Stories from Quick Reads and Venezuela
Venezuela's Oscar Entry Speaks an Indigenous Language
“Gone with the River” by Mario Crespo is Venezuela's Oscar entry in the Best Foreign Language Film… https://t.co/XR8tzauaSU — Carlos Aguilar (@Carlos_Film) September 3, 2015 Lo que lleva el río (“Gone With the River”), from Cuban-Venezuelan filmmaker Mario Crespo Dauna, is a Venezuelan film shot almost entirely in Warao, the language...
Venezuela Bans 22 Media Editors and Executives from Leaving the Country
Over 20 members of three Venezuelan media groups, El Nacional and Tal Cual, as well as news site La Patilla, are now prohibited from leaving the country. Caracas judge María Eugenia Núñez ordered the restriction on the opposition media figures, who are “accused of ‘continuing aggravated defamation'”, according to broadcaster NTN24. Venezuela places travel ban on opposition media execs...
‘Nappies in Adolescence': Alarming Number of Pregnant Teens in Venezuela
Desireé Lozano, blogging for Voces Visibles, urges attention be paid to the extremely high rate of teenage pregnancies in Venezuela, where 25% of the pregnancies are among young people, and the lack of an appropriate public policy to counter this phenomenon and its repercussions. Venezuelan statistics are the highest in South America...
Caracas #SmartCityHack Proposes Solutions to People's Problems
The Venezuelan edition of the Hackathon Smart Cities took place in Caracas from 6 to 8 March, 2015. Don't you know what a hackathon is? If so, read this post! The #SmartCityHack event was simultaneously organized in 27 cities by Global Datafest. “@forummedia: 5historias de querer es poder detrás del...
Bolivia to Host First International Community Radio and Free Software Conference
The first international conference on community radio and free software will be held in Cochabama, Bolivia from June 11-13, 2015. So far, the community radio stations from Spanish-speaking countries that have confirmed their assistance are: Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Uruguay, Venezuela, and of course, the host, Bolivia. The preliminary agenda...
Smart Cities Hackathon in Venezuela
Global Datafest is organizing the Smart Cities Hackathon, held simultaneously in 27 different cities around the world. The Venezuelan edition of the Smart Cities Hackathon calls on programmers, big data experts, urbanists, public officers and communications specialists who have an interest in developing technological solutions for issues related with the...
The Political Apartheid Against Women in Venezuela
Desireé Lozano, a blogger for the Spanish-language website Voces Visibles (Visible Voices), reflects on the existing limitations on women’s political participation in Venezuela. According to the sociologist Evangelina García Prince, a kind of political apartheid that excludes women from decision-making reigns in the Venezuelan parties: En los partidos venezolanos, el discurso oficial...
Educating Girls Today, Empowering Women Tomorrow
Marita Seara, who blogs for Voces Visibles (Visibles voices), invites us to reflect on the discrimination that affects girls and teenagers — access to education — and the need of educating our girls today so they can be the empowered women of the future. According to data backed up by...
Venezuela Suspends -and Brings Back- Flights to Netherlands Antilles
On Friday June 25, 2015, Venezuela government announced the suspension of all flights between Venezuela and the Netherlands Antilles (Aruba, Curazao, Bonaire, Saint Marteen and other islands). According to Venezuelan newspaper El Universal, the action would be a consequence of the detention of Venezuelan Army general Hugo Carvajal –former director...
Venezuela Clears the Tower of David, the “World's Tallest Slum,” of Squatters
The Venezuelan government has finished evacuating thousands of squatters from the Tower of David, which overlooks Caracas’ slums, and is the tallest and most distinct building in the capital city's skyline. The one-time office tower is a symbol of how prosperous Venezuela once was and its current dilapidated state reflects growing inflation and...
Biofortified Bananas for Beta Carotene Deficiency
Félix Moronta Barrios is a Venezuelan biologist who spreads scientific culture among Spanih speaking community. He recently explained the researches and biotechnologic findongs about transgenic bananas in Uganda and the United States. The banane cultivated in Uganda has no A vitamin. That's why its modification is necessary. Moronta Barrios warns...
‘Women Work 2 to 3 Hours More Than Men’
From Venezuela, Marita Seara Fernández, a member of the collective Mujeres Construyendo [es] (Women Building), an online community that aims to end the digital gap among women, took part in the “First International Women Bloggers Conference” [es] in Mexico on October 2013. She notes that women barely represent 25 percent of...
Venezuela: Answering Dieterich
After reading an interview [es] on Spiegel Online to German sociologist Heinz Dieterich, who purposts “Socialism of the 21st Century“, Adriana Vigilanza commented [es] on the blog Apertura Venezuela what Dieterich said. Below, a couple of them. Adriana's comments are italicized: S O: What has happened that people are ready to...
Atletico Madrid Football Club Campaign
Américo Alvarado wrote on Barataria about the campaign by Atletico Madrid Football Club: Sometimes, we witness real life stories, worthy of the seventh art. And right now we are witnessing one of those stories, somehow we are living it in the thrilling world of football. Heroic and inspiring are just...
Venezuela: Pro-government Website Goes Briefly Offline
After website Aporrea [es] went briefly offline on May 10, 2014, a number of comments appeared on Twitter. Apparently the portal domain was withdrawn for a while, thus revealing that the page is hosted somewhere in the United States. To many people, that the most important portal for Venezuelan pro-government...
Venezuela: Confusion and Attacks Discussed on Twitter
Using the hashsags #UcabCaracas and #SOSColectivosDelTerrorAtacanUCAB [SOS terror groups attack UCAB], comments and images of assaults on students on protests that apparently happened at Andrés Bello Catholic University [es] in Caracas have been widely shared. Among those tweeting inside the university campus, that has suspended it academic activities, we find...
Protesting in Venezuela Will Require Authorization
(All links are in Spanish otherwise noted as [en] for English) As the protests [en] in Venezuela draw upon 100 continuous days of demonstrations, the Venezuelan Supreme Tribunal of Justice's recent verdict rules that the right to protest “is not an absolute right.” In order to carry out any type of demonstration, one needs to...
Venezuela: Conclusions on the Dialogue
(Links in Spanish are signaled as [es]) Daniel Lara Farías, @DLaraF [es], writes [es] on Infociudadanos about the dialogue [es] between the government and the opposition. He launches criticism against the president of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello (links added). Due to Diosdado's lack of credibility within the fraction of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela...
Venezuela Decoded, Making Sense of Conflicting Accounts
Back in February 2014, Venezuelan journalists Mary Avilés, Ana María Carrano and Martín Quiroga, currently living in Silicon Valley, were frustrated with trying to find out what was really happening back home. After first protests that month, Twitter had become the last independent channel for information and everyone was using...
PHOTOS: Protests in Caracas, April 1
Website PRODAVINCI posts nine pictures by Andrés Kerese taken during protests in Chacao, one of the subdivisions of the metropolitan district of Caracas, on Tuesday, April 1, 2014.
Coming Soon! Rising Voices Microgrants for Amazon Communities
Rising Voices will be launching a microgrant competition next month for digital citizen media projects in the Amazon region which is home to many indigenous communities. Thanks to Avina Americas, Fundación Avina, and the Skoll Foundation, we'll be offering this support with ongoing mentorship from the Global Voices community. Read...
