A Cuban musician barred from the US by the administration of former US president George W. Bush performed in Washington on Thursday and had lunch with a White House official in a new sign of a thaw in US-Cuba relations.
Singer-songwriter Carlos Varela, whose songs capture the disenchantment of young Cubans, was given a three-week visa by the administration of US President Barack Obama, which has sought to improve ties with Cuba’s communist government.
Varela met the White House official for lunch at a Washington restaurant, according to the organizers of his trip, the Center for Democracy in the Americas, a liberal group that seeks the lifting of the US travel ban and trade embargo. The group did not identify the official.
Varela also met with two members of Congress, Democrats Jan Schakowsky and John Tierney.
“We don’t have 80 television channels in Cuba, so we have nothing else to do but sing to each other about what we do,” Varela, 46, said at a church where he gave a talk on Cuba’s musical culture and performed several songs.
He said Cuba’s radio stations did not play his more critical songs about the frustrations and dreams of his generation. He also criticized the travel restrictions between the two countries that began before he was born.
Varela, who last visited the US in 1998, hopes to bring his band on a US tour next year.
Next week at Jackson Browne’s studio in Los Angeles, he plans to mix his eighth album, which he recorded at his home in Havana and produced in Canada.
In 2004, the Bush administration severely restricted cultural exchanges with Cuba, and denied Varela a visa to perform in Miami, even though 1,700 tickets had been sold.
Obama has lifted travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans and restarted migration talks with Havana, but he says the trade embargo will stay in place until democratic reforms are seen in Cuba’s one-party state.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS