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The July 26 Coalition is hosting up to 20 Cuban scholars participating in the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) annual conference at Marriott Copley. Miguel Fraga, the First Secretary of the Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C. is also invited.

• Saturday, May 25, 2019, 8:00-10:00 pm
• Lenox Hotel’s City Bar reception room
• 1st floor, wheelchair accessible
• Complimentary appetizers, Cash bar
• RSVP: Margaret Witham, pegaleg45@gmail.com – (617) 905-9510

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• • “Imperialist War on Cuba and Venezuela: Afro-Caribbean Socialist Women Fight Back”
• Friday, May 24, 7:00 pm
• Encuento 5, 9A Hamilton Pl. (near Park St. T station)

Join the Boston branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Witness for Peace New England, the Boston Venezuela Solidarity Committee, and the July 26th Coalition for a special panel discussion on empire, race and socialism in Cuba and Venezuela. With

• Jourdy James Heredia, subdirector of the Global Economy Research Center in Havana;
• Gisela Arandia, president of the Cuban chapter of the Regional Articulation of Afro-descendants in Latin America and the Caribbean; and
• Jeanette Charles, international solidarity liaison with VenezuelAnalysis.com.

This event will be held in both English and Spanish; interpretation services will be provided. Food and drink will be served; unfortunately encuentro5 is not wheelchair accessible. Additional information about the presenters is in the full posting.

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Coming next month:

• The July 26th Coalition is hosting the Pastors for Peace Friendshipment Caravan
• Wednesday, June 19, 2019, 7:30 pm
• First Baptist Church Of Jamaica Plain
• 633 Center Street
• Featuring
• Gail Walker, Executive Director of IFCO/Pastors for Peace, “The Case for Ending the US Blockade Against Cuba”
• Rachel Domond, PSL Boston, on “The Recent Boston Urban Farmers Delegation to Cuba”
• Lee Schlenker, Witness for Peace New England, “Recently Returned: Update on Venezuela”

Continue reading →

Unfortunately filmmaker Eric Corvalán had to cancel plans for this trip at the last minute. We’ll try to get a copy the movie and show it at a later date.  

Award-winning Cuban filmmaker Eric Corvalán Pelle will introduce his 35-minute documentary Race (Raza): A Cuban Documentary in Colors (2009) on Monday, April 22, at 7:00 at Encuentro 5, 9A Hamilton Place, next to the Orpheum Theatre at the Park Street MBTA Station.     Continue reading →

Amidst new year tributes on the Cuban Revolution’s 60th anniversary, foreboding reports about Venezuela

New year congratulations and tributes to the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution have been posted from around the globe — e.g., from the National Network on Cuba (NNOC), the African Awareness Association, Let Cuba Live, the Republic of South Africa, Vietnam, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere.   There are celebrations occasioning the 50th anniversary of the Venceremos Bridge and invitations to join it in July — vb4cuba.com — and for IFCO/Pastors for Peace’s 38^th Friendshipment Caravan also in July. 

Mixed with these announcements, Havana was hit at the end of the month by a destructive tornado (note the link for support) — and foreboding reports about Venezuela.

What makes the Venezuela reports so worrisome is the complicity of so many seemingly progressive voices in U.S. aggressive militarism and avoidance of U.S. responsibility for the country’s destabilization.  FAIR (and more generally here), Democracy Now, NACLA have been especially informative in both providing thoughtful and detailed analyses of media complicity in U.S. aggression as well the on-going struggles there.

Notable is the special February 4th weekly Resumen Latinoamericano English Edition (on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook as well as at resumen-english.org), issue 302, devoted entirely to Venezuela.

Join Witness for Peace at encuentro 5, Sunday, December 2, 6:00-8:30 for a community dinner, screening of Tierralismo (2014) about the 26 acre farming co-op on the outskirts of Havana, and dialogue with urban farmers of color from Boston about their upcoming delegation to Cuba in December.

This fundraiser and send-off event for the delegation, with a $10 suggested donation at the door for food and the screening, will help to cover participants’ delegation fees for meals, lodging, transportation, interpretation and guide services, program and entrance costs, direct support to Cuban farmers, popular educators and organizers on the ground, and extensive reading and activist tools for delegates. More on the trip at its Facebook site.

