Vida y Luz

Serious Communications Gaps at Camps for Somali Refugees are Putting Lives at Risk

2011-09-18T13:34:00.009-04:00

I went to Dadaab, Kenya last month with INTERNEWS to assess communication needs in the world's largest refugee camp complex. 70% of new arrivals said they need more information about how to access the aid available to them. Communication gaps like this put lives at risk...but timely, accurate and well-targeted information has the power to SAVE LIVES.

Learn more by watching our YouTube Video:
http://youtu.be/NeSzfLtPtrI

Download and Read the final report here: Serious Communication Gaps at Camps for Somali Refugees are Putting Lives at Risk

More photos available here: Somali Refugee Crisis in Dadaab, Kenya

Venezuela's Prison Paradise

2011-06-15T17:43:00.001-04:00

By SIMON ROMERO
PORLAMAR, Venezuela — On the outside, the San Antonio prison on Margarita Island looks like any other Venezuelan penitentiary. Soldiers in green fatigues stand at its gates. Sharpshooters squint from watchtowers. Guards cast menacing glances at visitors before searching them at the entrance.

But once inside, the prison for more than 2,000 Venezuelans and foreigners held largely for drug trafficking looks more like a Hugh Hefner-inspired fleshpot than a stockade for toughened smugglers.

Bikini-clad female visitors frolic under the Caribbean sun in an outdoor pool. Marijuana smoke flavors the air. Reggaetón booms from a club filled with grinding couples. Paintings of the Playboy logo adorn the pool hall. Inmates and their guests jostle to place bets at the prison’s raucous cockfighting arena.

“The Venezuelan prisoners here run the show, and that makes life inside a bit easier for us all,” said Fernando Acosta, 58, a Mexican pilot jailed since 2007. His cellmate, a Congolese businessman, had hired him to fly a Gulfstream jet that prosecutors accuse them of planning to use for smuggling two tons of cocaine to West Africa.

It is not uncommon for armed inmates to exercise a certain degree of autonomy in Venezuela’s penitentiaries. Prisoners with BlackBerries and laptops have arranged drug deals, abductions and murders from their cells, the police say, a legacy of decades of overcrowding, corruption and insufficient guards.

But San Antonio prison, renowned on Margarita Island as a relatively tranquil place where even visitors can go for sinful weekend partying, is in a class of its own.

The island itself is a departure point for drug shipments into the Caribbean and the United States, and the traffickers arrested here often end up in this prison, effectively overseeing life behind its walls with a surreal mix of hedonism and force. Some inmates walk the prison grounds grasping assault rifles.

“I was in the army for 10 years, I’ve played with guns all my life,” said Paul Makin, 33, a Briton arrested here in Porlamar for cocaine smuggling in 2009. “I’ve seen some guns in here that I’ve never seen before. AK-47s, AR-15s, M-16s, Magnums, Colts, Uzis, Ingrams. You name them, it’s in here.” CONTINUE READING:

NY TIMES ARTICLE: Where Prisoners Can Do Anything, Except Leave

NY TIMES VIDEO: Venezuela's Prison Paradise

Honduras Tilapia for The NY Times

2011-05-15T16:58:00.006-04:00

Another Side of Tilapia, the Perfect Factory Fish
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

AGUA AZUL, Honduras — A common Bible story says Jesus fed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish, which scholars surmise were tilapia.

But at the Aquafinca fish farm here, a modern miracle takes place daily: Tens of thousands of beefy, flapping tilapia are hauled out of teeming cages on Lake Yojoa, converted to fillets in a cold slaughterhouse and rushed onto planes bound for the United States, where some will appear on plates within 12 hours.

Americans ate 475 million pounds of tilapia last year, four times the amount a decade ago, making this once obscure African native the most popular farmed fish in the United States. Although wild fish predominate in most species, a vast majority of the tilapia consumed in the United States is “harvested” from pens or cages in Latin America and Asia. CONTINUE READING HERE.

NYT Video: Cultivating Dinner
NYT Photo Slideshow: A Once-Obscure Fish Takes Center Stage on Americans’ Plates

Full Edit on MeridithKohut.com: Honduras Tilapia Farming

Skyscraper Squatters

2011-03-02T18:11:00.000-05:00

By SIMON ROMERO and MARÍA EUGENIA DÍAZ

CARACAS, Venezuela — Architects still call the 45-story skyscraper the Tower of David, after David Brillembourg, the brash financier who built it in the 1990s. The helicopter landing pad on its roof remains intact, a reminder of the airborne limousines that were once supposed to drop bankers off for work.

The office tower, one of Latin America’s tallest skyscrapers, was meant to be an emblem of Venezuela’s entrepreneurial mettle. But that era is gone. Now, with more than 2,500 squatters making it their home, the building symbolizes something else entirely in this city’s center.

The squatters live in the uncompleted high-rise, which lacks several basic amenities like an elevator. The smell of untreated sewage permeates the corridors. Children scale unlit stairways guided by the glow of cellphones. Some recent arrivals sleep in tents and hammocks.

The skyscraper, surrounded by billboards and murals proclaiming the advance of President Hugo Chávez’s “Bolivarian revolution,” is a symbol of the financial crisis that struck the country in the 1990s, the expanded state control over the economy that came after Mr. Chávez took office in 1999 and the housing shortage that has worsened since then, leading to widespread squatter takeovers in this city.

Few of the building’s terraces have guardrails. Even walls and windows are absent on many floors. Yet dozens of DirecTV satellite dishes dot the balconies. The tower commands some of the most stunning views of Caracas. It contains some of its worst squalor.

“I never let my child out of my sight,” said Yeaida Sosa, 29, who lives with her 1-year-old daughter, Dahasi, on the seventh floor overlooking a bustling artery, Avenida Andrés Bello. Ms. Sosa said residents were horrified after a young girl recently fell to her death from a high floor. CONTINUE READING HERE:

NY TIMES Article: A 45-Story Walkup Beckons the Desperate

FULL PHOTO EDIT on meridithkohut.com: Skyscraper Squatters

Buenos Aires slum for LeMonde

2010-10-25T22:25:00.001-04:00

Photos of Buenos Aires slum for a feature written by Nicolas Bourcier of Le Monde about Catholic priest, Father Hector Marquez, 35, who despite being stabbed last year by one of the slum's residents, is working to unite the residents of Buenos Aires through community councils and projects aimed toward making the slum a safer place to live.

