Archive for the ‘Cuba’ Category
US Officials Seize Seven Computers as Caravan to Cuba Crosses US-Mexico Border
9:11 am By Maegan La Mala · Activism|Cuba|Health|Justice|Politics · 1 Comment
21 Jul 2011Note: Some beloved mentors of mine are participating in the caravan this year so, like just about everything, this is more than political, it is also personal. – Mala
Dear Friends and Supporters,
At 12:20 PM on Wednesday, the 22nd Pastors for Peace Caravan to Cuba arrived at the US/Mexico border to break the US blockade against Cuba. The US border officials have again decided to interfere with our mission of breaking the US blockade, and have seized seven computers. More information is in the press release below. Although we are continuing on the caravan and taking the remaining 100 tons of aid to Cuba, our protest against the seizure continues! Your support is vital! We are asking you, our emergency response network, to spread the word:
Call your senators and congressional representatives, the White House, call your local media, and organize in your communities to demand that the US government:
- Return the 7 computers immediately!
- End the blockade and travel ban of Cuba now!
- Find your Congressional Representative here:
https://writerep.house.gov/
writerep/welcome.shtml Find your Senator here:
http://www.senate.gov/general/
contact_information/senators_ cfm.cfm Contact the Whitehouse here: http://www.whitehouse.
gov/contact Now is the time for action against this criminal blockade and in support of the Pastors for Peace Friendshipment Caravan to Cuba!
You can support our work by making a donation here:
https://npo.networkforgood.
org/Donate/Donate.aspx? npoSubscriptionId=4382 Let us work together to end the blockade!
In solidarity,
IFCO-Pastors for Peace
US Officials Seize Seven Computers as Pastors for Peace Cuba Caravan Crosses into Mexico
US Customs and Border Patrol officers seized seven computers intended for Cuban hospitals, schools, and a veterinary clinic at the Pharr (TX) International Bridge on Wednesday.
The computers are part of the 100 tons humanitarian aid carried by the 22nd IFCO/Pastors for Peace Friendshipment Caravan to Cuba. Caravan participants observed officers X-raying and searching the vehicles. Customs officers then said that they were ‘detaining,’ not ‘seizing’ the computers, in order to determine whether the caravan needed to have a license to take them to Cuba. Three of the computers seized were the same ones that were taken from last year’s caravan in 2010, and were later returned to IFCO/Pastors for Peace.
While the brightly painted trucks and school buses were being searched, caravanistas chanted “Cuba is no threat to you; let our computers through!” and “Love is our license! Free the computers!” and held banners and signs reading “Cuba is not our enemy” and other slogans. Caravanistas then prayed and chanted together as they gathered around the pickup truck holding the seized computers.
Although IFCO/Pastors is protesting the computer seizure, we are continuing through the border to deliver to Cuba the 100 tons of aid that have crossed successfully through the border.
This year more than 100 North Americans and Europeans have joined the Caravan.
For updates check www.pastorsforpeace.org
and www.facebook.com/ pastorsforpeace
Original Pelo Diva Mirta de Perales Passes
6:46 am By Maegan La Mala · Celebrities|Cuba|Culture|Entrepreneurs · 2 Comments
10 May 2011
This isn’t usually the story I would write about but I would be denying a huge part of my NY Rican upbringing if I didn’t give a moment to acknowledge the passing of Cuban beautician Mirta de Perales at the age of 88 in her Miami home.
For those of you who don’t know, Mirta de Perales is cult legend, seen in between the novelas your abuela used to watch and Walter Mercado’s show or Iris Chacon’s show (depending on the night), Mirta used to advertise her extensive product line that included shampoos and conditioners. Her segments were more than just mere commercials. She told you the right way to wash and brush your hair (with her branded brush of course). I particularly remember one of my childhood babysitters using the lemon shampoo with conditioner, bright yellow in a clear, small bottle with green lettering. According to El Nuevo Dia, Mirtha became interested in hair at the age of 11 after having some undisclosed hair issues. She grew her business into an empire, apparently even earning some sort of award from President Reagan.
