Rap and Censorship in Cuba: Rhyming at Alamar’s Winter Rap Festival

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The Havana Times, that ever reliable information source on Cuba, alerted me on the holding of the Alamar Winter Rap Festival. Initially organized in 1995 as an underground music festival by Cubans who were influenced by the rap and hip-hop movement in the United States in the backdrop of the hardship of the so-called Periodo Especial, it has since become an officially-sanctioned event under the Cuban Ministry of Culture. Read More ...

In Memory of the Philippine-American War: Assimilating the Little Brown Brother

The American flag flies over captured Fort San Antonio de Abad in Manila in 1899.

On 04 February, few noticed the passing of the anniversary of the Philippine-American War (which is known as the Philippine Insurrection in the United States). By and large, the war has become a mere footnote in history, which is not really surprising as the Philippines has become one of America’s closest allies in the Asia Pacific region. Filipinos also like to emphasize their colonial links to the United States as a selling point to attract business process outsourcing (BPO) investments. If they were alive today, Theodore Roosevelt and William McKinley would be proud. Their theory of how the White Man would turn the Little Brown Brother into a Civilized Being through a policy called Benevolent Assimilation has just been validated. Read More ...