamaica’s central geographical location also makes it equally accessible by air
Lee Kuan Yew himself epitomised development-centred leadership: first in recognising Changi’s potential, giving EDB early access to the airfield, choosing the chairman of the Port of Singapore Authority (PSA) to manage the project, and ensuring the continued improvement of the facility.
In contrast, closure of the Vernamfield and Goat Islands bases predate Changi by decades, but no one managed their transition into civilian use. Instead, the facilities were demolished and allowed to go to ruins. In fact, NMIA was being built when Vernamfield was being shut down.
Selecting PSA’s chairman to manage the relocation to Changi allowed for a multi-modal solution to the problem. In this regard, Jamaica is in good standing, because the chairman of the Port Authority of Jamaica is also managing the development of the Jamaica Logistics Hub.
Some may say Lee Kuan Yew simply disregarded all studies until he found one that suited him. But, Changi stands as proof of his visionary stewardship and legacy for Singapore’s continued pre-eminence as a global logistics hub.
Previous studies by the aviation consultants cited two problems with relocation to Changi: its higher cost and longer construction period. The latter was proven false and the former would have been more expensive in the long run, as Paya Lebar Airport could not have accommodated subsequent expansions.
With the exception of a report recommending relocation the Goat Islands Port, Jamaica has had no objection to the building of the Vernamfield Airport, although both facilities are proposed to be built in the PBPA and will be interconnected.
The report, titled “Economic Comparison of Alternatives to Building a Port on Goat Islands: Does Jamaica need to Sacrifice a World Class Conservation Site in Order to Build a World Class Port?”, concluded that Macarry Bay located outside PBPA would be a superior location to Goat Islands.
This report was undertaken by the Conservation Strategy Fund, Conservation Agreement Fund, and Niras Fraenkel Limited. It states that construction of the port at Macarry Bay was estimated to cost US$200-million less than at Goat Islands.
Macarry Bay was considered superior to Goat Islands “except with respect to its access to the road network and Kingston...”. This cost advantage is therefore questionable. The port is not meant to be a stand-alone facility but part of a multi-modal logistics hub.
Also, construction costs typically dwarf in comparison to operating expenses anyway. So, locating the port outside the PBPA simply to transport freight back and forth from the Vernamfield Airport, located within the PBPA, makes little sense and is unlikely to be cost-effective.
Like Singapore’s initial studies, this report by conservation special interest groups and a port and marine-engineering consultancy does not seem to consider the wider picture of building a world class logistics hub, not just a “World Class Port”.
A consortium of Chinese investors was once interested in developing the Caymanas Special Economic Zone (CSEZ), but required an airport. The previous government-administration was only able to propose relocation of the Tinson Pen Airfield, then adjacent to the Port of Kingston, to CSEZ.
The Vernamfield/Goat Islands initiative offers a multi-modal solution to kick-start the Jamaica Logistics Hub. Understandably, a life-cycle analysis needs to be conducted to examine all environmental and operational concerns and guide the present administration’s deliberation on this project.
For Singapore, developing Changi presented a greater environmental impact compared to Paya Lebar. Hundreds of buildings had to be demolished and occupants resettled, graves had to be exhumed, swamps cleared, and land reclaimed. But in the final analysis, Changi proved the better choice.
The truth be told, no other suitable alternative has been forthcoming outside PBPA. No one is even knocking at the door to develop a world-class eco-tourism facility in the area. So, the question is: does Jamaica really want to be the fourth global logistics hub, or not?