During the Book Fair, held August 16-21, the Cuban writer was named Corresponding Member of the Panamanian Academy of the Language.
The Panamanian newspaper La Estrella described Leonardo Padura as a “rock star” of the 12th International Book Fair of Panama 2016, which on this occasion was attended by authors from 16 countries, in addition to the representation of the guest country, the United States.
French companies will expand and manage Cuba’s largest airport in order to assimilate the strong growth in passenger traffic.
The agreements with two renowned French companies to modernise Havana’s José Martí International Airport will meet the urgent needs of the travel and tourism industry, and give continuity to recent steps to expand cooperation between Cuba and France. Early this month the Cuban authorities granted to Bouygues Batiment International and Paris Airports the right to respectively expand and manage the Cuban capital’s airport.
Perhaps the strengthening of cultural ties between Cuba and the United States will make it possible to appreciate on the island the work of this singular and authentic musical creator whose compositions are as enigmatic and universal as well as very Cuban.
Aurelio de la Vega can be considered an almost happy man. Not many artists can celebrate nine decades of useful existence. In his Californian home, together with his wife, the also musician Anne Marie Ketchum, he can collect recognitions from institutions, essays about his work written by prestigious authors and a wide-ranging list of records, to feel that his long life has not been in vain. However, together with those triumphs there is always a dull sorrow: in the country where he was born he is practically a stranger, even among his composer colleagues. For almost half a century his work was not played live, or broadcast on the radio’s cultural spaces, the island’s music history books ignored him. Less than 10 years ago his name started coming up in some concert programmes and some records even got to the CMBF radio station. But the authentic “thawing” of his work has not advanced too much.
Cuban Humberto Solás’ film-making points to essential and cultural elements that come out of the very drama of Latin American and Caribbean reality, especially Cuba’s. All of his work, including his unpublished scripts, procures enormous curiosity and attention toward the Latin American, way beyond the borders of their countries.
The structure of the cinematographic cultural view in an individual like Humberto Solás (1941-2008), who was born into a family of non-professionals, whose parents emerged in a single generation from poverty to middle class, was surely supported by contributions from diverse sociocultural contextual elements of the period.
