International Education Conference Begins in Havana

Pedagogy 2011 - Education Conference, devoted to the unity of educators worldwide, opens its doors on Monday at Havana’s Karl Marx Theater with a special conference by Cuban Minister of Education Ena Elsa Velázquez Cobiella.

The Cuban minister of education will address aspects of the Cuban education system along with the Cuban international cooperation efforts such as its Yes, I Can literacy program.

More than 2,800 papers have been submitted to this year’s conference that will have the participation of 3,000 delegates from 20 countries.

With more than 53,000 totalling the number of participants in previous years, the conference has become an influential event not only for Latin America, but also for other regions.

From January 24 to 28, the Havana Convention Center will be the venue to special lectures by Cuban officials, including Minister of Higher Education Miguel Diaz-Canel, Minister of Culture Abel Prieto, and President of the Cuban Parliament Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada.
Also presenting during the conference will be education ministers from Venezuela, Bolivia and Guinea Bissau.
“For Cuban education professionals, this gathering represents the peak of a movement organized throughout the country from the school level to the top. This time, the Cuban delegation will be made up of 600 delegates, including 20 outstanding students selected based on their results at the National Education Sciences Fair. More than 149,880 teachers took part at base level meetings and more than 3,000 at the municipal and provincial levels. This movement is essential for the promotion of research and debates,” said Cuban Vice Minister of Education Rolando Forneiro.
Forneiro also noted that the reforms currently underway in Cuba’s education system aimed at training more efficient professionals and making better use of the available resources will be the subject of some of the lectures scheduled.
Among the examples he mentioned are reducing boarding schools while increasing the number of high schools in urban areas, and the incorporation of more than 7,000 retired professors into the education system.
Forneiro also announced that an exhibition would be inaugurated in the lobby of the Havana Convention Center, reflecting some of the achievements of Cuban education, especially Cuba’s support of literacy campaigns in other countries and the success of the Yes, I can teaching method.
“The Pedagogy 2011 Conference coincides with the 50th anniversary of the literacy campaign carried out in our country following the 1959 revolution. One of the symposiums to be held parallel to the conference will deal with the history of this important campaign,” he added.
Some of the issues to be discussed are the instillation of human values; teacher’s training; culture and education; physical education, sports and recreation; education quality control; comprehensive education programs for children 6 years and under; environmental education; family, women and education from a gender perspective; health and sex promotion and education programs; scientific education programs; communication and publishing; and education sciences and scientific research.
Special forums will be held to analyze the works of important figures, such as Jose Marti, Simon Bolivar, Ernesto Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, and other Latin American and Caribbean heroes.
Participants will have the opportunity to visits different education facilities in Havana, and other places of cultural and scientific interest. In addition, there will be 79 courses offered for delegates on relevant issues, which will be delivered by prestigious Cuban and foreign teachers and researchers.
This year’s conference is dedicated to the 50th Anniversary of the Cuban Literacy Campaign and the last day, January 28, will be dedicated to Cuban National Hero Jose Marti.
The Cuban Literacy Campaign was a year-long effort to abolish illiteracy in Cuba after the 1959 triumph of the Cuban Revolution. It began on January 1, 1960 and ended on December 22, 1961. The period of the Literacy Campaign is referred to as the “Year of Education” in Cuba. During 1961, the literacy rate of Cuba increased from 76% to 96% and continued until it was completely wiped out in Cuba.
The literacy campaign was part of the revolutionary reforms immediately implemented by Fidel Castro that included agrarian reform, healthcare reform, and educational reform, all of which dramatically improved the quality of life among the lowest sectors of Cuban society.
The Literacy Campaign also aimed to create a collective identity of unity, an attitude of combat, courage, intelligence, and a sense of history.
It is estimated that 1,000,000 Cubans were directly involved (as teachers or students) in the Literacy Campaign). There were four categories of workers:
“Conrado Benitez” Brigade (Conrado Benetiz Brigadistas)—100,000 young volunteers (ages 10–19) who left school to live and work along with their students in the countryside. The number of students leaving schools to volunteer was so great that an alternative education was put in place for 8 months of the 1961 school year.
Popular Alphabetizers (Alfabetizadores populares)—Adults who volunteered to teach in cities or towns. Some13,000 factory workers held classes for their illiterate co-workers after hours. This group also includes the numerous individuals who taught friends, neighbors, or family members out of their own homes.
The Patria o Muerte Brigade—A group of 15,000 adult workers who were paid to teach in remote rural locations through an arrangement that their co-workers would fill in for them, so that the workforce of Cuba remained strong.
Schoolteacher Brigades—A group of 15,000 professional teachers who oversaw the technical and organizational aspects of the campaign. As 1961 progressed, their involvement grew to the extent that most teachers participated full-time for a majority of the campaign.
The government provided teaching supplies to volunteers, and workers that traveled to rural locations to teach received: clothes, books, blankets, lamps, and hammocks.
Many of the Literacy Campaign’s volunteers went on to pursue teaching careers, and the rate of teachers is more than 10 times higher than it was before the revolution. Before the revolutionary government nationalized schools, private institutions often excluded large segments of society; wealthy Cubans often received exemplary instruction in private schools, while children of the working class received low-quality education, or did not attend school at all. Education became accessible to all after 1959 triumph of the Revolution.