Political Flavor Infuses Venezuela’s New Cafes

2010-10-15T18:06:00.000-04:00

The menu at a Café Venezuela in Caracas. Each entry shows two prices, the “market price” and the cafe’s lower “fair price.”

By SIMON ROMERO
Published: September 25, 2010
CARACAS, Venezuela — On the eve of parliamentary elections on Sunday, a litmus test of President Hugo Chávez’s 12-year rule, one way to gauge the sentiment within his political movement is to wander through the streets of this city’s old center before slipping into a new state-owned cafe.

Along the way, peddlers sell copies of Correo del Orinoco, the new state newspaper. Soldiers in red berets patrol streets once overrun by informal vendors. Murals defiantly declare Caracas an “insurgent city.”

Tucked into a corner on Plaza Bolívar is Café Venezuela, part of a chain of open-air restaurants established by the government this year. The cafe serves Venezuela-grown coffee and Venezuelan snacks like cassava bread at so-called solidarity prices, half or less than what customers would pay elsewhere.

Ideology is also on the menu. The cafes were created by Comerso, a state holding company for socialist enterprises, which also manages stores that sell everything from subsidized arepas, the crispy corn cakes that are the staple of the Venezuelan diet, to inexpensive Chinese cars. The branch in Plaza Bolívar replaced a clothing store that once occupied the same spot and was expropriated live on television by Mr. Chávez.

The planners behind the cafes have multiple objectives: to provide food and conviviality at democratic prices, to serve as commercial linchpins to renew some of the city’s most run-down districts and, not incidentally, to remind satisfied patrons of the government’s populist program in an election year.

Judging by the long lines that snake from the counter onto the sidewalk on most days, they are a hit. CONTINUE READING

Hugo Chávez's hold on Venezuelan assembly in the balance

2010-10-08T17:56:00.000-04:00

By Rory Carroll in Caracas
The Guardian, Thursday 23 September 2010

It looked like a 1950s TV commercial: an avuncular man in a shiny kitchen explaining to a housewife the wonders of a new fridge. "Feel the lines on it. Nice, eh? And wait till I tell you about the discount."

The price was not just a bargain, it was a socialist bargain, for this was a live broadcast from Venezuela's presidential palace, Miraflores, and Hugo Chávez was selling more than just a fridge. The kitchen was a set to launch a new social campaign, "My well-equipped house", on the eve of an election that could shape the fate of Chávez's socialist revolution.

The president is not on the ballot but on Sunday voters will decide whether to maintain or loosen his grip over the national assembly, a constitutionally powerful body that has been dominated by "chavistas" since 2005. Polls suggest a close fight with a resurgent opposition that boycotted elections last time round.

"Both sides are evenly balanced," said Luis Vicente Leon, director of polling firm Datanalisis. "The country is divided into two practically equal parts." Recent polls have given a slight edge to Chávez's PSUV party.

After 12 years in power, the leftist leader remains popular with many of the poor, but his government is facing bad news: recession, high inflation, creaking public services, a scandal over rotting food, and horrific crime rates that have made Caracas a murder capital.

Analysts say the election will hinge on the government's formidable "red machine" overcoming voter discontent and mobilising its base through the use of oil revenues, control of state institutions and Chávez's charisma. CONTINUE READING

Multimedia piece: Hugo Chávez Woos Discontented Voters

Left Behind in Venezuela to Piece Lives Together

2010-10-01T16:32:00.001-04:00

By SIMON ROMERO
Published: September 18, 2010

CIUDAD GUAYANA, Venezuela — The first scavengers one sees in Cambalache, a sprawling trash dump on this city’s edge, are the vultures. Hundreds drift through the veil of smoke that rises from the refuse each day at dawn.
The carrion birds vie with children and their parents for scraps of meat discarded by Ciudad Guayana’s more fortunate residents. Those toiling under the vultures’ wake mutter to one another in Warao, an indigenous language spoken in the nearby delta where the Orinoco, one of the world’s mightiest rivers, meets the Atlantic.
“I’m hungry, and my children are hungry,” said Raisa Beria, 25, a Warao who came here to scavenge for clothes and food. CONTINUE READING

NY Times slideshow: Stitching a Life From the Scraps of Others
Full Edit on MeridithKohut.com: Plight of the Warao

Reclaiming the Red

2010-09-25T16:08:00.000-04:00

A few outtakes from a fashion piece for FOLHA SÃO PAULO on Venezuelan women who make a political statement by refusing to wear the color red, the color associated with President Hugo Chavez's Socialist Revolution.
published September 13, 2010
www.Folha.com

santa marta, colombia

2010-09-18T21:54:00.000-04:00

On the Colombian Coast, Natural Beauty, Gritty Charm
By LIONEL BEEHNER
Published: September 15, 2010

IT’S not called the Parque de Los Novios — Park of the Newlyweds — for nothing. Young couples lock arms as they stroll past rows of freshly planted flowers. A Sinatra love ballad sung in Spanish echoes from a corner dive bar. Aside from a few mustachioed, sombrero-clad men playing a board game, it seemed as if everyone on this breezy August evening was on a romantic sabbatical.

Yet this square in the center of Santa Marta, a port city along the Caribbean coast of Colombia, was not always a streetlamp-lighted refuge of romance. Just a few years back, the park was a tumbledown area trafficked mostly by prostitutes and petty criminals.

Wedged between the sea and the snow-capped Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta peaks, the city may be Colombia’s oldest, but it has always been seen as the grittier and more industrial counterpart to nearby Cartagena — at best, a stopover point for visitors looking to trek through Tayrona National Park or hike to the Lost City, a well-known archaeological site nearby.

“Until five years ago nobody would come here because of the guerrillas,” said Michael McMurdo, a New York City-trained chef who recently opened a Mexican restaurant, Agave Azul, in Santa Marta. “While there is still some sketchy stuff going on, I like it here because it still feels real and Colombian.” CONTINUE READING

narco ballads

2010-09-08T12:27:00.000-04:00

Ballads Born of Conflict Still Thrive in Colombia
By SIMON ROMERO
Published: September 4, 2010

“Uriel Henao needs to travel with certain standards,” said the 41-year-old balladeer, referring to himself in the third person, as is his custom. “The people in these parts expect it,” he explained after a convoy of honking pickup trucks and motorcycles led by the town’s fire truck marked his arrival for a concert here in August.

