Posted in Arts & Culture, tagged classical music, education, education in venezuela, gustavo dudamel, gustavo the great, Jose Antonio Abreu, music, music education, simon bolivar youth orchestra, venezuela, venezuelan conductor, Venezuelan culture, venezuelan music on May 30, 2008 | No Comments »
A youth music education program in Venezuela that has earned praise around the world recently won Spain’s Prince of Asturias Prize.
Since it began in 1975, “El Sistema” has taught 600,000 young people from poor areas of Venezuela to play classical music. It is still picking up steam: 275,000 children are currently enrolled in a network [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Arts & Culture, The Region, tagged Cuba, culture, latin america, latin american culture, Latin American history, latin american literature, literature, poetry, venezuela, venezuelan government, Venezuelan History, Venezuelan literature, Venezuelan writers on May 30, 2008 | No Comments »
Thanks to Venezuela’s Ministry of Culture, many classic works of Latin American literature are now available online for free.
To check it out, visit Biblioteca Ayacucho. You can download PDFs files of books in Spanish ranging in publication date from the early 17th century to the late 20th century. Many famous Venezuelan writers are included in [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Arts & Culture, tagged Art, caracas, culture, development, education, hip hop, Hugo Chavez, latin america, literacy, mision robinson, music, music education, poverty, President Chavez, social missions, Sontizon, Tiuna el Fuerte, venezuela, Venezuela coup, Venezuelan culture, venezuelan music on May 28, 2008 | No Comments »
Sontizon is a salsa-infused hip hop collective that offers listeners more than just a sound: it offers them a vision.
The group got a slow start in 2000 and later re-grouped in 2002 after an aborted coup d’etat in Venezuela. The title of its new album, “For each 11th there is a 13th” (A cada 11 [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Sports, tagged culture, baseball, venezuela, Venezuelan baseball, major league baseball, venezuelan baseball players, venezuelan women, milka duno, sports in venezuela, Indy 500, Sports, MLB, IndyCar on May 27, 2008 | No Comments »
The Venezuelan race car driver Milka Duno finished 19th in the Indianapolis 500 last weekend. Despite a crash, Duno was with the lead pack for most of the race, and showed much improvement over last year’s finish in 31st place. Here are some more staggering numbers: the race lasted 3 and a [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Nature & Environment, tagged cattleya, easter orchid, flor de mayo, florida, flowers, natural beauty, Nature, orchids, venezuela, venezuela festivals, Venezuela nature on May 22, 2008 | No Comments »
The orchid is Venezuela’s national flower. It’s no surprise, then, that the country was well represented at the Redland Orchid Festival in South Florida this week. Seasoned growers of these perennial plants hailed from Caracas and Maracay.
The Miami Herald quoted Alexis Pardo, the Maracay horticulturist, as saying: “This is a wonderful festival, both [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Nature & Environment, The Region, tagged caribbean, conservation, Cuba, development, eco-friendly design, economy, environment, environmentalism, housing, latin america, oil, oil and environment, Petrocasas, venezuela on May 21, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Remember the petrocasas we told you about back in March? These affordable, eco-friendly homes made of waste generated by oil refining are now being used to ease a housing shortage in Cuba. Reuters reports that 40 new petrocasas are being built per day to reach a total number of 14,000 this year.
Petrocasas are [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Arts & Culture, tagged culture, Isla Margarita, latin america, latin american culture, Margarita Island, poetry, poets, venezuela, Venezuelan arts, Venezuelan culture, Venezuelan festivals, Venezuelan literature, Venezuelan writers on May 21, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Some say that poetry is a dying art. This is not the case in Venezuela, where the World Poetry Festival is hosted each year. The fifth annual event is taking place this week.
This time around, the World Poetry Festival is dedicated to the Venezuelan writer Gustavo Pereira. Pereira hails from Margarita, an island [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in The Region, tagged ALBA, Bolivarian Alternative, caribbean, development, education, electricity, haiti, humanitarian aid, poverty, venezuela, venezuelan aid abroad on May 20, 2008 | No Comments »
Unlike elsewhere in the world, electricity consumption rates in Haiti have declined steadily over the last five years.
To help increase access, Venezuela is expanding a project set up in 2006 to provide Haiti with more electricity assistance. A new processing plant to be built on the island is expected to extend access to electricity [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Society & Politics, The Region, tagged culture, Hugo Chavez, venezuela, Chavez, media, caracas, citgo, milka duno, Indy 500, simon bolivar youth orchestra, music, politics, Jose Antonio Abreu, news, boston globe, orlando sentinel, Royal Philharmonic Society on May 19, 2008 | No Comments »
Last week, the American Society of Newspaper Editors went to Venezuela on a fact-finding mission. Their travels included a meeting with President Hugo Chavez. You can read about their observations, and what the Venezuelan leader had to say, in the Orlando Sentinel (editor Charlotte Hall is pictured here) and the Boston Globe.
Cultural figures [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Arts & Culture, tagged arts, Cheo Hurtado, cuatro, culture, ensamble gurrufio, History, instruments, music, venezuela, Venezuelan culture, Venezuelan History, venezuelan music, venezuelan traditions on May 15, 2008 | No Comments »
Venezuela’s national instrument, the cuatro, is currently on display at the House of Venezuelan History (Casa de Estudio de la Historia de Venezuela). This cultural institution is a library and exhibition center set in a beautiful old colonial mansion in downtown Caracas. It is an appropriate place to feature the cuatro, which also [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Nature & Environment, Society & Politics, tagged agriculture, cafe venezuela, citgo, coffee, economy, environment, food security, heating oil, sustainability, venezuela on May 14, 2008 | No Comments »
Consumers in the U.S. will soon be able to buy specialty coffee from Venezuela in Citgo gas stations. Citgo is a subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Pdvsa, and its charitable donations of heating oil in the U.S. are well known. Now, Citgo is helping bring small producers in Venezuela to the [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Society & Politics, tagged education, education in venezuela, health, oil, poverty, social missions, venezuela, venezuela anti-poverty effort, Venezuela economy, Venezuelan democracy, venezuelan government on May 13, 2008 | No Comments »
Five years have passed since Venezuela began its “social missions,” state-funded social programs across diverse areas of human development such as education, medicine, nutrition, and culture.
They began in 2003, when the government sought to revolutionize the country’s old social service institutions and reach out to communities all over the country in an aggressive program to [...]
Read Full Post »
