Daily Archives: April 1, 2016

Nationality + Migration

Interregional News | Cuban Migrants

Surge in Cuban emigration spurs resentment in U.S. and bottleneck throughout Central America
  • Taking advantage of Cuba’s 2012 removal of exit visas, more than 43,500 Cubans arrived in 2015, a 78% increase over 2014 and nearly six times as many as in 2011.
  • Following an airlift of Cuban migrants traveling to the U.S. through Central America stuck at a closed Nicaraguan border, Costa Rica closed its borders to Cuban migrants, trapping thousands across its border with Panama in towns like Paso Canoas and Puerto Obaldia.
  • With the reestablishment of U.S.-Cuba diplomatic relations, some have begun calling for a revision of the immigration policy that fast-tracks permanent residency for Cuban immigrants over others, including those from violence-riddled Central America.

Read more:
“Cuban migration to US continues to swell on fears of losing privileges” (AP via The Guardian)
“Bound for U.S., Cuban migrants are stuck in Central America” (CNN)
“Cuban immigrants face resentment in Texas over ‘preferential treatment’” (The Guardian)

(Image Credit: Ilana Panich-Linsman/New York Times/Redux/eyevine, via The Guardian)

Race + Color + Ethnicity

Zimbabwe News | Black & White

Zimbabwe looks to black farmers to provide reparations to displaced white farmers
  • As the Zimbabwean government struggles to keep its economy afloat, it has toyed with shifting the burden of reparation to black farmers, who lease land from the government, through a compensation fund created through their rent payments.
  • White farmers were displaced as a part of a contentious indigenization program that saw massive land redistribution beginning in 2000, promoted as a corrective to the expropriation of land from black families under colonialism.
  • More than 6,000 farms remain for reparation assessment, with only 240 white farmers having begun to receive payment.

Read more:
“We can’t pay: Zimbabwe farmers resist compensating evicted white landowners” (Reuters)
“Zimbabwe May Ask Black Farmers to Help Repay Ousted Whites” (Bloomberg)
“Zimbabwe begins talks to compensate evicted white farmers” (AfricaNews)

(Image Credit: via AfricaNews)

Nationality + Migration, Race + Color + Ethnicity

Zimbabwe News | Black, White & Foreigners

Deadline for Zimbabwe’s controversial corporate indigenization plan passes
  • President Robert Mugabe has pushed a contentious plan to have all companies operating in Zimbabwe—including major multinational corporations—comply with a 2008 law to transfer majority shares to black Zimbabweans to “indigenize” their local firms.
  • The plan was conceived as a corrective to colonial-era economic exclusion and is a follow-up to the ongoing land reform program that has transferred farm ownership from white to black Zimbabweans.
  • It is unclear how many companies, faced with the revocation of their operating licenses, have complied to date, and many concerned that the program discourages foreign direct investment.

Read more:
“Zimbabwe deadline for firms to be black-owned passes” (BBC)
“Zimbabwe says foreign banks, miners fail to comply on selling stakes to locals” (Reuters)
“Zimbabwe: Diamond firms comply with indigenization law” (Deutsche Welle)

Race + Color + Ethnicity

U.S. Feature | Black

The Precarity of Black Urban Farming in Detroit

“If we want a stake in the process of controlling our own life, we’ve got to own land. If we are to create a society that values black life, we cannot ignore the role of food and land.”

With de-urbanization over the last few decades having freed up tracts of land both large and small, Detroit would seem to be prime real estate for local urban farmers, a rare chance to bring significant agriculture to a mid-sized American city. Given Detroit’s predominantly black population, it would also appear to be a golden opportunity to reconnect urban African Americans with their agricultural history. Urbanization, proprietary exclusion, and cultural shame from centuries of forced and coerced labor have contributed to a widening gap between African Americans and agriculture. Black land ownership, one of the few historical forms of intergenerational black wealth, has decreased dramatically over the last century, from 20 million acres in 1910 to 8 million today. The situation in Detroit, which opens access to farming without ownership, doesn’t look posed to fix that.

Public Radio International features the stories of the black urban farmers of Detroit facing difficult odds as the city hoards land titles and wealthy outside speculators buy up the remaining deeds in controversial deals that further marginalize Detroit natives.

Read more:
“Black farmers in Detroit are growing their own food. But they’re having trouble owning the land.” (Public Radio International)

Additional:
D-Town Farm
Keep Growing Detroit
Earthworks Urban Farm
“7 Urban Farmers You Should Know” (The Root)
“Black Farmers to buy from instead of Whole Foods” (Blavity)

(Image Credit: Cybelle Codish/PRI)

Gender

Canada News | Women

Elective abortion services to return to Prince Edward Island for first time in more than three decades
  • The Prince Edward Island government announced that it has asked Health PEI to plan a new women’s reproductive health clinic, which will offer medical and surgical abortion procedures among other health services.
  • PEI has not offered on-island elective abortion procedures since 1982, forcing its residents to travel to New Brunswick or Nova Scotia for healthcare.
  • Activists had threatened the provincial government with a lawsuit, which few thought would withstand scrutiny under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Read more:
“PEI drops opposition to abortion, plans to provide access by year’s end” (The Globe and Mail)
“Abortion services coming to P.E.I., province announces” (CBC News)
“Canada’s Prince Edward Island ends abortion ban in province” (The Guardian)

(Image Credit: The Washington Post/Getty Images, via CBC News)