Posted by: ivetteromero | February 9, 2010

Haiti’s Rhum Barbancourt

Reporting from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Scott Kraft (Los Angeles Times) speaks about Haiti’s leading rum, Rhum Barbancourt, calling it a national tradition that has survived “the tumult of the last century and a half.” Kraft writes:

When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt arrived here in 1934 to mark the end of America’s occupation of Haiti, he insisted on toasting the hand-over with local Barbancourt rum. Two decades later, the visiting Vice President Nixon personally mixed a Barbancourt rum collins for Haiti’s president (who was, ahem, a whiskey drinker). And every voodoo priest and priestess in Haiti knows that soaking the ground with the golden rum — not the three-star version, mind you, but the five-star, aged twice as long — can raise the spirits of the dead.”It’s what they drink,” Markendy Jean Batiste, a voodoo priest, said with a shrug as if explaining the obvious. “You’ve got to keep the spirits happy.”

The article goes on to describe the considerable odds Rhum Barbancourt has faced—including the destruction caused by the recent earthquake—to remain a national institution. Besides the damage caused to the distillery itself, four of the plant’s 250 employees died in their homes and one-fifth of them are homeless. The company opened its soccer field to its employees, who are now among the 1,400 other homeless residents now camped there. However, Kraft points out, Haiti’s best-known export, founded by Dupré Barbancourt in 1862 and controlled today by his heirs, is an institution that isn’t likely to disappear any time soon. Thierry Gardère explains that the company should be back in production in three or four months. Barbancourt’s survivors are hard at work to repair the damages.

Dupré Barbancourt, a native of the Cognac region of France, opened the distillery to make rum from the sugar cane introduced to the island by Christopher Columbus. Unlike white rum, which is made from the molasses byproduct of sugar production, Barbancourt made his rum from the sugar cane juice itself (producing a higher quality rhum agricole). He used a double distillation process, favored by cognac makers, and aged the rum in French oak barrels imported from Limousin.

The article stresses that the secret to Barbancourt’s survival in the face of Haiti’s tumultuous history, is its steadfast resistance to change as Gardère believes that their goal has always been “to keep the traditions going.” Another reason, says Kraft, “is the sense of loyalty Haitians have for their national drink and the special place it holds in important rituals, from weddings and holidays to bringing forth the voodoo spirits that appease the dead and protect the living.” To keep the tradition, the company must continue being a family enterprise; Gardère’s 26-year-old daughter will soon take the reins. “Keeping Barbancourt around for a fifth generation is not just a matter of family pride—it’s a national obligation.”

For full article, see http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-haiti-rum9-2010feb09,0,4799177.story

More on Barbancourt at http://bunnyhugs.org/2008/10/16/barbancourt-rum-tasting/

Detail of Felix Jean’s artwork, which adorns the boxes of Barbancourt’s Reserve du Domaine, from http://projects.vassar.edu/haiti/art/jean_f.php

Posted by: ivetteromero | February 9, 2010

Miami: The “SOS Saving OurSelves—Help for Haiti” Concert

Last weekend Wyclef Jean opened the “SOS Saving OurSelves—Help for Haiti” concert and telethon with the Haitian Creole phrase for “It’s all good.” His performance began two hours of pleas for donations and pledges of unity with earthquake victims just 700 miles from the American Airlines Arena in Miami. Before the telethon, “Heroes” actor Jimmy Jean-Louis said Haitians needed to be in charge of their own recovery, saying that “We have to get Haiti moving by itself, and not just relying on the donors.”

In a night of celebration of Haitian culture and pride, “Haiti didn’t seem that far away” says the article. The effects of the January 12 earthquake have been felt even in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood, just north of the arena. Local Haitian-Americans who survived the earthquake or went to assist the relief efforts were highlighted in the audience. Many celebrities contributed to the telethon and participated actively in fundraising for Haiti. For example, former President Bill Clinton took the stage just after stepping off a plane from Haiti.

Artists and public figures such as Mary J. Blige, Chris Brown, Justin Bieber, Robin Thicke, Trey Songz, Busta Rhymes, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Nas, Drake, Ludacris, Akon, Queen Latifah, Pharrell, Gloria Estefan, tennis player Serena Williams, filmmaker Spike Lee, and former boxer Mike Tyson, among others, were on hand to lend a helping hand. “We’re all in the same boat,” said singer Trey Songz, making an unintentional pun in a city that is the destination for countless Haitian and Cuban migrants.