The rock-star welcome for Mr. Henao, who cloaks a gourmand’s paunch under a white leather jacket, was common enough. Colombians call him the king of the corridos prohibidos, or prohibited ballads, a musical genre that describes the exploits of guerrilla commanders, paramilitary warlords, lowly coca growers and cocaine kingpins.

Given the graphic depiction of the drug trade, some established radio stations in Colombia keep the songs off their playlists, sometimes fearful of violent reprisals that might result from glorifying one side or another in the country’s four-decade war. CONTINUE READING

Leading Again, Peru President Still Unpopular

2010-09-02T15:52:00.001-04:00

By SIMON ROMERO
Published: August 27, 2010

PRESIDENT ALAN GARCÍA is certainly used to being unpopular.

During his first term as president about 20 years ago, when Peru was suffering from terrorist attacks by a Maoist insurgency, he was widely blamed for the hyperinflation that crippled the nation’s economy.

Now in what might be considered his comeback term, a chance to rehabilitate his place in history, the insurgency is a shadow of its former self, the economy is booming — and he is still battling low approval ratings and heated criticism from his constituents.

So perhaps it is not surprising that Mr. García has learned to respond to Bronx cheers with panache.

“We’re sort of still the kind of country that expects the son of the sun, the Inca, to do acts of magic,” he said in a interview this month. “I have tried it, but it is difficult, almost impossible.”
CONTINUE READING

Venezuela, More Deadly Than Iraq, Wonders Why

2010-09-01T15:03:00.001-04:00

By SIMON ROMERO
Published: August 22, 2010

CARACAS, Venezuela — Some here joke that they might be safer if they lived in Baghdad. The numbers bear them out.

In Iraq, a country with about the same population as Venezuela, there were 4,644 civilian deaths from violence in 2009, according to Iraq Body Count; in Venezuela that year, the number of murders climbed above 16,000.

Even Mexico’s infamous drug war has claimed fewer lives.

Venezuelans have absorbed such grim statistics for years. Those with means have hidden their homes behind walls and hired foreign security experts to advise them on how to avoid kidnappings and killings. And rich and poor alike have resigned themselves to living with a murder rate that the opposition says remains low on the list of the government’s priorities. CONTINUE READING

NYT Photo Slideshow: Venezuela’s Climate of Crime

Personal Project documenting Crime in Venezuela: Rojo Rojito

Rapaz, Peru

2010-08-20T22:38:00.001-04:00

High in the Andes, Keeping an Incan Mystery Alive
By Simon Romero

SAN CRISTÓBAL DE RAPAZ, Peru — The route to this village 13,000 feet above sea level runs from the desert coast up hairpin bends, delivering the mix of exhilaration and terror that Andean roads often provide. Condors soar above mist-shrouded crags. Quechua-speaking herders squint at strangers who arrive gasping in the thin air. CONTINUE READING

multimedia piece: Mysteries Woven Into Peru's Past

Curaçao Island

2010-08-16T13:40:00.000-04:00

preserving papiamentu

2010-08-15T20:33:00.000-04:00

A Language Thrives in Its Caribbean Home
By Simon Romero

WILLEMSTAD, Curaçao — Thousands of languages spoken by small numbers of people, including many of the Creole languages born in the last centuries of human history, are facing extinction. But a little-known language spoken on a handful of islands near the coast of Venezuela may be an exception.

Papiamentu, a Creole language influenced over the centuries by African slaves, Sephardic merchants and Dutch colonists, is now spoken by only about 250,000 people on the islands of Curaçao, Bonaire and Aruba. But compared with many of the world’s other Creoles, the hybrid languages that emerge in colonial settings, it shows rare signs of vibrancy and official acceptance. CONTINUE READING

NYT multimedia slideshow:
Preserving Papiamentu

world cup in the netherlands antilles

2010-08-15T13:16:00.000-04:00

Venezuela’s Military Ties With Cuba Stir Concerns

2010-08-12T20:39:00.003-04:00

By Simon Romero

CARACAS, Venezuela — The ties between President Hugo Chávez and Cuba’s Communist leaders are plain enough: Cuba has thousands of doctors here, not to mention a smaller number of advisers who help on a breadth of issues, like agricultural engineering and even training Olympic athletes.
But the quiet expansion of Cuba’s military role here has raised a particular concern among critics of Mr. Chávez, who maintain that the military is being retooled — with Cuba’s help — into an institution that can be used to quell any domestic challenge to the president. CONTINUE READING

Bolívar's Bones

2010-08-05T10:25:00.000-04:00

By Simon Romero
CARACAS, Venezuela — The clock had just struck midnight. Most of the country was asleep. But that did not stop President Hugo Chávez from announcing in the early hours of July 16 that the latest phase of his Bolivarian Revolution had been stirred into motion.
Marching to the national anthem, a team of soldiers, forensic specialists and presidential aides gathered around the sarcophagus of Simón Bolívar, the 19th-century aristocrat who freed much of South America from Spain. A state television crew filmed the group, clad in white lab coats, hair nets and ventilation masks, attempt what seemed like an anemic half-goose step. CONTINUE READING

guyana

2010-07-28T21:10:00.004-04:00

a few of my favorite outtakes from Guyana:

Muddy Road Molds Debate on the Future of Guyana

2010-07-28T15:16:00.002-04:00

By SIMON ROMERO
Published: May 8, 2010

FIFTY EIGHT, Guyana — A battered, decades-old Bedford truck that would not look out of place in a “Mad Max” movie pulled off the road. Gold miners crawled out of its mud-splattered cab, sauntered into Peter Rajmenjan’s diner and asked if he had any bush hog for sale.

“The only wild meat I have left today is deer,” replied Mr. Rajmenjan, 55, whose establishment lies at the 58-mile marker on the main road cutting through the Guyanese jungle.

