Reforms in Cuba; Chávez out and about
Today in my Latin American culture class (in Spanish) students gathered news articles from various sources in the USA, Latin America and the UK, in Spanish, about two topics: 1) news from Cuba this week about reforms implemented by Raúl Castro; and 2) what’s up with Hugo Chávez? This is rounding out a chapter on the Cuban revolution. Part of the point of today’s class is compare the speech that Che Guevara gave at the UN in 1964 (fragment in Culturas Latinoamericanas) with the lifting of prohibitions against cell phones, staying at touristic hotels, computers, etc.
One of the most interesting articles to me was suggesting that Raúl Castro was reaching out to Lula (president of Brazil) as an ally for these reforms rather than Hugo Chávez, who would, according to this article, be too extreme for what Cuba hoped to accomplish. Interesting.
Here are the news stories that my students gathered.