Smile/ Hunter Baker
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COVER PHOTO SMILE / HUNTER BAKER is photo was taken in March of 2012 in Havana, Cuba. is trip was part of a class in Tisch Open Arts called Topics in Cuban Culture, in which we studied the history, politics, religion and expressive culture of Cuba prior to traveling there. is photo is in Habana Vieja, or Old Havana. EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ANITA ROJAS CARROLL ADVISING EDITOR MAGGIE CARTER MANAGING EDITORS HENRY TOPPER DECLAN GALVIN ALEXANDRA KELLY HANSEN KIARA WHITNEY COPY EDITOR MATTHEW BERENBAUM CREATIVE DIRECTOR ELISA YI ii JOURNAL OF GLOBAL AFFAIRS | VOLUME 8 | FALL 2013 DALA TOWNSHIP, YANGON, MYANMAR (BURMA) / NADÈGE GIRAUDET At dusk, a young boy walks through his village in Dala Township. Rice elds surround houses on stilts opposite the river from the city of Yangon, Myanmar’s former capital. July 2012. iii 1 RAP Y REVOLUCIÓN: AFROCUBANISMO AND POST-REVOLUTIONARY CUBA / ANITA ROJAS CARROLL 14 THE TRIALS OF THE WRETCHED / RHONDA KHALIFEH 21 REHABILITATING CHILD SOLDIERS: ALLEVIATING VIOLATIONS OF HEALTH AND HUMAN RIGHTS / ALIX COHEN 31 PHOTO SUBMISSION 1 / DIANE KANG 33 EDUARDITO / GABRIELA GARCIA 35 CIVIL SOCIETY OCCUPIES THE RIO+ 20 EARTH SUMMIT / MIKE SAMDEL 40 STATE-SPONSORED VIOLENCE: BETWEEN TERROR AND COUNTERTERROR / NICHOLAS GLASTONBURY 47 CROSS CLASS OPPOSITION TO HUSNI MUBARAK / JULIAN PHILLIPS 57 BITTERSWEET: CHOCOLATE TOURISM IN THE CARIBBEAN / MAGGIE CARTER 63 KASHMIR AND OPPOSING NATIONALISMS / BEN KELLERMAN 69 PHOTO SUBMISSION 2 / DANIELLE GRANT TABLE OF CONTENTS iv TAIPEI GAY PRIDE PARADE / DANIELLE GRANT Taipei, Taiwan 2012 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR In its founding in 2010, the Journal of Global Aairs began as a small collaborative eort amongst a group of frien ds with shared interests and goals to create an integrative, globally conscious student-run conference, which included a supplementary publication. ree years later, the Journal of Global Aairs has grown into an organization that is truly Gallatin in its interdisciplinary nature: integrating symposiums, panel discussions and conferences, and lm screenings with a publication whose denition of “global aairs” ranges from the political, the critical and theoretical, to creative expression and visual art. is edition has traveled great lengths to reach the point of publication. Aer working together throughout dierent countries, continents and time zones, our team pulled together to create yet another beautiful, thoughtful and synthetic issue. Our issue travels throughout Cuba, the Middle East, Brazil, Egypt, Jamaica, Pakistan, Malaysia, and countless other locations, exploring topics from terrorism, child soldiers, ecotourism, hip-hop, and the intense connections formed between places, people, and memory. Each article and each photograph portrays true passion and the hunger for intellectual curiosity that Gallatin encourages. Let this issue serve as a visual and literary journey throughout a vast and complicated world, seen through countless dierent lenses, stories told through words and images alike. Keep searching for more questions, keep writing, keep thinking, keep moving and traveling and documenting everything you see and hear and wonder. I am so honored to be editor-in-chief my senior year at Gallatin. I am proud of this beautiful and thought-provoking publication, and look forward to a fruitful and inspiring year. Happy reading, Anita Rojas Carroll Editor-in-Chief vi JOURNAL OF GLOBAL AFFAIRS | FALL 2013 EDITION RAP Y REVOLUCIÓN: AFROCUBANISMO AND POST-REVOLUTIONARY CUBA ANITA ROJAS CARROLL Rapper Julio Cardenas, speaking of his introduction to hip-hop through the song “Boricuas on da Set” by Fat Joe: “ ‘ Conyo, ‘ta Buena,’ (‘Damn, that’s good’) I said when I heard it. It was a moment that touched my heart and opened my mind. I was hearing a lot of music from Miami radio, LL Cool J, 2 Live Crew, Queen Latifah, Monie Love, but the song inspired me. I thought it could really be the Latino-American-Cuban connection… When Fat Joe said, ‘ Oh, Boricuas, clap your hands, I started saying, ‘ Todo el mundo con las manos arriba, negros, mulatos, blancos.’ (‘Everybody with their hands up, black, white, mixed.’) at was the basis of my rst rap, ‘ Hip-Hop Es Mi Cultura.’ (‘Hip-Hop Is My Culture’) It was an old-school rap, but it reached the people.” - Excerpt from Close to the Edge, In Search of the Global Hip-Hop Generation In June of 1961, Fidel Castro delivered his hop in Cuba. famous speech “Words to the Intellectuals,” in rough my research, I intend to which he highlighted cinema, television and explore rap cubano as a manifestation of the arts as important vehicles for propaganda nationalism, identity, and sociopolitical and “the ideological construction of the discourse. Specically, I am interested in its p e op l e .” i ere is no doubt that Cuban culture representation of the post-Revolutionary and identity are markedly shaped by the visual Cuban state’s relationship with art in the and performing arts - a fact that has provoked public sphere. I have found that these much scholarly interest in the somewhat questions can be examined through schemas contradictory relationship between artistic of race, socialism, and globalization. I will expression and the state. An examination of begin by analyzing the specic conditions history shows varying degrees of censorship in which Cuban hip-hop emerged, and by and freedom in the arts, shaping a society using the characteristics of the Special Period in which the artist is both autonomous and as a basis for examining rap’s representation dependent. e Special Period, from 1991- of Afrocentrism, politics and the global 1998, resulted in drastic changes in every market, and its expression of the conicts of aspect of life in Cuba, including the arts, as Revolution and counterrevolution, socialism well as Cuba’s position in the global market. and capitalism, race and nationalism, and It was an era of crisis, contradictions, and autonomy and hegemony. Rap cubano is a confusion, but it also marked the birth of hip- genre of crossing borders and contradictions. 1 RAP Y REVOLUCIÓN: AFROCUBANISMO AND POST-REVOLUTIONARY CUBA | ANITA ROJAS CARROLL LA HABANA / NILI BLANCK It is a generational phenomenon that seeks movement in New York. In the 1960s, black to express the narrative of a displaced and communities in New York were moved from questioning youth. their homes by slum-clearance programs ough the Cuban Revolution was and were relocated to areas such as the South generally seen as an empowering and Bronx. Displacement ruined long-existing equalizing force for most Afro-Cubans, the community structures, and hip-hop became a Special Period (1991-1998) subverted many way for displaced New Yorkers to voice their of the Afro-Cuban revolutionary ideals of frustrations about marginalization and racism equality and nationalism. e demographic and to form new communities.iii restructuring of urban areas resulted in an People of all social levels were relocated increase in racial inequality, causing Afro- to the Alamar district of Havana, but the Cuban youth to identify closely with the majority were people from marginalized black themes presented in American rap music. In communities and from slum areas. Isolated the early 90’s, large numbers of primarily black from the city, with fewer opportunities for Cubans were moved to the outskirts of Havana, employment and higher education, Alamar resulting in a weakened sense of community residents found it dicult to recreate a sense of and fewer economic opportunitiesii the community.iv e need to rebuild community same conditions that spawned the hip-hop and personal bonds gave rise to the popularity 2 JOURNAL OF GLOBAL AFFAIRS | VOLUME 8 | FALL 2013 of hip-hop music among the young Afro- policies were most strongly felt by blacks. Cuban residents of Alamar. It was also easier to vi e legalization of the dollar created a gain access to Miami radio stations in Alamar dichotomy of those who had access and those and there was less social control than in the who did not. White people usually received city. Cuban hip-hop was a local reaction to family remittances from the United States, displacement and impoverishment. Although while blacks did not. In the tourism sector, Alamar is considered the birthplace of Cuban blacks were usually excluded because they hip-hop, rap music and hip hop culture also lacked the education or proper appearance to experienced rapid popularity in urban areas interact with tourists. Racial prejudice became that mainly consisted of black working-class increasingly visible and accepted in the Special communities, including Old Havana, Central Period. Havana, Santo Suarez and Playa.v Inspired by racial democracy, the Cuban e crisis of the Special Period forced revolution attempted to create a “color- the government to adopt policies of austerity blind society.”vii As in many Latin American in order to increase Cuba’s competitiveness countries characterized by miscegenation, in the global economy, but anthropologist nation subsumes race in Cuba. Although and historian Alejandro de la Fuente argues the revolutionary government desegregated that the hardships that resulted from these schools, parks and recreational facilities, and oered housing and education to black Cubans, it also closed down Afro-Cuban clubs and the black press. de la Fuente believes that racially-based mobilization was spawned by contradictions in the Special Period: “e revival of racism and racially discriminatory practices under the Special Period has led to a growing resentment and resistance in the