Over plates of deer curry, travelers chatted in Caribbean-accented English or murmured in indigenous languages like Macushi, Arawak and Wapishana. Around them, the forest buzzed with mosquitoes. The siren moan of howler monkeys could be heard in the distance.
CONTINUE READING

Multimedia Link: The Road to Georgetown

albouystown, guyana

2010-06-26T15:55:00.001-04:00

port kaituma, guyana

2010-06-18T14:36:00.003-04:00

JONESTOWN, Guyana — Carlton Daniels was sweating as he sliced through the jungle with his cutlass. He pointed at some bushes and said a chimpanzee named Mr. Muggs had once lived there in a cage. Then he emerged in a clearing, proclaiming, “Welcome to the People’s Temple Agricultural Project.”
Better known as Jonestown, where more than 900 Americans committed suicide or were murdered one night in 1978 at the behest of the cult leader Jim Jones, the site yields few signs of remembrance. Rains, termites and scavengers have laid waste to its buildings. Vines camouflage its rusting vehicles, including an old flatbed truck and a tractor.
But while nature seems intent on erasing the utopian experiment that went tragically awry here, some enterprising souls in Guyana, South America’s only English-speaking nation, have another idea. They want Jonestown reborn as a tourist destination and are even getting some tepid help from the government, which spent more than 30 years largely trying to live it down. CONTINUE READING

pemon of the gran sabana

2010-05-13T12:25:00.003-04:00

"Yunék Journal In Venezuela’s Savanna, Clash of Science and Fire" by SIMON ROMERO

YUNÉK, Venezuela — The mist-shrouded mountains rising out of the forest here form one of the world’s most beguiling frontiers of exploration and research, inspiring Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 fantasy novel “The Lost World” and teams of biologists who still mount expeditions to remote escarpments in hopes of finding species new to science.
But in the savannas below, the tendrils of smoke hanging over the landscape attest to a custom that has set off a fierce debate among scientists in Venezuela and beyond: the Pemón Indian tradition of repeatedly burning grassland and forest to hunt for animals and grow food. CONTINUE READING

full edit on meridithkohut.com: Pemon of the Gran Sabana

caracas urban art

2010-05-02T22:43:00.003-04:00

Caracas Journal
Artists Embellish Walls With Political Visions
By SIMON ROMERO
Published: April 11, 2010

CARACAS, Venezuela --Mr. Zerpa, 26, a slightly built painter sporting a few days of stubble, shrugged at the possibility that American visitors to Caracas — or Mrs. Clinton for that matter — might find the mural offensive. “It’s a metaphor for an empire that is being defeated,” he said nonchalantly in an interview. “My critics can take it or leave it, but I remain loyal to my ideas.”

So does the government, which supports Mr. Zerpa’s creations and the work of many other street artists, and is increasingly making them a central element of its promotion of a state ideology. Government-financed brigades of graffiti artists and muralists are blanketing this city’s walls with politicized images, ranging from crude, graffiti-tagged slogans to bold, colorful works of graphic art. CONTINUE READING

full nyt slide show: POLITICAL GRAFFITI

extended edit on meridithkohut.com: CARACAS URBAN ART

criticism of chávez stifled by arrests

2010-04-28T16:38:00.001-04:00

By SIMON ROMERO
Published: April 3, 2010

“I’ve received threats from inmates telling me they will burn me alive because they see me as a symbol of the system that put them in prison,” said Judge Afiuni, 46, in her prison cell. “I’m in this hell because I had the temerity to do my job as a judge in a way that didn’t please Chávez.” CONTINUE READING

tim & paige

2010-04-28T16:28:00.001-04:00

villa lorena in cali, colombia

2010-04-28T16:11:00.006-04:00

By SIMON ROMERO
Published: March 30, 2010
CALI, Colombia — Of all the animals that come to die under Ana Julia Torres’s samán trees, the ocelots are among the most numerous. There are eight of them here, seized from the estate of a murdered cocaine trafficker, who apparently collected them in the belief that any self-respecting drug lord should always have eight ocelots in his dominion.

Ms. Torres’s sanctuary houses hundreds of animals rescued largely from drug traffickers and paramilitary warlords, as well as from circuses and animal-smuggling rings, offering a strange window into the excesses and brutalities carried out in this country’s endless drug wars. CONTINUE READING

full NYT slideshow here: "A Rescued Menagerie"

extended edit on meridithkohut.com: Villa Lorena-Cali, Colombia

El Chigüire Bipolar

2010-04-28T16:03:00.002-04:00

By SIMON ROMERO
Published: March 20, 2010

CARACAS, Venezuela — This may be a perilous time to operate a Web site focused on politics here, given President Hugo Chávez’s recent push for new controls of Internet content. But one plucky Venezuelan satirical site is emerging as a runaway success in Latin America as it repeatedly skewers Mr. Chávez and a host of other leaders.

Named in honor of the capybara, the Labrador retriever-sized rodent that Venezuelans are fond of hunting and eating, the 2-year-old Web site, El Chigüire Bipolar, or Bipolar Capybara, is rivaling or surpassing in page views leading Venezuelan newspapers like the Caracas daily El Nacional.

The rise of Chigüire Bipolar, which has already drawn the wrath of state-controlled media here, and a handful of other popular Venezuelan sites focused on politics is taking place within a journalistic atmosphere here that international press groups say is marked increasingly by fear, intimidation and self-censorship. CONTINUE READING

basque

2010-03-22T13:19:00.003-04:00

"Arrests in Europe Expose ETA’s Ties to Venezuela" by Simon Romero

CARACAS, Venezuela — The shadowy underworld of Basque exiles in this city is coming under sharp scrutiny after recent arrests in Europe and an indictment this month from one of Spain’s top judges asserting that Venezuelan intelligence officials were involved in training Basque separatists and Colombian guerrillas in Venezuela. CONTINUE READING

baruta

2010-03-06T18:32:00.001-05:00

felipe

2010-03-06T10:23:00.002-05:00

lo extraordinario de lo ordinario

2010-03-03T19:25:00.003-05:00

La asociación civil Comunicación y Cultura (CYC) se complace en
invitarle a la inauguración de la Exposición Fotográfica Itinerante.

