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Las Maestras: Amelia Peláez
“I am not interested in copying the object….What matters is the relation of the motif with oneself, with one’s personality, and the power the artist has to organize his [her] emotions…. These are the words of Amelia Peláez y del Casal (1897-1968), in 1936. As a Cuban Modernist Painter, Ceramist, and Muralist her style has ...
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Through the screen: People, power and police
I have lived in Buenos Aires long enough to be no longer surprised by protests. The sight of flag-waving, drum-beating groups heading for the city’s main square, the Plaza de Mayo, sometimes feels like a daily occurrence. Equally as frequent during my 11 months here have been the improvised road-blocks, Nothing, though, had been quite ...
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Through the screen: Laughter’s many faces
Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara used to tell a joke about how he got the job of Minister of Finance and National Bank President in Cuba. At a cabinet meeting to decide on a replacement of Bank President Felipe Pazos, Fidel Castro asked who among them was a ‘good economist’. Guevara raised his hand and was sworn ...
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Through the screen: The city & the city
Brazil and the FIFA World Cup: what could possibly go wrong? No other nation has claimed the sport’s top prize so many times, nor is so closely associated with the concept of the ‘beautiful game’. Yet football’s global governing body FIFA has recently expressed concern over the country’s preparations for hosting the 2014 ...
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Life in Plastic, It’s Fantastic!
Sitting by a pool in Cali, my eyes were suddenly fixated on a woman walking by. Something just didn’t seem right about her – and then it hit me: I had just witnessed my first surgically enhanced butt. Before coming to Colombia, I did not know that this was a phenomenon, particularly in Medellín and ...
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Through the screen: The ones left behind
In its cinematic golden age, travel to Mexico via its films often meant a trip to a land of melodrama, tears and familial strife. Espiral, a 2008 film directed by Jorge Pérez Solano, contains those elements of a decades-old tradition while dealing with a phenomenon of real importance and consequence in modern-day Mexico. The ‘spiral’ ...
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‘The hunt for a strange animal in a remote land’: looking for Chatwin’s Patagonia
It went with me all the way to Ushuaia, squeezed into a corner of my rucksack. The bookish bit of my brain wouldn’t let me go without it. Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia is renowned as a Bible for travellers heading to the southern reaches of the South American continent. As a piece of ‘travel writing’, ...
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Costa Rica: The Numbers Game
Costa Rica is the happiest country in the world, home to cute sloths and beaches and volcanoes and 5% of the planet’s biodiversity. It’s easily reached from the United States and, increasingly, Europe. In 2011, 2,195,960 foreigners visited the country, a 4.6% increase from 2010. Last month ICT, the Instituto Costarricense de Turismo (Costa Rican ...
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Through the screen: Spray cans and beatings
Instructions for a social experiment: stand in a street in the United States, the UK or any western European country, assemble a group of passers-by, and ask them to free associate on ‘Guatemala’. Then, record the results. What are the responses? Are there any? What percentage are ‘drugs’ or ‘civil war’? What, then, are your ...