http://www.juventudrebelde.co.cu/

Cuba shoots its first zombie movie Juan Of The Dead

Blood-spattered, flesh-eating monsters have been roaming the Cuban capital, Havana, in recent months - all part of filming for the country's first zombie movie.

Bearing a similar title to Britain's 2004 comedy horror Shaun Of The Dead, Juan Of The Dead's plot is actually closer to the 1984 ghoul classic Ghostbusters.

In the film, an entire city is overrun by zombies while Cuba's Communist leaders insist it is just a plot by US-backed dissidents to bring down the government.

So it is left to hero Juan - played by Cuban actor Alexis Diaz de Villegas - to rid the island of the undead for money.

But as the zombie outbreak begins to spread, he is left with no choice but to fight for his own survival.

The film, due for release later this year, was written and directed by 34-year-old Alejandro Brugues.

Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote
Cuba has a great history of cinema and they've always been avid filmgoers”
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John Landis
Director of An American Werewolf In London
It is only his second movie since graduating from Cuba's International School of Film and Television.

"It's a zombie film but it's about Cubans and how we react in the face of a crisis because we've had a lot of them here over the last 50 years," Brugues told the BBC World Service's The Strand.

"It is a social comedy, it has a bit of everything. It has horror, it has action and it pretty much laughs in the face of problems."

The movie is a joint Cuban-Spanish production with much of the funding coming from overseas.

It is the latest in a wave of independent cinema which has been struggling to find its feet after state funding all but dried up following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Strawberry And Chocolate, which dealt with gays rights at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in Cuba, was the last film to enjoy international success after it was nominated for an Oscar in 1994.

Although Cuban cinema has been struggling in recent years, for many decades it was a flourishing industry.

Art-house classics

Shortly after the Cuban revolution in 1959, leader Fidel Castro created the Cuban Film Institute, known as ICAIC.


Will Juan of the Dead been successful in and outside Cuba? He believed that cultural and political change should go hand in hand.

As a result, many films such as the 1966 movie Death Of A Bureaucrat and 1968's Memories Of Underdevelopment, both directed by Tomas Gutierrez Alea, became art-house classics.

Humberto Solas' Lucia, which explores the lives of three women living through the country's political and social revolutions at three different points in history, is also considered a landmark in Cuban cinema.

It won the Golden Prize at the 1969 Moscow International Film Festival.

Cinema history

US director John Landis, who made the 1981 comedy horror classic An American Werewolf In London, in November visited the international school where Brugues studied.

He hailed the country's history and passion for film.

"Cuba has a great history of cinema and they've always been avid filmgoers," Landis said.

"After the revolution, Cubans used to steal prints from Miami and they'd have first-run movies. So movies would play in Havana before they'd play in LA. How did that happen?"

He added: "Cuban cinema has always been interesting and what is fun now is how they make political films because they always disguise it."

While there seems to be a sense of excitement building around Juan Of The Dead in Cuba, Brugues believes the industry needs to move with the times if the rest of the world is to sit up and take notice.

"At the moment there are two trends, films produced by the Cuba's state production company and films made outside of that," he said.

"There needs to be a balance but I think the two will eventually merge. When this happens I think this will produce the best Cuban cinema."


http://www.bbc.co.uk/

UK firm signs Cuban renewable energy deal

Generating power from sugar cane fibre and wild shrubs is at the heart of a pioneering link between a British company and the Cuban government.