"LO EXTRAORDINARIO DE LO ORDINARIO"

4 de marzo de 2010 – 6:00 p.m.
Brindis: 6:30 p.m.
Recorrido por la sala: 7:00 p.m.

Lugar: Fundación Centro de Arte Daniel Suárez
Av. Del Ávila con San Miguel. Qta. Veneyork
Urbanización Alta Florida
Caracas – Venezuela

Fotógrafos:

- Marjorie Cabrita
- Meridith Kohut
- Argenis Bellizio
- Trevor Cornilliac
- Aaron Sosa
- Jean Herrera

Curadores:

- Kelly Martínez
- José Luís Omaña

Más información:
comunicaciónycultura.ac@gmail.com
RIF. J-298265850

portrait series : survivors

2010-01-20T14:04:00.003-05:00

belen, amnesty international domestic violence spokesperson

linda, linda loaiza foundation-caracas, venezuela

marjorie

international reportage for the new statesman/look magazine
mil gracias to all of the incredible women who contributed their story to this project.

exerpts from The New Statesman/Amy Stillman:

In cases of rape or domestic violence, justice is not easily won in Venezuela, a country where violence against women is widespread: last year the Venezuelan daily newspaper Diario Vea reported that five women are killed each week in gender-related violent incidents, and it is estimated that every 15 minutes at least one Venezuelan woman is attacked.

In March 2007, the government's Organic Law on the Right of Women to a Life Free of Violence came into effect; it defines 19 forms of violence against women, including psychological abuse. The law has won praise from women's rights campaigners, but they say that the government has not provided enough resources for implementing it. According to data taken from the Venezuelan Observatory for the Human Rights of Women, only 4 per cent of cases of violence against women have been prosecuted since the law was passed.

Even in the event of prosecution, women rarely receive justice.
Venezuela's poor record on violence against women is not exceptional in the region: up to 40 per cent of women in Latin America and the Caribbean are physically or sexually abused at some point during their lifetime. But what sets Venezuela apart is that its leader is a self-proclaimed feminist.

Hugo Chávez calls for the empowerment of women through his socialist political project the Bolivarian Revolution. At the World Social Forum in January 2009 he announced that "true socialism is feminist". But women's rights groups say that the government is dragging its feet on the issue of violence against women. “If the president is really feminist, he should be investing in improving the system for women to access justice," says Sonia Obregón from the UN Development Fund in Venezuela.

A huge problem is the lack of training for police; domestic violence is not taken seriously because it is viewed as a private matter between husband and wife. "When we tell women to go to the police they often say, 'For what? If I go to the police my husband will know that and he will hit me again in a worse way,'" explains María Sierra from Unifem, the United Nations Development Fund for Women.

Only 10 per cent of women report cases of domestic violence, according to local NGOs.

Overall, violence in Venezuela has reached unprecedented levels. The country has the highest homicide rate in Latin America, with more than 14,700 murders committed in 2008, and an estimated 19,000 in 2009, according to the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, an academic think tank. “Violence against women has increased, and the reason is simple," says Roberto Briceño León, the group's head. "There is an increase in violent behaviour in general, and a lack of respect for laws and norms fostered by the government itself. Violence has become a legitimate way of solving conflicts."

bailey for the nyt

2010-01-20T13:54:00.002-05:00

nyt article: Caracas Journal: An American Household Name in Venezuela

maria eugenia & rodrigo

2010-01-14T09:52:00.003-05:00

maria eugenia

2010-01-10T10:11:00.002-05:00

revolutionary haircuts

2010-01-08T21:03:00.001-05:00

Dennis Brutus, Poet, Dies at 85

2010-01-03T18:18:00.003-05:00

Brutus' was easily one of the most fascinating interviews I've ever sat in on...incredibly humble, witty, inspiring thinker who spent his life devoted to political activism. He will be missed by many I'm sure.

NEW YORK (AP) -- South African poet and former political prisoner Dennis Brutus, who fought apartheid in words and deeds and remained an activist well after the fall of his country's racist system, has died. He was 85.

Brutus was an anti-apartheid activist jailed at Robben Island with Nelson Mandela in the mid-1960s. He helped persuade Olympic officials to ban South Africa from competition from 1964 until apartheid ended nearly 30 years later.

Born in 1924 in what was then Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, Brutus was the son of South African teachers who moved back to their native country when he was still a boy. He majored in English at Fort Hare University, which he attended on full scholarship, and taught at several South African high schools.

By his early 20s, he was politically involved and helped create the South African Sports Association, formed in protest against the official white sports association. Arrested in 1963, Brutus fled the country when released on bail, but was captured and nearly killed when shot as he attempted to escape police custody in Johannesburg and forced to wait for an ambulance that would accept blacks. Brutus was sentenced to 18 months at Robben Island.

His books ''Sirens, Knuckles, Boots'' and ''Letters to Martha and Other Poems from a South African Prison'' were published while he was in jail. He was confined, but unbeaten, writing in the poem ''Somehow We Survive'' that ''All our land is scarred with terror/rendered unlovely and unlovable/sundered are we and all our passionate surrender/but somehow tenderness survives.'' In ''Prayer,'' written after he left prison, he proclaims, ''Uphold -- frustrate me if need be/so that I mould my energy/for that one swift inerrable soar.''

Sometimes terse, other times dense and lyrical, his poems were political, but also emotional and highly personal. Forced to leave the country in 1966, he longed for home in the 1975 poem ''Sequence for South Africa,'' writing that the ''secret is clamping down/holding the lid of awareness tight shut,'' until ''some thoughtless questioner/pries the sealed lid loose.''

Brutus emigrated to the United States in 1971, but his legal troubles did not end. The Reagan administration, which began in 1981, changed the policy on political refugees, making it more difficult for them to remain in the U.S. Brutus fought deportation for two years before an immigration judge granted asylum.

Brutus taught literature and African studies at Northwestern University and the University of Pittsburgh, a distinctive figure in old age with his flowing white hair and beard, engaged in protests against world financial organizations and in calls for stronger action against global warming.

Over the years, he completed more than a dozen collections of poetry, including ''A Simple Lust,'' ''Stubborn Hope'' and ''Salutes and Censures.'' In 2006, Haymarket published a compilation of his work, ''Poetry and Protest.'' His work was banned for years in South Africa, but one book, ''Thoughts Abroad,'' slipped through; it was published in 1970 under the pseudonym John Bruin.

