Chatham House is an esteemed think tank where I engage in discussions on international issues, particularly on Venezuela. Today’s meeting covers U.S. policies and Trump’s view on Venezuelan narcotrafficking, which many believe lacks foundation. The session explores regional influences, Cuba’s potential role, and the broader implications for U.S.-Latin America relations.
Chatham House is the Royal Institute of International Affairs. It is based in St. James’ Square, Mayfair, London, a short walk from Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square. I have been a member of Chatham House for several months but with me being based in Wales all of my interactions thus far have…
View More Chatham House: How Effective Are The United States’ Sanctions? 19.06.2023
The Cuban Revolution was an earth-shattering event with huge consequences internationally, not just in Latin America, but further afield. I felt the impact myself whilst travelling across Scandinavia in 2005. I’d run out of clean underwear and, while scanning the aisles of a Göteborg department store, I came face to…
View More Guerrilla Heroico
Graham Greene delivers here a classic espionage novel, fiction, set in Cuba around the time of the revolution, Greene writes in his knowledgeable subject area of expertise a comedy account of a chance vacuum salesman being recruited by Mi6 as their ‘Man in Havana.’ Struggling lone parent Wormold runs a…
View More Review: Our Man in Havana – by Graham Greene
David Kilcullen has had a few books included on my shelf recently. As a military expert on Guerrilla Warfare, I was thrilled to find this new book on the Colombian Civil War which he coauthors with a group of specialists who went on extensive field research around Colombia, with a…
View More Review: A Great Perhaps? Colombia: Conflict and Convergence – by Dickie Davis, David Kilcullen, Greg Mills and David Spencer
Joey is a teacher of mine at MLANG in Cardiff University. This is his first book. It explores prison writing in Latin America and looks at abolitionism of the penal system and draws on some really rather delicate themes that expose the dark brutality of prisons in a developing continent…
View More Review: Prison Writing of Latin America by Joey Whitfield
Once the richest country in Latin America, Venezuela is now broke thanks to the collapse of the oil industry and general mismanagement of the economy. For the last 6 years people has been starving, Caracas has been the most violent city in the world and the government has been focusing…
View More A Tribute To Venezuela’ at Kapu, Cardiff, 14.11.18
The Cuban author offers a postmodern view of the Caribbean. It is a sociocultural study that encompasses aspects of history, economics, sociology, cultural anthropology, psychoanalysis, literary theory, and non-linear mathematics, incorporating chaos theory. The book’s aims and theories are laid out in a flowing introduction whereby Benítez-Rojo’s notion of the…
View More Review: The Repeating Island – The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective – by Antonio Benítez-RojoThis is an enthralling, well-researched book, that reveals many unknown new facts about the global cocaine industry. The book opens with a chapter focussing on the USA, the biggest market for the Cocaine industry, where 66% of Cocaine users exist. We then enter into the producing and transit phase of…
View More Review: Cocaine Nation – How The White Trade Took Over The World – by Tom Feiling
This book is based on a series of interviews given by Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chavez, to the daughter of Che Guevara, Aleida. Although the book doesn’t cover the entire period of Chavez’ rule up until his demise, it presents a wonderful tale and grasps fundamental insight into the way the…
View More Review : Chávez: Venezuela and the New Latin America – by Aleida Guevara
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway My rating: 4 of 5 stars This Hemingway adventure is set in Cuba and involves a wily sailor who is involved in the murky smuggling business between Havana and his home port in Florida. Harry Morgan is a man in conflict with…
View More Review: To Have and Have Not – by Ernest Hemingway
The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course, and Legacy by Marifeli Pérez-Stable My rating: 3 of 5 stars I’m doing a university essay question on the Cuban Revolution so felt that this was a good text to read ahead of doing my assignment. The book certainly covers the Cuban Revolution and its…
View More Review: The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course, and Legacy – by Marifeli Pérez-Stable
The fourth edition of Waves, Wez G’s weekly chill podcast… The groove is again global in this episode of Waves… we travel through Arabia and then across the Atlantic to Cuba, with some nice sounds from more general chill artists also. :::Tracklist::: # Artist name Track name 1 Passionista Her,…
View More Waves 004
Wez G Sessions Episode 20 crams a full range of diverse sounds into an hour of joy. :::Tracklist::: # Artist name Track name 1 Amy Winehouse Tears Dry On Their Own 2 Wu Tang Clan Protect Ya Neck 3 Tears For Fears Everybody Wants To Rule The World 4 Morcheeba…
View More Wez G Sessions – Episode 20
Summer is upon us. Festival season, bar-b-q’s, beaches and sunshine. This mix has a lot of remixes of big bands and also showcases some of the talent we are working with at Shuffle. Following the tracklisting are links to buy some of the tracks. Also – this is the first…
View More Wez G – Summer Shiftin’ (DJ Set 22)