See, too, the flyer about the WFP March 2019 Arts, Culture and U.S.-Cuba Relations Delegation trip here.

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We’re interested in hearing from anyone attending the Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies November 30 program at Harvard on Cuba Studies Graduate Student Symposium: New Voices in Cuba Studies. Contact info@july26.org.

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Just in from Judy Robbins and our colleagues on the Maine solidarity committee — The Let Cuba Live web site has been updated with:

• Articles written by the Cuban doctors returning from the Mais Medicos program in Brazil
• Coverage in “Our America” of increasing intervention in Latin America by the Empire and its allies
• Several new pieces in “News and Views” by Tom Whitney, Arnold August and others
• p.s. does everybody know that JetBlue.com now flies from Boston to Havana ?!?!

New Cuba President Miguel Díaz-Canel Comes to the U.S.

On Monday, September 17, there will be a live broadcast from Radio Havana, from 10 am (EDT) to 12 noon, a Twitter Storm and online forum, “The World Against The Blockade” that can be followed on Facebook and Twitter @Siempreconcuba. More info here.

From Monday, September 24, through Friday, September 28, a week-long series of Days of Action Against the Blockade will take place in Washington, DC featuring congressional visits, rallies, movies, and other events. There is more info on the pages of its main co-sponsors, The International Committee and the Institute for Policy Studies.

On Wednesday, September 26 at 8:00 at Riverside Church in New York City a special program will welcome new Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel leading a delegation to the opening of the 73^rd session of the UN General Assembly. The publicity/outreach for the special program here; Díaz-Canel’s speeches of the day here.

On Friday and Saturday, September 29 and 30, three Cuba films will be shown as part of the Boston Latino International Film Festival:
xxx* “The Rest I Make Up” – Fri, 5:00-7:00, Brandeis, Wasserman Cinematheque
xxx* “Los Viejos” – Fri, 8:00-10:00, Emerson Paramount Center, Bright Family Screening xxxxxRoom, and Sat, 7:00-9:00 – Brandeis, Wasserman Cinematheque
xxx* “Voices of the Sea” – Fri, 7:30-9:00, Harvard, Tsai Auditorium, David Rockefeller   xxxxxCenter for Latin American Studies and Sat, 5:00-7:00, Northeastern, West Village xxxxxF, Room 020
More info about these films is available at www.bliff.org.

Coming Soon:

Friday-Sunday, October 19-21, National Network on Cuba Annual Conference, Minneapolis, Augsburg University – notes and photos available here.

December 12-21, “Sustaining Food and Farming in Cuba,” Witness for Peace delegation, registration extended — more info here.

On the May Day Brigade, the Venceremos Brigade, and the Latin American Medical School

Thursday, July 26, 7:00, Encuentro 5: Claudia Kaiser-Lenoir leads a program for the annual July 26th Cuban Revolution Day celebration, the 65th anniversary of the July 26, 1953 rebel attack led by Fidel and Raul Castro on the Moncada military barracks. Claudia is the co-founder of the Latin American Studies program at Tufts and has traveled to Cuba on many occasions. She’ll talk about the perspective from this year’s May Day Brigade.

The program will also celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Venceremos Brigade and its ongoing work with two early Brigade alums, Richard Cambridge and Greg LaMotta. Dr. Tia Tucker, a graduate of Escuela Latino Americana de Medicina, ELAM, featured in the June Pastors for Peace program, currently serving in Cambridge, will also speak.

Friday, June 29, at 7:00 pm — First Baptist Church, 633 Centre St., Jamaica Plain

The July 26th Coalition is hosting a gathering in honor of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO)/Pastors for Peace, based in New York City, a group that has long worked throughout the country and the world to end the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba. Since 1992 has taken yearly Friendshipment Caravans to Cuba without a license as a protest and conscious act of civil disobedience.

Journalist ​Cheryl LaBash, one of the chairpersons of the National Network on Cuba, will introduce Dare to Dream: Cuba’s Latin American Medical School, a new documentary about Escuela Latino Americana de Medicina (ELAM), the training facility that provides free medical education and graduates over 1000 new doctors every year, from countries all over the world including the United States. Cheryl works in Michigan with Doctors 4 Detroit supporting the ELAM scholarship program, Detroit area students and graduates.