He received numerous honorary prizes, including a lifetime achievement award from South Africa's Department of Arts and Culture. But in 2007 he rejected induction into the South Africa Sports Hall of Fame, stating, ''It is incompatible to have those who championed racist sport alongside its genuine victims. It's time -- indeed long past time -- for sports truth, apologies and reconciliation.''

Brutus remained engaged and became passionate about climate change in recent years.

In an open letter dated Dec. 10 about this month's U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, he warned against ''brokering a deal that allows the corporations and the oil giants to continue to abuse the earth.

''Better that there is no deal, so that ordinary citizens can make their choices and voices heard, against the marketing excesses for the rich allowing some to gorge themselves while others starve.''

He was honored with the Peace Award of the War Resisters League in New York City in September. Unable to attend the event, he sent a recording of his poem ''Gull,'' which reads in part, ''Gull gliding against gray-silver autumn sky sees a vast miasma of greed slowly encompass our entire planet cries out to unheeding stars to whom wails of children rise in shrill unending caterwauls.''

mark & annie

2010-01-02T14:11:00.000-05:00

some of my favorites from the super fun texas wedding of two of my all-time favorite friends, mark & annie. they share an incredible love that spawned in the UTexas photoj department; has taken them to Egypt, Virgina and now Washington! I miss you guys and am so glad to have had the opportunity to share your wedding day with you!

SANTAna

2009-12-30T16:47:00.002-05:00

NYT article: "Venezuelan Children Flock to See Santana on His Trip Home" by Charlie Devereux
NYT slideshow: "Santana's Cause"
more photos: Mets' Johan Santana in Tovar, Venezuela

kentucky

2009-12-30T16:29:00.003-05:00

snaps from a recent roadtrip with my hermanas to skippers in cadiz, kentucky.

el junquito

2009-12-30T15:58:00.004-05:00

for The Sunday Telegraph

palo

2009-12-14T18:09:00.002-05:00

full nyt article here: In Venezuela, Even Death May Not Bring Peace
full nyt slideshow: Stolen From the Dead

rumba

2009-12-14T15:49:00.003-05:00

iso y salvador

2009-12-11T16:27:00.003-05:00

salvador the barbero is by far my favorite venezuelan neighbor; he's super sweet--every morning he wishes me, "buenos dias blondie" and gets extra cool points for keeping a huge stack of nat geos from the 80's in his barber shop. salvador is also in love with my landlady, isolina. I think she loves him back, but she won't admit it. they sit like this every night in his shop after isolina walks her dog. it is really cute.

World Aids Day with the U.N.

2009-12-01T17:22:00.003-05:00

To learn more about HIV/AIDS awareness, prevention and testing, please visit:
UNAIDS o en espanol, ONUSIDA

vida sin luz...y agua

2009-11-13T14:58:00.004-05:00

nyt article: "Blackouts Plague Energy-Rich Venezuela" by Simon Romero

fire dancers

2009-11-11T13:37:00.001-05:00

"Court Drama" cover story for the Washington Post Magazine

2009-11-08T12:19:00.003-05:00

Online Multimedia Slideshow link: "Greivis Vasquez, On and Off the Court"
Full story link: Washington Post Magazine, "Court Drama" by Steve Yanda

kelsey and kaitlyn

2009-11-06T18:45:00.002-05:00

more from Sorte mountain

2009-11-03T13:03:00.003-05:00

as promised..

the full edit will be on www.meridithkohut.com next week. thanks for visiting!

maria lionza pilgrimage

2009-10-29T14:22:00.004-04:00

Full NYT slideshow here: A Pilgrimage to Sorte Mountain
NYT Article link: Sorte Journal:In Venezuela, Adoration Meets Blend of Traditions

I'll post more out-takes as soon as they're off embargo.

paddling the pecos

2009-10-29T01:50:00.003-04:00

back in caracas after a quick trip to Texas, where I met up with my dad and sister Morgan on the Mexican border to paddle the pecos river. it was a great trip...nothing beats paddling in untouched nature, listening to wild billy goat cries echoing through the canyon, with the people you love most! more snaps from the Tejas trip up soon!

sweet xv

2009-10-08T23:12:00.001-04:00

mas marchas

2009-09-12T17:15:00.001-04:00

go go team whodat dos

2009-09-05T21:46:00.003-04:00

Right now my dear dad and sister morgan are in their 13th hour paddling non-stop in the Colorado River 100 kayak race. Here's a photo I snapped of them on my last trip home, when we went to San Marcos to pick up their new racing boat. good luck guys!

august apologies...

2009-09-05T21:20:00.002-04:00

still here, just busy busy! august was a stellar month. (2) week long + (1) 4-day editorial assignments...23 portrait sessions...4 workshop-days taught..1-gallery show...67.22GB of photo files...and dozens of new friends. thanks to everyone who helped make it so great...and thanks for all the emails and pulse checks...i promise to get my blogger-ing on again soon!

Venezuelan Cacao

2009-07-29T12:35:00.006-04:00

full nyt piece here:
In Venezuela, Plantations of Cacao Stir Bitterness

multimedia slideshow here:
Venezuela's Cacao Plantations

Jen, New Orleans Bride

2009-07-27T18:01:00.005-04:00

Danny and Jen

2009-07-19T01:13:00.005-04:00

We just wrapped shooting Danny and Jen's fantastic wedding in New Orleans, LA. Here is a sneak peak!

Emily D

2009-07-14T01:36:00.007-04:00

We had so much fun shooting with Emily, Nick, Jessica, Phantom and Cappy yesterday at their barn in Cypress, TX! Special thanks to Phantom for navigating through the hay field for us, on a broken leg! We're officially wrapped shooting in Texas and are heading to New Orleans in the morning...more photos soon!

Tim & Paige

2009-07-12T03:07:00.003-04:00

san pedro de guatire

2009-06-30T23:37:00.002-04:00

sneak peak. more soon.