Rest in Peace Mirta and may all your hair days be good ones.
It’s National Poetry Month! In the past we have posted poems by Latino and Latin American Poets. This year, besides writing my own poetry, I am also going to highlight a few notable poetry collections I have on my bookshelf and have not yet reviewed.
Are there rainbows in New York after the storm?
This is the question Cuban poet Orlando Ferrand leaves of with at the end of the first poem sharing the name of his first published collection, Citywalker. Reading through the 49 poem collection is to accompany the citywalker, perhaps Ferrand himself, perhaps urban migrants like you or your friends and neighbors, on a journey to find the answer to the question first proposed.
Ferrand’s poems take us walking on water, both lyrically and in terms of setting between two islands. Cuba is wrapped in memory and longing as exemplified by Family Landscapes. Water surrounds islands and surround Citywalker through setting and metaphor. New York City is an encrypted map where the citywalker searches for love but first finds lust and loneliness.
From No Man’s Land:
Narcissus, homeboy
drowning into my eyes
I’ve been looking for the tempest
haunting Harlem’s brown stone palaces.
Citywalker can also be seen as a poetic narrative of Latino gay life in NYC. For example there is a poem which references the life and death of Andre Melendez aka the club kid Angel Melendez and other references to imagined and real gay life in the 80′s and 90′s.
Support independent Latino writer’s.
You can purchase Citywalker here and read the rainbows for yourself.
From : World Music News Wire:
Shifting mix is Ferrer’s specialty. Ferrer, once a major figure in Cuba’s nueva trova of the 1960s, has created his own distinctive and dynamic palette of Cuban sounds, which he has dubbed changüisa, a feminine word playing on changüí and a pithy challenge to Latin musical machismo. It became a vehicle to engage tradition without slavishly following what Ferrer dismisses as “the old formula” in Cuban music.
“Changüisa is always changing,” Ferrer explains. “The concept of changüisa presupposes transformation. I created the term to describe the free intention to tackle tradition, the transformative intention. It assumes both closeness to the changui and to creativity, a concept that both unites and reconstructs traditions.”
Perfect meditation con this morning’s cafecito.
Today in Latin American Historia : Dia de la Revolucion en Cuba
10:09 am By Maegan La Mala · Cuba|history · 4 Comments
1 Jan 2011
On January 1st 1959, U.S. backed dictator of Cuba, Fulgencio Batista fled the island for the Dominican Republic following the Battle of Santa Clara. This ushered in the communist government, led by Fidel Castro, that remains in power today.
While we can and should debate and question the Cuban revolution, as we should all revolutions, including the ones we actively participate in,
a quote from Grace Lee Boggs, from a conversation at the U.S. Social Forum last year, that I recently read is echoing within as I think about the Cuban revolution, U.S. interventions in Latin America, and the idea of democracy. Boggs was talking specifically about Chinese democracy but it’s applicable here as well.
“What is important is not our critique if the Chinese vertical democracy, but the understanding that democracy is now a concept in contention and that we are all participants in creating what we think should be the democracy of the future”
Image Via / Wikipedia
Grace Lee Boggs Quote Via / A Conversation Grace Lee Boggs, Immanuel Wallerstein, U.S. Social Forum 2010
Miercoles Morning Musica : Septeto Nacional
25 Aug 2010
Aqui in Nueva York, the cool rainy weather is making fall feel too close for Mala’s comfort. Thankfully there is Septeto Nacional’s ¡Sin Rumba no hay Son!, which you can listen to this week only by clicking on the link. The Cuban son group bring my mind and body to Caribbean playas and my soul thanking Oshun/la Caridad del Cobre (as they do in one of their tracks).