Aware that “donor fatigue” may be setting in, hosts Sean “Diddy” Combs, Queen Latifah and Pharrell urged viewers and concertgoers to remember Haiti’s need for investment in its infrastructure, along with food, water, shelter and medicine. Proceeds of this fundraiser will go to aid agencies Yelé Haiti, CARE, Project Medishare, Children’s Safe Drinking Water, and The Clinton Foundation.

For full article, see http://www.bostonherald.com/news/international/americas/view.bg?articleid=1231037

Photo of Wyclef Jean and former President Clinton from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/07/AR2010020701303.html

Posted by: ivetteromero | February 9, 2010

European Union Contributes over 400 Million Euros to Haiti

The ambassadors of the European Union in Haiti announced that the 27 countries would contribute with over 400 million euros for the reconstruction of the Caribbean country ravaged by last month’s violent earthquake. French Ambassador Didier Le Bret said, “The EU wants to support the Haitian government so that it can direct the effort of the reconstruction of Haiti and strengthen the capacity of the government to take things in hand.”

Several technical missions of EU countries are currently in Haiti and are work alongside the Haitian authorities. European diplomats have also announced budget in favor of the government to enable it to face urgent expenses, pay officials, and restore the streets. Jean-Marc Ruiz, from the Office of the European Commission in Haiti, also welcomed the individual efforts of Europeans who, privately, were able to “contribute on a massive scale, sometimes more even than the Governments of the countries of the EU.”

For full article (in French), see http://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/article/2010/02/06/l-armee-americaine-restera-en-haiti-tant-que-ce-sera-utile_1302245_3222.html

Photo of René Préval with Didier Le Bret from http://www.ambafrance-ht.org/spip.php?article701

Posted by: ivetteromero | February 9, 2010

China Pledges Funds for Roads and Homes in Jamaica

The Boston Herald reports that China has agreed to finance road, housing, and shoreline renovation projects totaling $500 million in Jamaica. The agreement was reached during a visit by Prime Minister Bruce Golding and private sector representatives who are in China in search of economic aid.

Projects include affordable-home construction and the renovation of a shoreline leading to Kingston’s international airport that was severely damaged by hurricanes Ivan and Dean in 2004 and 2007. Foreign Affairs Minister Kenneth Baugh did not specify whether the money was a donation or a loan in a statement issued Thursday.

See article and photo (of Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding with Chinese President Hu Jintao at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China) at http://www.bostonherald.com/news/international/americas/view/20100205china_pledges_500m_for_homes_roads_in_jamaica/

Posted by: lisaparavisini | February 9, 2010

Edouard Duval-Carrié on Haiti’s earthquake

The Biscayne Times reviews The “Global Caribbean” exhibit curated by Haitian artist Edouard Duval-Carrié, and includes an interview with the artist in which he comments on the impact of the earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince last month. Here are some excerpts, with a link to the full article  below.

The carefully chosen works in this superb show reflect the Caribbean reality and mythology, the dark and the light, the troubled past, present, and future, and the incredible vibrancy of the artistic output from a region that starts at the tip of Florida and ends on the shores of South America.

After January 12, that reality took on new meaning. The earthquake that ravaged Haiti gives a new poignancy and power to this art, from 23 of the Caribbean’s top artists, being shown in a gleaming new space in the magnificent new Little Haiti Cultural Center.

The image of sunny isles and the ultimate tropical tourist escape has always clashed with the darker one, of brutal dictatorships, occupations, and stark social inequalities. While recent photos and stories of unimaginable destruction overwhelm our senses, this beautiful show seeks to address these contradictions.

Organized and curated by prominent Haitian artist and Miami resident Edouard Duval-Carrié, “Global Caribbean” deals with the lives and histories of African descendants of the region, as well as with the capriciousness of the very ground itself. In the show’s catalogue — published well before the earthquake — Duval-Carrié wrote: “A definite constant in the region is the wrath of mother nature…. Along with the damage wrought by the weather, colonialization, slavery and plantation economies could also be seen as agents of destruction in the region.”