Johanm y Pedro

2009-06-29T19:26:00.004-04:00

Marcha del Orgullo Gay - Caracas

Apaga el Fuego with Amnesty International

2009-06-21T21:59:00.007-04:00

June 15-22 is World Action Week Against Gun Violence. Venezuela has one of the highest per capita firearms-related homicide rates in the world, and continues to skyrocket statistically, increasing from 2,474 homicides in 1990 (population 19.7mil) to 12,257 homicides in 2006 (population 27 mil). To learn more about or support Amnesty International's efforts to curve gun violence in Latin America, please visit: www.aiven.org

Feliz dia del Padre

2009-06-21T09:13:00.001-04:00

circa 2005...Texas/Mexico border film scans

Diablos Danzantes de Yare

2009-06-13T02:00:00.006-04:00

To view the complete image set, please visit Dancing Devils of Yare on meridithkohut.com

Barrio El Milagro snaps

2009-05-30T00:34:00.001-04:00

Caracas Motorizados, new clips

2009-05-25T13:17:00.006-04:00

full nyt piece here:

For a City in Gridlock, a Lifeline and a Scourge

multimedia slideshow here:

The Motorizados of Caracas

to view all of the images from this project, please visit:

'Motorizados' on www.meridithkohut.com

Sinamaica Lagoon

2009-05-03T18:44:00.004-04:00

To view the complete image set, please visit the Sinamaica Lagoon Gallery on www.meridithkohut.com

Armando & Benmar Wedding - Caracas, Venezuela

2009-05-03T18:29:00.007-04:00

01 de Mayo marcha

2009-05-03T02:46:00.003-04:00

calles de caracas

2009-04-29T13:27:00.001-04:00

live simply so others may simply live

2009-04-22T13:46:00.007-04:00

Sinamaica Lagoon, situated along a notorious Venezuela/Colombia waterway used by narco-traffickers, is one of the last remaining ´floating villages´on earth, where habitants including indigenous "Añú" indians live in houses above water; and travel to work, school, etc. via wooden canoes or small motor boats. Life in the lagoon is currently threatened by social issues such as severe poverty, water contamination and global warming.

Happy Earth Day.

To view the full image set, please visit the Sinamaica Lagoon Gallery on www.meridithkohut.com

new snaps

2009-04-20T23:25:00.001-04:00

los palmeros de chacao

2009-04-07T17:03:00.003-04:00

Palmeros of Chacao - Images by Meridith Kohut

to view the complete edit, please visit Palmeros of Chacao on www.meridithkohut.com

proximo taller :: 18 de abril - 23 de mayo

2009-04-01T12:59:00.005-04:00

A petición de muchos aqui traemos el 3er TALLER FOTOGRAFI-ARTE.

Luego comenzará a atinerar por el país, con el objetivo de descentralizar un poco la actividad fotográfica.

El presente taller está diseccionado hacia el perfeccionamiento de la mirada y las habilidades de aquellos interesados en la fotografía como medio de expresión personal. Para su realización se cuenta con un staff de profesores que se dedicarán a desarrollar distintos rubros teórico-prácticos
relacionados con el discurso, la experiencia y las técnicas fotográficas y que los participantes pondrán en práctica con la elaboración de un portafolio.
Con ello se pretende orientar en el uso de técnicas de composición, encuadres, tratamiento de imagen y sus usos, así como selección y edición de imágenes de altísima calidad, tanto conceptual como en el descubrimiento personal como autor de fotografías.

Clases y Staff de profesores:
Clase 1: Ramón Grandal: Apreciación visual de la fotografía, tratamientos de la imagen.
Clase 2: Meridith Kohut: Fotoperiodismo: Reportaje eficaz para una audiencia internacional
Clase 3: Kelly Martínez: Aproximación crítica a la fotografía, sus discursos y lineamientos.
Clase 4: Aaron Sosa: Usos del color y fotografía digital.
Clase 5: Gilda Pérez: Edición de portafolios.
Clase 6: Revisión de portafolios por el staff de profesores.

Requerimientos:
Este taller está dirigido a todos aquellos interesados en la fotografía, independientemente
de los años de experiencia dentro de este campo. Se debe tener cámara propia.

Cupo máximo:
12 participantes

Duración del taller:
Seis clases, de cuatro horas cada una. / 24 horas
Comenzando el sábado 18 de abril y finalizando el 23 de mayo.

Horarios:
Sábados, de 3 pm. a 7. pm.

Costo:
700 Bs. F.

Para mayor información y para confirmar inscripción:

0416-8112020
aaronsosaphotography@gmail.com

papa

2009-03-30T14:50:00.003-04:00

Alvin Benjamin Kohut
(August 30, 1926 – March 28, 2009)

carnaval en caracas

2009-03-12T20:14:00.002-04:00

new cadiz ruins, cubagua island

2009-02-25T19:11:00.005-05:00

---------

full nyt article here:

In Venezuela, Trying to Map Out Blueprint for Lost City

---------

full edit here:

and even more..

2009-02-25T12:58:00.008-05:00

mas enmienda..

2009-02-25T12:54:00.002-05:00

ernesto lives

2009-02-15T16:44:00.003-05:00

enmienda marchas..

2009-02-13T16:05:00.003-05:00

pookie

2009-02-08T15:29:00.003-05:00

yesterday was my crazy landlady's 72nd birthday...i gave her portraits of her beloved dog, pookie...who she admittedly likes more than all of her grandkids...i tend to prefer the grandkids...because they don't eat my socks like pookie does..

Taller FOTOGRAFI-ARTE

2009-01-22T23:11:00.001-05:00

El presente taller está diseccionado hacia el perfeccionamiento de la mirada y las habilidades de aquellos interesados en la fotografía como medio de expresión personal. Para su realización se cuenta con un staff de profesores que se dedicarán a desarrollar distintos rubros teórico-prácticos
relacionados con el discurso, la experiencia y las técnicas fotográficas y que los participantes pondrán en práctica con la elaboración de un portafolio.
Con ello se pretende orientar en el uso de técnicas de composición, encuadres, tratamiento de imagen y sus usos, así como selección y edición de imágenes de altísima calidad, tanto conceptual como en el descubrimiento personal como autor de fotografías.

