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The Landfill Harmonic
In the huge rubbish dump in the barrio of Cateura, on the south side of Asunción, Paraguayan youngsters who sort through the capital’s rubbish have found the means to make music. The orchestra known locally as Melodias de la Basura or Los Reciclados, and in English as the Landfill Harmonic, was started in 2006 by…
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Book Review: The Island that Dared: Journeys in Cuba by Dervla Murphy
Dervla Murphy has always been a remarkable traveller but becomes even more notable as she continues her intrepid walks (if no longer so many bike rides) well into her ‘third age’. This book of her journeys in Cuba, undertaken when she was in her mid-seventies, is full of excursions on foot for several days along…
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School of the Assassins
On Friday, thousands of protesters will converge on Fort Benning, Georgia, home to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Co-operation (WHINSEC). It’s had this title since 2001, but when it was set up in Panama in 1946 it was the School of the Americas. In 66 years it has trained 64,000 soldiers from Latin America in…
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Mothers of the disappeared
Three weeks ago a remarkable caravan of vehicles arrived at the Mexican town of Reynosa, just across the border from Hidalgo, Texas. It left the northern border of Nicaragua on 12 October, carrying the relatives of migrants who made the journey north to cross illegally into the United States, but vanished along the way. The…
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At the Lighthouse
Beyond the Frame, an exhibition of Cuban paintings and photographs in aid of the campaign to release the Miami Five, is at the Lighthouse in Glasgow until Sunday (it was at Gallery 27 in London last month). Many of the works are apolitical but some are inspired by the various attempts by US governments to destabilise…
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Our man in Havana
Alan Gross, a 62-year-old US citizen, has been imprisoned in Cuba since December 2009. He fell foul of the authorities while working for USAID, liaising with Cuba’s small Jewish community. The Washington Post earlier this month demanded his release, saying that ‘Cuba’s accusations stem from Mr Gross’s humanitarian work’. When he was convicted for ‘acts…