Kiszla: Nolan Arenado's journey to Cuba changes view of world for star. SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Nolan Arenado wasn’t sure what he would find if he went to Cuba.
“I’ve always wanted to go, you know?” The Rockies’ star third baseman said. “It was more than I ever imagined.” He saw the country where his father lived as a child. Here’s how the world’s cartoonists are remembering Fidel Castro. As part of the world celebrates the life of Fidel Castro as a revolutionary hero who freed Cuba from dictatorship, others are celebrating his death as a man who was a dictator in his own right and turned Cuba into his personal fiefdom.
While his legacy will be debated for years to come, nobody can dispute the impact Castro had on global politics over the past six decades. Few world leaders have also had such an impact on global cartoonists over the years. And as Cuba prepares for El Comandante’s final send-off, cartoonists around the world are putting pencil to paper to give him a send-off of their own. These Afro-Cuban women are fighting the last battle of the revolution. HAVANA—The Cuban Revolution’s universal healthcare and tuition-free education have created a more inclusive society where Afro-Cubans were given a chance to become doctors, engineers, and other professionals who helped build a new nation.
But vanquishing racism hasn’t been so easy. Despite the many advances by Afro-Cubans over the past 50 years, implicit and explicit anti-black racism continues to permeate Cuban society. Cuba's Havana International Book Fair is a giant party — Quartz. Usually, Neil Gorsuch is the one who sits in judgment, as part of a panel of appellate judges reviewing lower court records for errors.
But now the tables have turned, and the judge has submitted his own record for review. Named by President Donald Trump to fill the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court on Jan. 31, Gorsuch faces Senate confirmation hearings in March. On Feb. 11, he responded to a Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire with 68 pages (pdf), listing jobs, articles, club memberships, speaking engagements, and even calendar entries for events he can’t recall attending. Gorsuch has decided 3,000 cases—1,800 criminal and 1,200 civil—as part of a panel of at least three, sometimes more, judges on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, Colorado. He listed these 10 as most significant: The sort-of Rum Diaries, 2017: Post-Castro Cuba is a crumbling gem with touches of modernity.
There are no seat belts, and the speed limit is 70 mph.
A thick fog closes in on the freeway. Few lights pierce the dark wet night, and my friend and I clutch each others’ hands when we look at the road ahead. Palm trees punctuate the median like ghosts in the dark, and the occasional shadowy animal moves through the mist just off the road. Cuba's opening to the world has a problem much closer to home than Donald Trump. A man uses the internet via public Wi-Fi in Havana, Cuba.
Enrique de la Osa/Reuters Donald Trump's denunciations of Obama's opening to Cuba while on the presidential campaign trail and his continued insistence on getting a "better deal" with the long isolated island nation have stirred worry that the president-elect will halt or undo Cuba's rapprochement with the US. It remains unclear what kind of policy toward Cuba Trump will pursue, but Cuba's work toward expanding its economy and engaging with the world faces an obstacle that is much closer than Washington.
Cuba's centrally planned economy has long been stunted by its relative isolation from the rest of the world, and the country has relied on its partners to support its citizens. Cuba Is the Missing Link in Jazz History. Under loosened restrictions, U.S. and Cuban jazz musicians linked up at a Havana music festival to celebrate a common heritage—but can that last under Trump?
A full moon hung low in the Havana sky, looking expectant, the night before a gala mid-December concert opened the 32nd annual Jazz Plaza Havana festival. A reception crowded the courtyard of the U.S. ambassadorial residence, the air spiced with the scent of rum, the sound of music, and a sense of possibilities. Pianist Arturo O’Farrill sat at a keyboard. Why Cuba is an education success story and what it can teach Africa. Cuba takes education very seriously.
It became a top priority after Fidel Castro became prime minister in 1959 and this helped the country shake its mantle as the most unequal of the Hispanic Caribbean territories during both the colonial and post colonial early 20th century periods. The foundations of Castro’s new social - and socialist - order were premised on the common understanding that only good-quality, empowering education could conquer Cuba’s acute poverty, ignorance and underdevelopment. Cuba invested heavily to make its education system world class.
"Visit Cuba, Before It Changes!" Over the course of 55 years, the United States has pursued change in Cuba with implacable tenacity and almost single-minded resolve: one armed invasion, scores of assassination plots, years of covert operations, and decades of punitive economic sanctions.
An embargo—“harsher than on any other countries in the world,” as Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson acknowledged in 2015—was designed with malice of forethought: to inflict adversity upon the Cuban people and deepen Cuban discontent through economic privation, in the hope that hardship would bestir the island’s people to rise up and, in one fell swoop, precipitate the overthrow of the Castro government.
Starting in 2014, the Obama administration introduced a new lucidity to U.S. policy—one informed with a more nuanced appreciation of the perils attending political change obtained through economic collapse. In principle, Obama’s words represented a remarkable paradigm shift. People-to-People’s Subversive Intent. Fidel Castro: Master of the Image. Fidel Castro was every word in the book.
The longtime Cuban leader was a revolutionary to many, a dictator to many others. A reader and a thinker as well, Castro, who died on Nov. 25 at 90, was famous for his oratory and infamous for his verbal lashes against his enemies. But the master of the word was also a master of the image. Below are six portraits of Castro made between 1959 and 1995 by photographers who spent variously short or significant amounts of time with him. The Guardian view on Fidel Castro: man of history. Cuba after Fidel. “There are too many Cubans who get up every day and struggle and struggle, and that’s it,” she said in an interview. “My dream is to leave.” The Montes family’s story of faith and disillusion is common. Log In. By now, many hopes that the revolution would lead to democratic reforms were dashed.
The free elections that were promised never occurred. Yet Mr. Castro remained popular, affectionately referred to as Fidel. That spirit was captured in this rare poster by the Cuban painter Raúl Martínez, an artist who influenced the Havana art scene with his abstract work and his own version of Pop Art. The star from the Cuban flag represents national identity, and the number 26 commemorates the attack on the Moncada barracks. Former Cuban President Fidel Castro Dies At Age 90. Cuban leader Fidel Castro, speaking at the 30th anniversary of the communist revolution on Jan. 1, 1989, in Havana, Cuba. Castro died Friday at age 90. Charles Tasnadi/AP Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born on Aug. 13, 1926, on his family's sugar plantation in Biran, Cuba. Jose Goitia/Corbis Portrait of a young Fidel Castro in New York in 1950s.
Castro got involved in revolutionary politics as a teenager and studied law at the University of Havana. Amid A Struggling Economy, Cuban Real Estate Is Booming : Parallels. A view of the Caribbean is among the things attracting new buyers to high-priced Havana real estate along the city's famous seaside strip, the Malecón. Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket via Getty Images A view of the Caribbean is among the things attracting new buyers to high-priced Havana real estate along the city's famous seaside strip, the Malecón.
Havana: the city of the unfinished – in pictures. Cuba: While The Politicians Argued, The Musicians Jammed. How one Cuban town saved lives in the middle of Hurricane Matthew's devastation.