Clases y Staff de profesores:
Clase 1: Ramón Grandal: Apreciación visual de la fotografía, tratamientos de la imagen.
Clase 2: Meridith Kohut: Fotoperiodismo: Reportaje eficaz para una audiencia internacional
Clase 3: Kelly Martínez: Aproximación crítica a la fotografía, sus discursos y lineamientos.
Clase 4: Aaron Sosa: Usos del color y fotografía digital.
Clase 5: Gilda Pérez: Edición de portafolios.
Clase 6: Revisión de portafolios por el staff de profesores.

Requerimientos:
Este taller está dirigido a todos aquellos interesados en la fotografía, independientemente
de los años de experiencia dentro de este campo. Se debe tener cámara propia.

Cupo máximo:
12 participantes

Duración del taller:
Seis clases, de cuatro horas cada una. / 24 horas
Comenzando el sábado 21 de febrero y finalizando el 28 de marzo.

Horarios:
Sábados, de 3 pm. a 7. pm.

Costo:
700 Bs. F.

Para mayor información y para confirmar inscripción:
0416-8112020 / 0426-8185434 / 0414-0214940
photogilda@yahoo.com / aaronsosaphotos@hotmail.com

pdval food subsidies

2009-01-22T18:22:00.003-05:00

full NYT article HERE

p-phunk sportraits

2009-01-22T14:49:00.003-05:00

portrait session with peyton vickers, a texas 5A district high school track champion

tvick

2009-01-10T20:40:00.003-05:00

happy holidays

2008-12-31T17:25:00.001-05:00

foto fun

2008-12-14T18:03:00.003-05:00

fun sequence from lisa's expat holiday fiesta...lisa has a lot of cool friends and a lot of cool cameras. thanks for sharing them with me!

duerme en paz

2008-12-12T14:45:00.005-05:00

Last month sandra, her boyfriend peter, and I decided to sneak off to the beach on...a monday. I ended up not being sneaky enough though, an editor called minutes before we arrived, and I ended up having to stay on the bus for the ride back into the city. sandra and I like taking the $2 colectivos to the beach whenever possible, they're cheap, frequent, and usually the jumping off point for some sort of adventure. I remember this particular trip because it was the first time that I had the opportunity to finally meet her long time boyfriend, and because of the music. Pirated anything is popular in Venezuela, and street stands of dvds and music cds abound on most busy streets. The colectivo drivers love to jam their musica, and on this particular trip, our driver was blaring a pirated compilation of 80's/90's love songs. I groaned through the mix, sending text messages to myself with the names of the songs, thinking that at some point, this 'colorful detail' might be useful to future story. As I texted, "1.) Celine Dion..the titanic song" "2.) Whitney Houston..I will always love you" Sandra sang along, with Peter's head on her shoulder...declaring in my misery that she loved the colectivo driver's choice of music, laughing as each new song began to play..each one cheesier than the one before it. "3.) Brian Adams...Everything I do, I do it for you.." "4.) Up Where We Belong, Joe Crocker & Jennifer Warnes.."

The lyrics to these songs don't seem so cheesy now, remembering Sandra singing them to Peter and being with her now without him. "Who knows what tomorrow brings...In a world, few hearts survive...All I know, is the way I feel...When it's real, I keep my pray alive" or "Near, far, wherever you are...I believe that the heart does go on...Once more you open the door...And you're here in my heart...And my heart will go on and on."

My heart is so heavy for you Sandra. Te quiero mucho y estoy aqui para ti siempre.

Q.D.E.P.
Peter Antonio Repillosa Segovia
1/26/1989 - 12/08/2008

playa

2008-11-30T22:12:00.008-05:00

my caracas happy place. 20 minutes and a $2 buseta. chevere!

these were all taken with with a handy coolpix...perdoname for the blown out highlights...taking good gear to the beach = not being able to leave it to go swimming...so not an option today!

new clips

2008-11-24T22:08:00.002-05:00

chavistas

2008-11-24T22:05:00.002-05:00

venezuela votes

2008-11-24T21:58:00.003-05:00

recent revista clips

2008-11-10T19:57:00.003-05:00

familia

2008-11-10T19:19:00.004-05:00

by far the best part of going back to texas was getting to spend time with my family...i'm blessed to have an incredibly close-knit family who all live relatively close together, so i was able to see just about everyone. my very sweet parents and sisters carefully planned each day that we had together and went above and beyond to make sure that i had the opportunity to do all of my favorite things and visit all of my favorite places...we had a great trip to lake austin and wakesurfed past sun set under the 360 bridge....kayaked down the brazos river...and celebrated our first "Christastergivingirthdayween" the coolest family holiday get-together, that combined an entire year's worth of holidays that i've missed over the past year. my sweet grandma made her thanksgiving dinner, we had birthday cake, a christmas tree, easter eggs, halloween costumes...and my sisters decorated the house with nearly every holiday decoration stuffed in the attic. it was so memorable and so special. thanks to everyone who drove out to visit, i miss you all loads and think of you often.

speaking of holidays, today is my dear dad's birthday. we stopped counting, but he still looks better than most 35 year olds that i know, and can also paddle down a river quicker than most people decades younger than he is! feliz cumpleanos papa! i love you!

savannah

2008-11-10T18:35:00.006-05:00

while in texas, we also shot a last-minute portrait session with savannah...who i think just might be the most brilliant 12 year old i've ever met. we spent all morning climbing on hay bales, navigating fields of wildflowers, sloshing through mini waterfalls and dressing up in princess dresses. i've known savannah and her family for years and was delighted when her mom booked a shoot to capture her coming of age. my sister morgan was savannah's nanny for a long time, and that is the age that i automatically pictured savannah in my thoughts preparing for this shoot. i still have to do an occasional double-take looking at these photos making sure that it is really her...i can't believe how quickly she has grown up...but am quickly reminded that she is 12 when remembering the tactic morgan (who graciously came along to help and lug around a 6 ft ladder!) used to render a 100 percent success rate of getting the most genuine smile across savannah's face after hours of shooting...embarrassing potty humor stories...it worked every time. my favorite story morgan told her was of when savannah outed her dad during a christmas eve church service while she was quite young. when being interviewed by the pastor in front of the entire congregation, savannah announced exactly how and how long it takes her dad to go #2. if he only knew how we got that smile of her in that sweet princess dress...i hope the photos we produced were able to capture her as she grows into an even more beautiful young lady...