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MIAMI, Fla. (April 29, 2003) – Leading journalists and policy makers from
around the world will exchange perspectives on Latin America and the Caribbean
later this week at the 21st Annual Journalists and Editors Workshop hosted by
FIU’s Latin American and Caribbean Center.
The theme of this year’s conference will be U.S. and European views of
Latin American and the Caribbean and their impact on policy toward the region.
The conference brings together representatives of print and electronic media,
U.S. and Latin American policy makers and academia in a series of “on-the-record” panel
discussions about Latin American and the Caribbean issues.
Among this year’s panelists are reporters from The Wall Street Journal,
Le Monde in France, The Miami Herald, Spain’s El Pais, The Financial Times,
Radio Haiti Inter, The Dallas Morning News, Venezuela’s Globovision
and The St. Petersburg Times. Joining them will be key policy makers from
the U.S.
State Department, the Corporacion Andina de Fomento (Andean Development
Corporation) and the Brazilian Ambassador to the United States.
The keynote address will be delivered
Friday by Anoop Singh, director of the Western Hemisphere Department
for the International Monetary Fund.
Mr. Singh,
a graduate of the London School of Economics, plays a key role in IMF
operations in the Caribbean, Central America and South America.
This year’s conference features
a new special address Friday by Enrique Garcia, President of
the Corporacion Andina de Fomento on economic trends in
the Americas. Garcia, Bolivia’s former minister of planning and
coordination, sets the vision for the CAF, an Andean financial institution
that supports sustainable development in 16 Latin American and Caribbean
countries.
Garcia’s address will be followed
by a panel discussion of neo-liberal economics and their impact
on social policy in the Americas with journalists
from The Miami Herald, The Wall Street Journal and America TV, a
top Buenos Aires television station.
The Honorable Rubens Barbosa, Brazil’s Ambassador to the United States
will participate in a Friday panel discussion on the Bush Administration’s
vision of Latin America and the Caribbean. Also on Friday, two leading journalists
from Haiti, The Miami Herald’s Bogota correspondent and the
president of Globovision Television in Venezuela will discuss threats
to journalists covering
Latin America and the Caribbean.
Saturday’s focus will shift to the Caribbean. Mary Ellen Gilroy, director
of the U.S. State Department’s Office of Caribbean Affairs, will join a
panel examining security threats to the Caribbean region. A special panel on
Saturday will examine the possibility of national reconciliation in Cuba based
on the research of FIU sociologist Dr. Marifeli Perez-Stable. Her recently published
report, “Cuban National Reconciliation,” tackles the question: How
should a free and democratic Cuba deal with decades of human rights violations
and abuses by all sides? Along with Dr. Perez-Stable, the panel will include
U.S. State Department’s Kevin Whitaker, coordinator of the Office of Cuban
Affairs; the Havana-based reporter for the Dallas Morning News and the St. Petersburg
Times’ Latin American and Caribbean correspondent.
The Journalists and Editors Workshop
is co-sponsored by the University of Florida’s
Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS), Miami’s European Union Center,
The Miami Herald, The Sun Sentinel and ExxonMobil and others. The event is an
important part of LACC’s outreach activities, helping to
make the LACC/CLAS consortium one of only a handful of academic
institutions designated by the federal
government as a National Resource Center for language and area
studies.
The conference takes place at the
Marriott Biscayne Bay, 1633
N Bayshore Drive in downtown Miami. Panels will run Friday from
9
a.m. – 6 p.m. and Saturday
from 9 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. Copies of the agenda can be e-mailed
to members of the press; please e-mail your request to Maydel
Santana-Bravo at santanam@fiu.edu.
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