I am a writer and media producer based in Trinidad and Tobago. Follow me on Twitter @JanineMFranco.
Latest posts by Janine Mendes-Franco from February, 2012
Bermuda: Economic Debate
“This Friday parliamentarians will hold the annual economic debate against the backdrop of a sustained global recession and two competing views about how to get out of it”: Respice Finem...
Cuba: Worry about Hunger Striker
Uncommon Sense hopes that political prisoner Ernesto Borges’ fate will not go the way of so many other hunger strikers, saying: “He needs you to learn his story and to...
Jamaica: Nicknames
Grasshopper Eyes The Potomac blogs about Jamaicans and their nicknames, explaining that it's an eccentricity with “meaning and real origins that mark a key characteristic of a person or their...
Cuba, USA: Blogger Perspectives on the Embargo's 50th Anniversary (Part 1)
The United States' economic embargo against Cuba has been in existence for 50 years. To mark the occasion, Global Voices interviews two bloggers about the blockade and what it has...
Trinidad & Tobago: Carnival is My Time
“In an attempt to imitate art…culture in T&T seems to have perverted itself and in trying to become something else, may have succeeded all too well; the business model of...
Cuba: Dialogue with the Opposition?
“It might be paranoia. In totalitarian states, suspicion and the absurd become habit. But it isn’t insane to think that to give the dissidents a space if circumstances force their...
Jamaica: Inmate Beatings
Following reports that several high-profile inmates are being beaten, Active Voice wants to know “what’s going down at the Horizon Adult Remand Centre”, which seems to be “a virtual Guantanamo...
St. Lucia, Trinidad & Tobago: Priestly Poetry & A New Literature Partnership
Caribbean Book Blog interviews priest and poet Fr. Lambert St Rose, while Bocas Lit Fest announces “a new partnership that will work towards enhancing the Caribbean literary scene and help...
Jamaica: “Intellectual Ghetto”
Jamaica Woman Tongue feels the backlash “for daring to suggest that [the late radio talk show host Wilmot Perkins] had feet of clay.
Haiti: Legislative “Assault” Against Civil Service
“Back in May 2011, undistracted by Haiti’s 4.5-million dollar presidential inauguration, I sounded the alarm about a brewing legislative coup d’etat“: Haiti Chery explains.
Cuba: Working for “The Enemy”?
Havana Times reports that “the leading Cuban government website…unleashed a front page attack on blogger Yoani Sanchez…with an article accusing her of working for the enemy (USA) for pay”; Sanchez...
Cuba: More Sunday Detentions
Uncommon Sense blogs about yet another Sunday of repression as members of Las Damas de Blanco were again detained by authorities.
Jamaica: Lenten Songs
Diaspora litblogger Geoffrey Philp posts a poem about Lent.
Haiti: Prayers & Priorities
The Millikan Daily meets a “beach head for incoming Methodists to Haiti” and is less than impressed with her “mission”, saying: “I for one, am touched that there are people...
Trinidad & Tobago: Fashion over Festival?
Rishi Sankar explains why he will not play mas with one particular Carnival band ever again.
Cuba: Bejerano Against Corruption
“Eliot Ness and his group in Chicago…[have] a female version in Cuba”: Iván's File Cabinet blogs about the country's “Iron Lady”.
Cuba: Prisoners’ Rights
Uncommon Sense republishes a statement by Amnesty International about “former prisoner of conscience Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia [whose] whereabouts are unknown following his alleged arrest in central Havana, Cuba, on...
Haiti: Students in Sheds
Haiti Grassroots Watch explores the issues surrounding the non-reconstruction of the state university in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake.
