Janine Mendes-Franco · May, 2011

Latest posts by Janine Mendes-Franco from May, 2011

Cuba: Rojas Detained

  24 May 2011

Cuban bloggers focus their attention on Luis Felipe Rojas, who was reportedly detained this past weekend, allegedly for blogging about the beating of three women.

Trinidad & Tobago: Gay Rights

  24 May 2011

gspottt thinks that “it’s impressive that the Ministry is interested in attitudes to homosexuality; and notable that the poll [about equal rights for homosexuals] was commissioned by the last government”, but maintains that “it’s a matter of how you ask the question.” Photos and video of Trinidad and Tobago's first...

Caribbean: Reflections on the Rapture

  23 May 2011

So the world was supposed to end this past Saturday - at least according to some religious sects. Caribbean bloggers write about how one man's delusion had an impact on the region and put a humourous spin on surviving the end of the world.

Cuba: Cultural Center Closed

  23 May 2011

Generation Y blogs about “the shock of the correctives” in the form of “the closure of the cultural center run by the painter Pedro Pablo Oliva”.

Barbados: Code of Ethics for Elected Officials

  23 May 2011

The irony of the acting Prime Minister “ha[ving] the audacity to lecture the Barbados news media on ethics and the purpose of journalism” in the absence of a “code of ethics for elected and appointed government officials” is not lost on Barbados Free Press.

Cuba: Reforms vs. Reality

  20 May 2011

Laritza Diversent looks at some of the impending changes coming out of the Communist Party Congress, but says: “There is far too much optimism towards the announced changes made by the PCC. Freedom and permission are not synonymous.”

Bahamas: Help with Crime?

  20 May 2011

“Mr Dwayne Cartwright, an employee of the Department of Environmental Health has been murdered by senseless thugs that are running wild on our streets”: Jerome Pinder at Weblog Bahamas wonders if the country is at the stage of needing “outside assistance”.

Cuba: Musings on the Sixth Congress

  20 May 2011

Laritza's Laws blogs about “the trap of socialist democracy”, while Octavo Cerco says that “after the close of the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party…the only point on the official agenda that seems to be right on the mark is the repression of the alternative groups that have been growing...

Cuba: Effects of a Beating

  19 May 2011

Crossing the Barbed Wire blogs about his efforts to make a film about “Alberto Lairo Castro, a young Holguin native who in 2007 was a victim of a ‘Double Nelson’ lock applied onto him by the National Revolutionary Police” and was left disabled as a result.

U.S.V.I.: “The Caribbean Writer”

  19 May 2011

A Nation or Nobody is enjoying his new copy of The Caribbean Writer: “The topics…rang[e] from the Virgin Islands’ place in the Caribbean community to concerns over the homicide rate in the territory…”

Guyana: Caribbean Law

  19 May 2011

Signifyin’ Guyana interviews regional legal expert Abiola Inniss about her new book and possible “solutions to some of the major issues which plague Caribbean law today.”