You can buy the album, released on World Village’s label, on September 14th and if you are in the NYC area you can catch the septet later this week, August 28, at NYC’s Hostos Center for the Arts, where they launch their tour. El Septeto has several dates at Yoshi’s San Francisco and the Monterey Jazz Festival before heading north to Canada in October and November. They’re back in the states in a big way in March/April 2011 with a string of dates culminating with a concert at Carnegie Hall on April 16th.
Cuba : Fidel Resurfaces & Released Political Prisoners Continue Their Struggle
10:45 am By Maegan La Mala · Cuba · 2 Comments
15 Jul 2010
He’s alive!
Earlier this week, Fidel Castro made a public appearance last week, posing for fotos and speaking at Cuba’s World Economy Research Center proving that despite the never ending rumors, he is not dead yet.
No doubt the appearance was meant to draw attention away from the releasing of 52 political prisoners from behind Cuban bars. Some of the released prisoners will stay in Spain. The U.S. and Chile have offered asylum to the prisoners still on the island that are expected to be released shortly. Some of the prisoners, whose release was secured with intervention from Spain and the Catholic Church, have said that they do not want to leave Cuba.
Mala’s a sucker for a good bolero, the kind you sing really loudly when you maybe have had a little too much to drink you’re suffering from some offense of the heart.
Cubana Olga Guillot was known as the Queen of the Bolero and she passed away last week in Miami. She was 87 years old.
Here Olga sings Miénteme, “Lie to Me”.
Cuban Memory Lane: Teofilo Stevenson
5 Jan 2010I was surfing around my sports stuff today and came across this clip of legendary boxing great, Teofilo Stevenson.
I am a secret fan of boxing. I actually dig the shit out of it, but don’t often admit it because I am, after all, anti-violence etc. Also, lately boxing is not that interesting–there are no real personalities and boxing on the whole seems to be suffering from the same thing every other sport is suffering from: too many people thinking they can do that–and really nobody can. Diluted talent is what I think it’s called.
Watching this old clip made me remember why I love(d) boxing so much. There is beauty in the perfect hit, but even more so, there is humanity in the story of sports. Remember the olden days when the story of a person’s life mattered just as much as his/her successes (or lack of) in sports? And not in a “Tiger Woods is the cleanest and neatest non-Negro” sorta way–but in an earthy-never-gonna-keep-me down sorta way?
Images back during Teofilo Stevenson’s time were not carefully crafted by handlers–but pretty much all that the athlete had outside of his/her skill. The human being still sits underneath the crafted image these days (as Tiger Woods has shown us)–but for some reason we are addicted to the idea that our athletes are perfect beings that make no mistakes. Back in the old days, the mistakes and the situations we didn’t understand and the drama behind the scenes were what made us love them.
I wonder what caused that change. And I want the old days of sports to come back.
With the holiday and cold here in NYC, I’ve been watching lots of movies at home. This past weekend I caught another film featured on the PBS Voces series, Celia, the Queen, about Celia Cruz.
Celia the Queen by Joe Cardona
Celia the Queen is a loving look at the amazing life and legacy of a woman whose voice symbolized the soul of a nation and captured the hearts of fans worldwide. Erupting onto the Cuban music scene as the lead singer for La Sonora Matancera, Celia Cruz broke down barriers of racism and sexism. With the powerful weapon of her voice and the warm tolerance of her heart, Celia soon became all things to all people. The film shows the diversity of the people whose lives she touched, from stars like Quincy Jones, Andy Garcia, and Wyclef Jean to ordinary people all over the world who loved not only her music but her incredible spirit. A co-presentation with National Black Programming Consortium.
What I found most interesting was how Afro-Latino and Pan-Latino Celia was in terms of the kind of music she sang and with whom she worked with while remaining rooted in lo Afro-Cubano. The film features other musicians she workd with like Johnny Pacheco, Oscar De Leon, and Willie Colon. What I also found interesting was how apolitical the film attempted to be. Not once was Fidel Castro mentioned and in a clip of Celia, she herself refuses to call him by name, but rather just speaks of how she worked even harder outside of Cuba post-Revolution to make sure her sick mother could get what she needed.
Hola!
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