2009-04-23 / Jeremy Kinsman (NY Times)
A recent visit to Havana stirred hope of change, that in 10 years you might smell the sea instead of the concoction of dust, dodgy plumbing, tobacco and the blue breath of 1950s cars jockeying for space around the Parque Central while trying to avoid stray dogs wandering pathetically into the traffic. Or that the night-time crowds of men under the plane trees could argue passionately about something other than beisbol.
That Havana will be less poor. On the Malecón, probably the world’s greatest urban ocean drive, 1920s apartments crumble from the harsh arm of the sea and a half-century of neglect. John Lee Anderson described in his biography “Che Guevara” how the first Russians in Havana in 1960 “like peasants...stared in wonder at the modern city, with its shiny American consumer products still in shop windows; television sets, refrigerators, air conditioners. ... Huge American cars, luxuriant, with chrome and fins, had them goggle-eyed.” Today, capitalist Muscovites enjoy IKEA and flat-screen TVs while socialist Havana’s peso stores are like Soviet Moscow’s at their scantiest. ...more2013-04-22 / The Miami Herald
Cuba saw a record number of “politically motivated and at times violent short-term detentions” during 2012, according to the U.S. State Department’s “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices,” which was released Friday...more
2013-04-18 / The Washington Post
Members of Cuba’s Ladies in White opposition group will finally pick up Europe’s top human rights prize from 2005 in person next week in Belgium, the European Union and the daughter of the group’s former leader said Wednesday...more
2013-04-16 / The Washington Post
Cubans were relieved Monday by the announcement that the late leader Hugo Chavez’s hand-picked successor had been elected Venezuela’s new president, apparently allowing their country to dodge a threatened cutoff of billions of dollars in subsidized oil...more
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People in Need (PIN) is a Czech organization that provides relief aid and development assistance, while working to defend human rights and democratic freedom.