The everyday violence of today’s Caribbean world is inescapable in the work of Dominican artist Jorge Piñeda with Afro-Fight — Issue III, its faceless fighter in army fatigues butting against the wall; as well as in Hew Locke’s Kingdom of the Blind, three huge sculptures pieced together with plastic chains, dinosaurs, and guns.

But Kingdom also highlights what this show succeeds in relating — that in the face of almost insurmountable odds, artistic expression can heal and even bring joy into relentlessly joyless lives. While these “blind” sculptures can look devilish, they also include a profusion of colorful plastic flowers and beads. Life goes on, they seem to say, especially through art.

. . .

No country has been more traumatized in the Western Hemisphere than Haiti, and viewing this show in the wake of the earthquake can’t help but color the picture even more darkly.

Sitting on a baroque chair in his expansive studio, Duval-Carrié says that art, music, and dance have always sustained life in Haiti, and that it will once again as the country struggles to recover. But it won’t be easy, says the Port-au-Prince native, looking tired but still filled with humor. His family there has survived, as it appears did artist André Eugéne, a founder of the Grand Rue art movement. But it also appears that much of Haiti’s cultural history, and visual arts, have disappeared — maybe forever — in the rubble of the capital city and the seaside town of Jacmel.

Duval-Carrié believes that the Little Haiti Cultural Center, adjacent to his studio, and the Haitian Cultural Arts Alliance that he heads, will have to play a major role in documenting and preserving that culture.

In an office connected to his studio, some of that documentation has taken place already — the alliance has a catalogue of books, original documents, and maps. The new cultural center is now home to four Afro-Caribbean dance troupes, as well as an impressive black box theater that will host musical groups and film screenings from the region.

But without Duval-Carrié himself, much of this would not exist. Although the City of Miami initially funded the center and now staffs it, Duval-Carrié, long active among the Caribbean diaspora in Miami and abroad, brought in the French government to sponsor “Global Caribbean,” along with promises of future exhibits and exchanges. Because of its historic (and difficult) ties to the Caribbean, France has created a cultural outreach arm, “Caraïbes en créations,” to fund such projects, and Duval-Carrié lobbied for Miami to be a focal point of this initiative.

While he is currently active in various relief efforts, Duval-Carrié says he wants to put most of his time and energy into raising money and awareness of what must be done over the long haul to resuscitate Haiti. To that end, he plans an art auction, featuring very significant work, that could help fund a symposium of thinkers, scientists, and social and environmental planners.

“We have to start from ground zero,” he says. “We can not rebuild it the way it was before, a complete and total disaster, built by tyrants and crooks to benefit the very few and starve the rest. Believe me, as someone who knew Port-au-Prince when the sea was crystal clear, that city should never be rebuilt the way it was, including its meaningless palaces and political structures.”

Anger flairs as he talks about the past and the present, but then he smiles as he says that the famous quilt makers from Gee’s Bend, Alabama, have already offered to donate a quilt for such an auction. “Drastic measures must be taken,” he adds. “We need to formulate a serious vision for the future.”

Back in the bright exhibition space, a current vision of the world is beautifully and disturbingly expressed. Bahamian artist Blue Curry has suspended from the ceiling the skeletal jaw of a bull shark. Spilling out of the shark’s mouth to the floor are 754 hours’ worth of used cassette tapes. It can look alternately like a glamorous evening gown or a hideous concoction of dead animals and plastic garbage.

Duval-Carrié acknowledges that duality: “Whether they [the artists] are part of well-intentioned cultural directives or they are solo acts whose productions are in defiance of all odds, I want to honor their efforts by presenting them and their works in a pristine new facility, which provides the proper environment to enhance their visual acts.”

For more go to http://www.biscaynetimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=495:views-from-the-islands&catid=38:art-a-culture&Itemid=154

