by the El reportero’s news services
Yoani Sánchez
HAVANA — A Cuban blogger who has become an international sensation for offering frank criticism of her country’s communist system said she was denied government permission Monday to travel to New York to receive a top journalism prize.
Yoani Sánchez had hoped to go to Columbia University for a Wednesday ceremony to receive her María Moors Cabot Prize, the oldest international award in journalism.
“Immigration just confirmed that I remain prohibited from leaving the country,” she posted on her “Generation Y” blog.
There was no confirmation from the government, but Cuban authorities almost never comment on such matters.
Sánchez’s husband, Reynaldo Escobar, who uses his own blog to provide searing criticism of everyday life in Cuba, said in a phone interview that his wife spent the morning discussing her travel request with immigration offi cials, then posted word of the denial.
In May, Cuban authorities denied Sánchez permission to fl y to Madrid to accept the Ortega y Gasset Prize in digital journalism for creating Generation Y, which gets more than 1 million hits a month. Around the same time, Time magazine deemed Sánchez one of the world’s 100 most infl uential people.
Indigenous groups across the region flex their muscles
Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa and assorted cabinet ministers received more than 30 indigenous leaders in the presidential palace Carondelet this week in an effort to pre-empt an escalation in protests against the new Water Law and the government’s mining plans.
Correa’s decision to give the indigenous a hearing shows he is acutely aware of how the Peruvian government’s mishandling of protests in the Amazon led to bloody clashes with security forces in June.
Peru’s President Alan García failed to consult the indigenous about development plans in the area: a commission belatedly travelled to Bagua this week to assess the causes of the protest.
How different would a Piñera government be?
The opinion polls for Chile’s presidential election still point to a decisive, second-round run-off between a rightwing billionaire, Sebastián Piñera from the Alianza por el Cambio, and Eduardo Frei, from the ruling Concertación, on January 17.
The first round on 13 December is likely, according to the opinion polls, to knock out Marco Enríquez Ominami, an independent socialist and Jorge Arrate, a radical leftwinger. Here we look at how different a Piñera government might be from the Concertación administrations of the past 20 years.
Hondurans agree on constitution; no deal on Zelaya
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Honduras’ opposing factions agreed Tuesday on nearly every point of a pact to end the political crisis except the central issue: ousted President Manuel Zelaya’s return to the presidency.
Negotiators said Zelaya’s camp has promised that if he returns to power, he will drop his efforts to change the Honduran constitution, an initiative that led to his June 28 ouster.
Juan Barahona, a Zelaya supporter who has led street protests against the coup, walked out of the talks Tuesday in protest of the agreement on the constitution. He vowed to continue fighting for a new constitution on his own even if Zelaya is restored to office.
Critics say Zelaya was seeking to extend his time in office by removing a constitutional ban on presidential re-election, as his ally Hugo Chavez has done in Venezuela. Zelaya denied that was his intention, but soldiers fl ew him into exile at gunpoint after he ignored court orders to drop a referendum to ask Hondurans if they wanted an assembly to rewrite the constitution.
Zelaya sneaked back into Honduras on Sept. 21 and is holed up at the Brazilian Embassy. The United States and other countries have suspended aid to the Central American country to pressure the interim government to restore Zelaya.
(AP and Latin News contributed to the report.)