Havana Energy, chaired by former Labour government minister Brian Wilson, plans to develop the technology to build biomass energy plants in the country.

The deal, with state-owned Zerus, comes as the country trials ways of working with private firms, after decades of running its economy through the state.

It is being valued at $250m (£157m).

The investment is being hailed as the first major renewable energy contract signed between Cuba and a British company.

It would see a pilot project at the Ciro Redondo sugar mill, 250 miles south-east of Havana, with a second stage of four further biomass plants at other mills, each of 32mw capacity.

A return on the investment is expected within five years.

According to Havana Energy, the country already produces 7% of its energy needs from renewable sources.

But there is potential for far more, particularly from using the the sugar cane plant.

As much as 50% of the country's energy needs - or 3000mw- could be provided by the burning of bagasse, the fibre left over after sugar cane is crushed at 56 sugar refineries in Cuba reckoned to have biomass potential.

In addition, about one million hectares of land on the island has been invaded by the marabu shrub, which is now being tested for its potential as an energy source in biomass burning.

The strategic agreement follows a visit in November 2010 by academics from Scotland, looking at ways in which they can help develop the country's renewable energy potential.

One of those who took part, Professor Martin Tangney, director of the Biofuel Research Centre at Edinburgh Napier University, commented on the sugar mill biomass plants plans.

He said: "It is an ideal process and one of the most efficient sources of renewable energy in the world.

"The next stage should be incorporating biofuels from the other waste products from the sugar cane."

'Excellent record'

Brian Wilson, who was minister for energy, trade and Scotland as well as an Ayrshire MP, said: "Having tried for more than a decade to promote closer economic links between the UK and Cuba, I am delighted to be involved in a project that demonstrates the benefits of such co-operation.

"Cuba has an excellent record both in providing electricity for its people and promoting environmental sustainability. This project will support both objectives".

Nelson Labrada, the Cuban government's vice-minister of sugar, said: "This strategy of using sugar cane bagasse for power generation avoids one of the primary problems with other biomass sources which is supply.

"In Cuba it is possible via the sugar mills and bagasse based power plants to generate up to 40% of the energy needs of the country today."

Havana Energy is a subsidiary of Esencia, a British company focused on trade with Cuba, which also works in the tourism sector.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/

British cruise ship Thomson Dream to dock in Cuba

A British-owned cruise ship is due to sail into the Cuban capital, Havana, on Wednesday, the first in years to dock in the Communist-run island.

The arrival of the Thomson Dream in Cuba is seen as a sign that European cruise companies are starting to return to the island.

Visits from European cruise ships dwindled after the then-president Fidel Castro criticised the business for leaving "rubbish, but little income".

The ship can carry 1,500 passengers.

The BBC's Michael Voss in Havana says the Thomson Dream will be by far the largest cruise ship to have sailed to Cuba in almost six years.

None of the many cruise companies based in Miami, Florida, can make the trip due to the decades-old US trade embargo which severely restricts trade with the island.

Our correspondent says Spanish- and Norwegian-owned cruise ships were the first to return to Cuba over the past few months.

In an interview with a Cuban magazine in December, a Cuban Ministry of Tourism official said Canada and Russia would also send cruise ships to the island.

The official said negotiations were also under way with Canadian cruise companies for their ships to dock there during the next winter season.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/

Cuba Launches Online Encyclopedia

HAVANA, Cuba, Dec 14 (acn) Cuba is launching on Tuesday its own online
encyclopedia “to create and disseminate the knowledge of all and for all,
from Cuba and with the world.”
According to Granma newspaper, EcuRed www.ecured.cu will be launched
officially on Tuesday, but it was already up and running on Monday, with
19,626 entries.
Users will be able to update entries with prior approval from EcuRed
administrators.
“Its philosophy is the accumulation and development of knowledge, with
a democratizing, not profitable objective, from a decolonizer point of
view,” the site self-defines.
Entries include Cuban personalities, geographical sites, towns and
cities, as well as scientific writings.
The site notes that discriminatory, obscene, disrespectful,
aggressive, advertising, tendentious, defamatory or pornographic materials
will not be allowed

http://www.juventudrebelde.co.cu/

Foreign Ministry Explains Controversial "Sexual Orientation" Vote to Activists

By Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Dec 2, 2010 (IPS) - Gay rights advocates in Cuba received an unprecedented response from Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez, in a meeting held at the ministry itself, after they complained about this country’s support in the United Nations for an amendment seen as a step backwards from the government’s position against discrimination based on sexual orientation.