Image 1: And She Swings So Sweetly by Haitian-American artist Vickie Pierre

Image 2: Hew Locke’s Kingdom of the Blind # 5,6,7

Posted by: lisaparavisini | February 9, 2010

Cuba Looks to Private Farms to Boost Economy

Reuters reports that Cuban President Raúl Castro has announced a five-year plan that he hopes will ease the country’s economic problems and reliance on food imports. Echoing some of his previous attempts at agricultural reform, the president wants to surround cities with small urban farms so private citizens can raise animals and grow fruits and vegetables. While Castro has firmly stated that he has no plans to make broad changes to the socialist government, these small initiatives would seem to be signaling a move away from the collectivist agriculture that some critics believe is forcing the fertile island to import about 70 percent of its food. Cuba has huge swaths of unused land left over from giant sugar cane farms that went fallow after the end of Soviet subsidies.  ”The land is there waiting for our sweat,” Castro said in a speech in July.
The new plan will rely on small producers working unused suburban land with organic methods, similar to the reform that food activists like Will Allen are calling for in the United States. The pilot program will take place in the suburbs of Camagüey, Cuba’s third-largest city, and government experts expect it to provide the city of 320,000 people with about 75 percent of its food.  While the Alice Waters-meets-Castro aspect of these reforms might seem strange, Raúl has been a proponent of encouraging domestic development since the fall of the Soviet Union and has previously leased large amounts of land to private farmers, saying beans were more important than cannons.
When Raúl Castro formally took power from his ailing brother Fidel in 2006, many hoped that he would bring a new era of progressive reform. Early on, he said he would actively encourage discussions of Cuba’s shortcomings in universities, but over the past few years he has been accused of beating, imprisoning and torturing political dissenters. He is No. 13 on Parade magazine’s list of worst dictators.
“For sure there will be more food around here if you come back in a few years,” a farmer named Camilio Mendoza told Reuters. “More than that, I can’t say.”

For more go to http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/cubas-raul-castro-looks-to-private-farms-to-boost-economy/19349323

Posted by: lisaparavisini | February 9, 2010

Disease hits St Lucia bananas

Agriculture officials have confirmed that black sigatoka, a dangerous fungal disease, has been discovered in St Lucia and threatens the struggling banana industry.
Agriculture Minister Ezekiel Joseph said the dreaded disease was discovered on a banana plantation in the south-east of the island and that government officials will be verifying the extent of infestation across the island.
“We are now embarking on a comprehensive survey islandwide to determine the extent of the problem and from that we will know the measures we need to undertake to either eradicate or control,” he told the Caribbean Media Corporation.

Originally reported at http://www.freshplaza.com/news_detail.asp?id=58397

Posted by: lisaparavisini | February 9, 2010

Inside Cuba’s dance factory

London’s Guardian has published a lengthy article on the current state of the internationally-known dance company founded by Cuban ballerina Alicia Alonso. Here are some excerpts, with the link to the full article below.

Virtually blind and wearing Jackie Onassis sunglasses that might have been bought when Jackie O was still alive, Alicia Alonso has her ballerina face painted on every morning: a wide slash of scarlet lipstick, thick found-ation, flaring black eyebrows. She may be approaching her 90th birthday, but she is still the head of the Ballet ­Nacional de Cuba, still the island’s ­revolutionary prima ballerina assoluta. Talking to me in her private office in Havana, she combines diva glamour with political rhetoric; spreading her arms wide at one point, she insists: “Art is the lungs of the ­people. It is the expression of our ­humanity.” It’s a ­gesture that would carry to the back of an opera house.

Ever since she gave up her inter-national career to found the Ballet ­Nacional in 1959, Alonso has been proselytising for her art form. Fidel Castro, determined to acquire a people’s ballet to match Russia’s Bolshoi and the Kirov, gave her the funding to expand what was a private company into a state ­ensemble. She has kept it alive for 50 years despite chronic money problems and a scarcity of essential supplies, and in the process acquired a near-sacred standing in Cuba. You almost believe her when she says, serenely: “I’ll still be running this company in a hundred years’ time.”

Certainly the impact Alonso has made on Cuban dance will gain her a kind of immortality. The ballet school she opened with her former husband Fernando is now world-famous, gathering its students from the island’s rural poor and urban delinquent; Carlos Acosta was enrolled by his father to keep him off the streets. The training it gives is also world-class, producing dancers who can pirouette and jump with explosive attack, but whose musicality embraces a shimmering languor.

. . .

Stuck in a 50-year time-warp

This spring, Britain will be getting a concentrated taste of Cuba’s dynamic rhythm and heat, as both the Ballet ­Nacional and the state-run Danza ­Contemporanea de Cuba (DCC) begin UK tours. Also founded in 1959, Danza Contemporanea now numbers 47 ­dancers – almost double the size of the UK’s Rambert Dance Company. Its signature style is a bewitching hybrid, blending the blunt attack of American modern dance with the long, lean ­extensions and graceful arms of ballet, as well as the percussive syncopation and rippling spines of Caribbean dance.

Spanish choreographer Rafael Bonachela, who was recently invited to create a work for DCC, says he was awed by the dancers’ talent. “If I audition for my own company, I might see 800 dancers, but few are as good as these. They’re taught to really push themselves and they have this very old-fashioned, hardcore technique that you don’t often see.” Yet Bonachela’s voice has the guilty inflection typical of most visitors to Cuba, as he acknowledges that DCC’s unique qualities are, in part, a reflection of their long and enforced segregation from the rest of the dance world. The time–warp effects of the 50-year US embargo, and of Castro’s rule, may be fascinating to observe: a world free of Starbucks and the evils of global capitalism. But for Cubans, the reality has been grim. For all their justified pride in Cuba’s health service and education system, many Cubans long for Starbucks, or at least what it symbolises – access to basic goods and, above all, the freedom to travel. As Bonachela says: “Cuba is a waiting island.”

At the Ballet Nacional, dancers do have certain privileges, including the chance to tour abroad. But it’s evident from talking to them that this exposure to the wider world has sharpened their dissatisfaction, as they realise how far ballet has moved on, and how limited their own repertory is. It’s not just that Alonso’s taste dominates the company, a taste inevitably rooted in an older aesthetic; there is also little money to acquire new work from elsewhere.

For some dancers, the situation feels impossible. Carlos Acosta, who left Cuba for good in 1993, believed he had no choice: “Your career is so short – you have to do everything you can to find new challenges.” But others find it harder to leave, like dancer Javier Torres, who professes enormous loyalty to his home company: “It has taken me to a very high level.” Even so, an expression of longing crosses his face when he ­describes watching the Royal Ballet dance Chroma, the fiercely modern Wayne McGregor ballet they brought to Havana last year. “My body is hungry to dance that,” he says simply.

For the full article go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/feb/08/cuba-ballet-nacional-danza-contemporanea

Posted by: lisaparavisini | February 9, 2010

Dominica cricket fraternity mourns death of former national batsman

Dominica’s cricketing fraternity has been thrown into a state of shock and mourning following the sudden death of Kelvin Toussaint, a former national opening batsman. Toussaint, 30, died on Friday evening following a vehicular accident close to the eastern community of Castle Bruce. The left-handed batsman, who opened the batting for Dominica for several years in the Windward Islands senior tournament, was a passenger aboard a pick up truck which plunged into a precipice.

Toussaint only returned to competitive cricket two years ago after self imposed exile. Just before his untimely death he was scheduled to represent his club in a Twenty20 encounter this Sunday. He had also represented Dominica at the regional youth level and at the Sir Garry Sobers Secondary Schools International cricket tournament in Barbados.

http://dominicanewsonline.com/?p=3658

Today Radio Universidad (WRTU – FM 89.7) the University of Puerto Rico’s radio station, celebrates three decades of existence with a special programming that demonstrates the excellence that has characterized it since its launching in 1980. Journalist Yolanda Zabala, Radio Universidad’s director, explained that the station had served as a workshop for journalists and the radio station’s programming has consisted of a variety of spaces for classical, popular, folk music, and jazz as well as local and international news and programs focusing on political and cultural events of Latin America and the Caribbean, complemented by information from the BBC in London, Radio France Internationale, and Radio Nederland, and is affiliated with National Public Radio and Bilingual Satellite Radio.

Zabala indicated that since 1999, Radio University expanded its coverage area through WRUO 88.3FM in Mayagüez, the same year that the station also became part of the school of communications of the UPR-Río Piedras campus. A pioneer of digital technology, Radio Universidad’s programming can also be heard online on www.radiouniversidad.pr.

 As part of the station’s 30th anniversary, it will offer the following special programming this week, February 8 to 14. There will be special programs hosted by Carlos Camuñas, Norma Valle, Errol Montes Pizarro, Abdel Oakil Sebbana, Andrés “Cucho” Pérez, Emanuel Dufrasne, Jorge Medina, Rosa Luisa Márquez with Antonio Martorell, José Vélez, Nelly Lebrón, and César Colón Montijo with Josian Bruno Gómez.

For full article and program schedule, see http://www.vocero.com/noticia-39514-radio_universidad_celebra_sus_30_aos.html

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