An estimated half a million people turned out for Sunday’s parade
by the El Reportero’s news services
The Mazatlán Carnival will conclude tonight after five days of celebrations that were marred by a murder on Sunday.
But as of this afternoon that was the only incident of violence at the event whose first of two parades drew an estimated half a million people Sunday evening.
From the start there was a strong police presence on hand, but that was reinforced after an altercation early Sunday morning in the Flamingos neighborhood that left one man dead and another injured.
In response and in an attempt to quell any further violence, the state Secretariat of Public Security strengthened the carnival’s security operations by deploying more police officers to the most crowded areas.
They were joined by canine units trained in detecting narcotics.
Sunday’s parade delighted many thousands of residents and visitors, who spent more than three hours viewing more than 30 floats.
Local authorities reported that on each night an average of 90,000 people, including locals and domestic and foreign visitors, have poured into the streets of the port city.
The 2018 carnival concludes today with a second parade scheduled to start at 4:30 p.m.
Source: El Universal (sp), El Sol de Mazatlán (sp)
The XIV International Poetry Festival of Nicaragua begins with 130 poets
The XIV International Poetry Festival of Granada, in Nicaragua, officially inaugurated on Tuesday, Feb. 13, the largest in Central America and bringing together 130 poets from 60 countries.
“Welcome poets of the world, who are the voices and the soul of your country, all of you are main guests in the land of (Rubén) Darío (1867-1916)”, said Nicaraguan poet Francisco de Asís Fernández, president of the Festival, in his speech from the Plaza de Independence, in Granada, 45 kilometers southeast of Managua.
Fernandez said that “this wonderful cultural project”, from its first edition in 2005 to date, has gathered more than 1,500 poets from 120 countries.
He remarked that 2017 “took drops of blood from our festival”, recalling the deaths of Nicaraguan poets Carlos Rigby, Ana Ilce Gomez, Julio Cabrales and now the recently deceased Claribel Alegría, “the poet who owns the sea who only gave love”, I note.
The poet urged his counterparts to unite “our songs, our energies, ideals and build together an unattainable wall in which indifference, discrimination, perversity, hatred and lack of love for a better world collide.”
Federal iudge indemnifies 21 US graffiti artists
The sentence of a federal judge of Brooklyn favored today 21 graffiti artists with a compensation of 6.7 million dollars, after the demolition of a building considered a world mecca of urban art.
The verdict forces the current owner of the facility, Jerry Wolkoff, to pay the 21 artists the high compensation for destroying the building in 2014 to build luxury apartments instead.
The aerosol murals in the complex known as 5 Pointz, located in Long Island City, were for two decades a tourist attraction and temple of the best and largest outdoor exhibition of street art.
The ruling considers that a total of 45 of the works made on the walls of the building were worthy of being preserved from any negligent act by the Law of Rights of the Visual Artists of 1990, and condemns the owner to the greater indemnity provided.
A year before the demolition, the owner of the building had painted all the white walls in order to erase the graffiti, without having given time to safeguard some creations.
Several experts of contemporary art, cited during the judicial process, certified the quality of the lost works.
Prestigious jury at Viña del Mar Festival
Viña del Mar has the privilege of hosting one of the few International Song Festivals still having an impact, as the edition to begin on Feb. 20 seems to show.
Cuban duo Gente de Zona, Prince Royce, Ha Ash, Zion and Lennox and Chileans Roberto Márquez, member of the Illapu band, and Augusto Schuster, will be part of the jury of the event, to be run until Sunday, Feb. 25.
The 59th Viña del Mar International Song Festival will feature the performances of Luis Fonsi, Miguel Bossé, Carlos Vives and duo Gente de Zona, among others.
Puerto Rican Fonsi, acclaimed for his success Despacito, will perform on Wednesday, February 21, without Daddy Yankee, but with the expectation of singing along with Cuban duo Gente de Zona, something that has already happened in the past.
CNCO, a group emerged in Miami with young people of different nationalities, Chilean dancer and guitarist Schuster, and Puerto Rican reggaeton singers Zion and Lennox, will close the festival on Sunday, Feb. 25.