"A summary of the conversation will be on my blog in a few hours," journalist and gay activist Francisco Rodríguez Cruz told IPS shortly after emerging from Wednesday’s meeting, which was also attended by Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Abelardo Moreno.

The reporter, who is better known by the name of his blog, "Paquito el de Cuba", said the meeting "was as unexpected as it was useful and beneficial.

"All of the people taking part in the meeting learned something from it," said the blogger, a member of Cuba’s ruling Communist Party. He is one of the protagonists of what could, without exaggeration, be described as a historic moment: the first formal meeting between a Cuban foreign minister and representatives of this country’s gay community, which has only recently begun to openly organise.

Other participants in the meeting with the foreign minister were Dr. Alberto Roque, head of the sexual diversity unit in the Cuban Multidisciplinary Society for the Study of Sexuality (SOCUMES) and coordinator of Hombres por la Diversidad (Men for Diversity), a group that advocates the right to free sexual identity, and Ada Alfonso and Mayra Rodríguez, assistant directors of the government’s National Centre for Sex Education (CENESEX).

SOCUMES and CENESEX were the first to express their concern over the Cuban delegation’s vote on Nov. 16 in the U.N. General Assembly’s Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Affairs Committee, known as the "Third Committee".

That day, the Committee passed an amendment introduced by Morocco and Mali on behalf of African and Islamic nations that removed the explicit mention of sexual orientation from a General Assembly resolution on extrajudicial, arbitrary or summary executions.

The motion, which triggered controversy in on-line publications and blogs and prompted Rodríguez Cruz to send an open letter to the foreign minister, called for replacing the words "sexual orientation" with "discriminatory reasons on any basis."

Cuba was the only Latin American country among the 79 that voted in favour of the amendment. Most of the countries in the region, including important allies like Venezuela, were among the 70 nations that voted against the motion, while the delegates of two Latin American countries, Nicaragua and Bolivia, were not present during the vote.

Seventeen countries in other regions abstained from voting.

According to the recent blog post on "Paquito el de Cuba", in the two-hour "chat" with the foreign minister and his deputy, "both officials spoke at length about the complexities of U.N. voting mechanisms" and "the inevitable confrontations and alliances between blocs of countries."

Besides describing "the political manipulations by powerful states against underdeveloped nations" in scenarios like the annual U.N. General Assembly sessions, the officials "listened receptively and with great interest to our arguments, concerns and suggestions."

According to Rodríguez Cruz, the minister said during the conversation that "there has been no shift in policy" with respect to Cuba’s opposition to any form of discrimination or its promotion of respect for free sexual orientation and gender identity.

The controversial vote in question was the result of "an unforeseen and very specific circumstance," said Minister Rodríguez, as reported by the blogger.

The vote cast by the Cuban delegation was, moreover, explained at the time to the Committee, the minister said. The text of the Cuban government’s explanation, which was delivered to the representatives of CENESEX and the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans community), was not reported by the journalists stationed at the U.N. or by the local press in Cuba.

In the document, the Cuban delegation clarifies that this Caribbean island nation is "against any kind of discrimination, for whatever reason, whether race, skin colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, economic status, birth or any other social condition.

"Cuba voted in favour of the amendment proposed by the group of African nations because it considers it to be sufficiently broad and encompassing. It refers to all executions committed on the basis of any kind of discrimination, which in Cuba’s view also includes killings committed on grounds of sexual orientation," the text adds.

During the meeting in the Foreign Ministry, it was announced that "within the next few days, Cuba’s mission at the U.N. will issue an additional statement with respect to this question."

Furthermore, Minister Rodríguez "confirmed that the Foreign Ministry will maintain, from here on out, a stance consistent with the government’s positions on the question of non-discrimination and respect for sexual diversity."

In what was clearly a response to the offer to "political decision-makers" by CENESEX and SOCUMES of the tools needed to continue including the right to sexual diversity among human rights, the Foreign Ministry offered "to work more closely together with CENESEX and LGBT groups."

"I never thought the minister would respond to me, and much less in person," said Rodríguez Cruz.

