· December, 2011

Stories about Caribbean from December, 2011

Global Voices: Donate Today

  20 December 2011

2011 has been an extraordinary year for online content. Global Voices has been there as revolutions happened, dictatorships fell, and network effects rippled through the cities and neighborhoods of our contributors reporting from around the world.

Jamaica: vote or not?

  19 December 2011

Idle Yout Speeks asks if he should bother to vote in Jamaica's upcoming general election. “I blame my reluctance … on a deep rooted fear that stemmed from the more violent days of Jamaica's more violent election campaigns,” he writes. “I see some subtle differences in the parties but ultimately...

Barbados: remembering “Hitch”

  19 December 2011

Barbados-based B.C. Pires posts his reflections on the death of writer Christopher Hitchens: “for all his flaws … worth a few hundred pastors and priests to me, perhaps a few thousand.”

Trinidad and Tobago: making zines

  19 December 2011

Trinidadian artist Rodell Warner posts images from a zine workshop for young artists which he organised in Johannesburg, South Africa, and explains that the experience made him think “of all the people at home who are concerned with actively sharing and making the place richer and more fertile.”

Barbados: debating “the letter”

  19 December 2011

Barbados Underground and Barbados Free Press comment on a controversial letter allegedly written to Prime Minister Freundel Stuart by members of his party, expressing a lack of confidence in his leadership, and subsequently leaked to the media.

Trinidad & Tobago: Online Petition Against Offensive Ad

  16 December 2011

Globewriter is heartened that Project Runway winner, Anya Ayoung-Chee, has “[thrown]her weight against hate” by signing a petition “to demand the Trinidad Express apologize for running an offensive advert that, among other things, described LGBT people as ‘broken’”, and urges you to do the same.

Cuba: The Living Dead

  16 December 2011

Generation Y sees parallels between the film “Juan of the Dead” and life in Cuba: “More than gazing on a story of beings taken from our worst nightmares, the public wants to decipher the second reading contained in the film…such that, between laughter and shrieks, the metaphor crumbles, it is...

Haiti: Housing Still a Problem

  15 December 2011

“While over one million refugees suffered under tents following the January 12, 2010, earthquake, 128 newly constructed homes, finished in May, 2010, sat empty for 15 months,” reports Haiti Grassroots Watch, adding: “Today, the majority of these ‘social housing’ units are occupied, but mostly by illegal squatters…”

Trinidad & Tobago, Belize: Gay Rights

  15 December 2011

Globewriter notes that some of the more homophobic nations are getting “their knickers in a twist” over the Obama administration's statement at the UN “that it is standing up for the rights of LGBT people worldwide”, calling the Belizean Prime Minister “about as enlightened to human rights as a lamppost…so...

Cuba: In Defense of Human Rights

  15 December 2011

Pedazos de La Isla highlights the testimony of one of the Ladies in White who relates her experience as a victim of the “vigilance operations, brutal beatings, arbitrary arrests, deportations, and other forms of violence against those who publicly demonstrated on the streets of the island in defense of human...

Barbados: Courts Send Message that Women are Nothing

  15 December 2011

“Men again learned that no matter how badly you beat women, they can always be pressured to drop the charges. Police learned that it is useless to treat an assault on a woman seriously. The judge learned that assault charges are a waste of time when a West Indies cricketer...

Trinidad & Tobago: Dangerous Ad

  15 December 2011

Bloggers from Trinidad and Tobago voice their outrage at a newspaper ad that claims to educate people about homosexuality, calling it “a vile advertisement that can only be described as hateful, mean spirited and a pack of lies.”

Guyana: Rape Allegations against Police Chief

  15 December 2011

Save Guyana reports on rape allegations being brought against the police commissioner, explaining: “The Alliance For Change…has called for [his] dismissal or at least interdiction from duty…and is viewing the matter as the first real test of the Donald Ramotar administration.”

Cuba: Defining “Vulgarity”

  14 December 2011

Without Evasion continues to share her thoughts about the outcry over the “vulgarity” of a popular reggaeton song, saying: “The confusion lies, then, in properly ascertaining the limits of vulgarity and limiting at the same time in what spheres of social life vulgarity will be allowed without it constituting a...

Cuba: Food History

  14 December 2011

Iván García reviews Fidel Castro's history with “experiments”, saying: “The ex-president has put his foot in it many times. In all fields. The most painful has been in regard to food.”

Jamaica: So What About the Spy Plane?

  14 December 2011

After reading a newspaper editorial which was nonchalant over the presence of a spy plane during the country's state of emergency, Active Voice says: “The big deal…is that 73 people were killed under unexplained circumstances during that Tivoli Gardens operation. This spy plane has video footage of what happened…and the...

Haiti: Celebrity Visits Overshadow Real News

  12 December 2011

“I just don't get it. Why is it newsworthy that Kim Kardashian was in Haiti?”: Toussaint on Haiti “continue[s] to be baffled by the relative media silence around the effort of Haitians to hold the United Nations accountable” and asks: “How can we maintain attention on this issue until it...

Jamaica: Politics or Party?

  12 December 2011

Jamaica Woman Tongue says of the new Prime Minister's choice of a December 29 election date: “If our PM/minister of education knew his history, he would never have dared to ‘mash up’ the holidays with politics. But ‘im young; im wi learn.’”

Cuba: Christmas Lights, No Human Rights

  12 December 2011

“In the long list of the words forbidden in my childhood, there were two in particular that were censored: ‘Christmas’ and ‘Human Rights'”, writes Generation Y, explaining that Christmas has become acknowledged – unlike human rights; Uncommon Sense supports her claim by quoting “one of the island's preeminent human rights...

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Janine Mendes-Franco
Janine Mendes Franco is the Caribbean editor. Email her story ideas or volunteer to write.