Thawing relations between the United States and Cuba have brought an upsurge in Cubans trying to leave the island. They’re worried that they may lose their favourable US immigration status, becoming no more welcome than any other Latino who fancies life in the US. Since 1995, the ‘wet foot, dry foot’ policy has deterred people…
So much has been written about the Spanish conquest of Latin America that it has become difficult to find new approaches to the topic. Hugh Thomas’s definitive history of the invasion of Mexico, now called simply Conquest, is 20 years old, but his monumental history of the Spanish monarchy is much more recent, and volume…
The village primary school in El Corralito in the province of Pinar del Rio has 30 students and 15 teachers. We were invited to their celebration of the ‘Day of the Teacher’ (December 22), along with all the students and parents (almost all those attending were mothers). The day began as it always does, with…
This letter was in response to the The Guardian’s obituary of Denis Healey. David McKie says that Denis Healey was “formidably equipped” for the job of foreign secretary, despite never getting it. I had an experience in the 1980s that made me draw the same conclusion but which also gave an insight as to why…
Over 120 organisations have signed a letter to President Obama instigated by the Alliance for Global Justice, calling on him to rescind his executive order which imposes sanctions on officials in Venezuela and describes the government of Nicolas Maduro as an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States’. …
Those who would protest that only regime change and full recognition of human rights in Cuba should precede any deal have surely had their arguments demolished. This month marks the 112th anniversary of the signing of the lease for the Guantánamo base between the Cuban and US governments. For at least half this period the…
There are many histories of the Americas that begin with Columbus’s landing in what were to become known as the West Indies, but this is perhaps one of the few accessible accounts which focus on the Caribbean itself, and which follow through right to the present day. Carrie Gibson’s thesis is that the Caribbean was…
Silvio Sirias comes from a Nicaraguan family who brought him up initially in the United States, but clearly bequeathed him a strong interest in finding out about the story of the region from which the family came. His latest novel is based in Panama, where he now lives, and I’ve yet to read his first,…
On the morning of 17 December, schoolchildren in Coralito assembled under the Cuban flag to sing the anthem before starting lessons. Early sunshine picked out five palm trees on the roadside opposite the school. They were planted in support of the ‘Cuban Five’, agents sent to Miami to disrupt anti-Castro plots by Cuban exiles in…
New measures requiring private landlords to check the immigration status of prospective tenants started to come into force on 1 December. CIH policy adviser John Perry explains why we are working with a range of organisations to assess the impact. The question in the title of this blog was posed by ‘accidental landlord’ Victoria Whitlock…