Sexual Orientation" Vote in UN Panel Kicks Up Controversy

By Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Dec 1, 2010 (IPS) - An unusually strong controversy has broken out in Cuba over a vote by the delegation from this Caribbean nation in favour of an amendment that left out the specific mention of sexual orientation in a United Nations General Assembly resolution on extrajudicial, arbitrary or summary executions.

In a country where people generally agree with or simply do not question the stances taken by the government in international forums, representatives of different sectors of civil society, as well as the governmental National Centre for Sex Education (CENESEX), have expressed concern over the position taken by the Cuban delegation.

"Failure to specifically mention discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation gives the green light for many states and governments to continue to treat homosexuality as a crime," Alberto Roque, president of the sexual diversity unit of the Cuban Multidisciplinary Society for the Study of Sexuality (SOCUMES), told IPS.

Cuba is the only country in Latin America that backed the amendment introduced by Morocco and Mali on behalf of African and Islamic nations that called for replacing the words "sexual orientation" with "discriminatory reasons on any basis."

Cuba thus joined "countries that do not condemn killings and other discriminatory treatment on the basis of sexual orientation, such as 76 countries that criminalise homosexuality, including five where it is punishable by the death penalty," added Roque, a medical doctor who works with CENESEX.

The vote cast by Cuba in the Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Affairs Committee, better known as the "Third Committee", of the U.N. General Assembly, which met in November, ran counter to the Cuban government’s support of the U.N. declaration on sexual orientation and gender identity, presented to the General Assembly in December 2008 but not yet approved.

Roque said the fact that Cuba was the only Latin American nation which, after supporting the declaration of 2008, now voted in favour of excluding sexual orientation, makes this country "a politically unfavourable scenario" and contradicts the spirit of the National Sex Education Programme.

A joint statement issued Nov. 24 by CENESEX and SOCUMES pointed out that Cuba’s laws do not provide for penalties based on sexual orientation or gender identity and reiterated an interest in offering "a reference framework" to political decision-makers, in order to continue recognising sexual rights as human rights.

The statement was also signed by journalist Francisco Rodríguez Cruz, the creator of the "Paquito el de Cuba" blog and a prominent gay activist, who also published an open letter Monday addressed to Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, under the title "let’s not make a mistake again".

The letter sent to the Foreign Ministry expresses the "total and vigorous disagreement" on the part of "a Cuban citizen, Communist militant and member of the island’s LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans community)."

Rodríguez Cruz warned that "incoherent stances" like the vote in the U.N. could be counterproductive when it comes to overcoming "outdated mental states" that justified homophobic actions after the triumph of the 1959 revolution, and could hinder the promotion of respect for the freedom of sexual orientation and gender identity as a human right.

Cuba’s vote shows that, despite CENESEX’s unflagging efforts over the last few years, the rights of sexual minorities are still not "a political priority," Rodríguez Cruz, a journalist with Trabajadores, the weekly publication of the government-aligned Cuban Confederation of Workers (CTC), commented to IPS.

The reporter said "it also stands out sharply that with its vote, Cuba diverged from the position of strategic allies in the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA), like Venezuela and Ecuador."

Besides these two countries, the Latin American nations that voted against deleting the explicit mention of sexual orientation were Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. Bolivia and Nicaragua were among the 26 countries absent when the vote was held.

"I hope that in the future, positions will be adopted on human rights like the ones we have taken on women’s and children’s rights and so many others, even if our vote is not in line with our sister nations from Africa, the Middle East and Asia," Roque said, adding that he was not aware of why the Cuban delegation voted for the amendment.

The amendment was passed on Nov. 16 by a vote of 79 to 70 with 17 abstentions. It was then approved by the Human Rights Committee, and is set to be formally adopted by the U.N. General Assembly this month.

While the removal of the mention of sexual orientation from the resolution on extrajudicial killings has been loudly protested on web sites, blogs, social networking sites and email distribution lists, the government-controlled Cuban media have remained silent on the subject, and the Foreign Ministry has not taken a public stance.

Feminist blogger Yasmín Portales wrote that the vote in the Third Committee "reveals the same resistance met, in society as well as in the government," by a series of legal proposals in favour of the rights of the LGBT community

"Votes like the one Cuba cast on this occasion express the implicit consideration that sexual, reproductive and sexual diversity rights, which to me form part of a single anti- patriarchal package, are negotiable and dispensable in the name of political alliances," the author of the blog "En 2310 y 8225" told IPS.