Urban Agriculture in Cuba

Learned at LASA that 350,000 Cubans are engaged in urban agriculture in Cuba (on an Island of 10 or 11 million that is a good chunk of people). Certainly exploding urban environments in Latin America with good growing seasons (Rio, DF, Guatemala City, etc) could certainly expand on urban agricultural production to provide less expensive food (shipping costs), lower pollution (shipping period), and work. Agriculture is no slacker's game, and the agricultural intelligence of Latin America's universities might best be tilted toward sustainable urban agriculture, learning from the Cuban model.

Notes From LASA: Part 1

Brilliant. No other way to describe the presentations of panel 494: US-Latin American Relations in the Obama Era. Julia Sweig from the Council on Foreign Relations commented on presentations by Greg Grandin, Dan Hellinger (on Bolivarianism), Forrest Hylton (on Plan Colombia), Jennifer McCoy (Georgia State / Carter Center), and Julia Buxton (why the US CAN'T change). While Sweig - who has the ear of not only Hillary Clinton but also Fidel Castro - was fascinating with her insider discussion of the gap of what advisors on Latin America WANT to accomplish and what they CAN, the bombshell of the meeting was Julia Buxton with her explosive presentation on internal structural reasons for why the US simply cannot change its Latin America policy. Though Grandin, Sweig, Hellinger, and McCoy all tried to portray a rosy picture (as liberals from the US), Buxton, an activist from the UK, was fairly clear and specific in her analysis of the alliance between corporations, NGOs, and politicians that breeds stagnation in policy. I think that while the others want desperately to believe that there is indeed a relevant, effective left in the US of which they are a part, Buxton's indication that the absence of any major social innovation in the United States in over 50 years points to the similar stagnation in foreign policy.

Another great reason why LASA should be attended by more than the college professors.

Cuban Festival in SMA

A Mexican town known for its artists colonies and colonial architecture located in a region bristiling with conservative Catholicism decided to celebrate Cuban music this week in an old convent dedicated to a very strict order and now named after indigenous intellectual and liberal Ignacio Altamirano. I love Mexico.

El Sol del Bajio is reporting that San Miguel de Allende is holding its Six Annual Celebration of Cuban music in that town this week and next, and it is dedicating the celebration to Ibrahim Ferrer (of Buena Vista Social Club fame). This last year SMA was designated a World Heritage site by UNESCO, and I imagine that the colonial architecture was only part of the reason this fairly globe-friendly site was embraced.

I've never been to SMA, and I admit to never having had any interest in going there. I tend not to like "hot spots" very much, but recent communication from the father of one of my future colleagues had me looking at SMA today. That, and my students just wrapped up Margaret Chowning's fascinating book on the Concepcion convent that is now the town's arts center. Historians deal in continuity and change over time, and San Miguel de Allende sounds far more interesting than the pots-for-putterers pueblo I had assumed it to be. Maybe a visit in 2010 is in order.

Thanks to the ever popular if not so accurate wikipedia for the photo of SMA.