lunes, 1 de diciembre de 2008

Cuban Chess Earns Prestige Despite Failures

By Amauris Betancourt.
The practice of chess in Cuba achieves its turning point with Capablanca's history. His Grand Master's title, the first one belonging to the Island, was topped by his reign in worldwide chess at the beginning of the 20th century. It was not until the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, in 1959, when conditions were created to foster this sport. Nowadays it lives prosperity and wins over fans in times when there is, in men and women, the greater amount of internationally acknowledged titles.
National Chess Championship Holguín 2008.The role of Cuban teams in the last International Chess Olympics in Dresden could be better according to press experts though some think it good. The interest for this sport grows up according to the increasing number of followers in informative search about the performance of both teams.

Leinier Domínguez did not lose any game and Lázaro Bruzón seems to wake up from a worrying lethargy. However, they both went down in ELO average. Women made the news however; Lisandra Ordaz and Oleini Linares in a positive way.

The good news in the female team was starred, fisrt of all, by the IM Oleiny Linares ( 2262 ). The born-in-Santiago de Cuba Linares got the silver medal at the fourth chessboard with 9 points out of 10, only outshined by the Polish Joana Madjan ( 2284 ). Oleiny played for a 2530 average ELO, a higher level than her current average. He added 41 points to her ELO.

The role of the Cuban Eastern-born Oleiny set the difference in the Cuban team and was the most productive in the Dresden's meeting. The IM Lisandra Ordaz (2306) classified among the outstanding players behind the second chessboard and made a good impression. The GM Maritza Arribas (2303), present-day national female chess champion, did not play as usual and did not put in the points for the sake of the team’s better final position. The GM Sulennis Piña (2286), playing at the third chessboard, had a poor performance as well as a decreasing ELO average. She made 3.5 points in 8 games representing the Cuban team.Yaniet Marrero, change player, did little too for the Cuban females and her present-day ELO went down 16.5 points. Such a performance kept Cuba anyways at the head of Latin America, even playing at a lesser level according to its current possibilities. The future of Cuban chess has to focus on the necessary international training to get used to it to be able to achieve better results internationally.

sábado, 29 de noviembre de 2008

Fidel Castro Gives Away a Hospital to Holguín

By Amauris Betancourt
“…as a reward and a motivation to the people from Holguín…” said Fidel Castro Ruz ten years ago when the Lucía Iñiguez Landín Clinic and Surgical Hospital started off with medical services. The health care was a field to improve in the Revolution to come according to the program advanced in The History will absolve me in 1953.
The health center gives also medical aids to the provinces of Granma and Las Tunas, stated Dr. Teresa Guillén, director of the hospital, when expressing her satisfaction at the head of a team where human and moral values prevail.
Holguín's Surgical Hospital has been successful in renal transplants, in general surgery, in the introduction of new surgical techniques – videoendoscopics, for example –, and the only institution in Cuba in the practice of 24-hour-a-day minimum access surgery, said doctor second grade specialist surgeon Rosell Batista Feria, hospital founder.
Imagenology, privileged area, includes technologies such as Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, mono and multi-cut computerized Axial Scanners, Densitometers, Doopler and conventional Ultrasound, X-Rays among others. The provincial Ophthalmology Unit, inaugurated recently and updated with the most modern technology like the Excimer Laser introduced today, has assisted and intervened surgically about three thousand patients in less than a year.

People from Holguín thank and congratulate the Lucía Iñiguez hospital's working people.

jueves, 27 de noviembre de 2008

Rene Pérez Massola, Art in the Lens

By Amauris Betancourt.

Today’s Cuban press photography profits from creative times, alongside high aesthetic values. It prevails in art galleries all over the island, in competitive or non-competitive events, devoted to the lens's image. Press photography aesthetic level stands out and outdoes, in numbers, the purely artistic proposals on exhibit these days. Rene Pérez Massola, photoreporter for the Trabajadores Weekly, makes justice to this assumption.

And art is by no means excluded when it comes to photojournalism. The difference lies only upon intention and function. Art photography focuses on the purely aesthetic matter and leans on codes and a language appealing to intellectual sensibility while press photography calls upon objectivity from an unmasked reality. The former, more subjective resulting from human worries, abstracted to praise, to embellish or to criticize, in order to express the soul; the latter, objective to inform and to show with its tools a comprehensible message the best possible way.

However the frontier between these photographic genders fades away sometimes. It seems to come about with this young Cuban photographer who, aided by his web blog where he shows his best pictures – a real fortune and delight for photo-loving people –, that ironically, for one reason or another, do not get published in Cuban papers.

When visiting his blog recently, part of my daily habits, I found a very well interwoven photo-story that served as encouragement and leitmotiv to share it with the net users.

The first assessment dwells on the graphic strength of the photo-report and on the topic – a very common topic were it not for its importance after the disasters brought about
by the hurricane hits – focused on a very common place activity in the island these days: farming recovery, the potato harvest specifically, in honor of the 49th anniversary of the first voluntary work summoned by Che. And speaking of his hurricane images the ones after Paloma in the province of Camagüey are worth looking at.

Convincing photo composition stands out, as well as the right use of planes, the timely change of shooting angles and the use of symbolism to provide a context to his pictures where he avoids commonly shots. It is also worth adding his relevant use of light, contrasts, tones and shades.

And to top it all his photo editing, or rather self-editing, work adds up to it when choosing the right pictures to get across better the message of the story.

Rene Massola’s photography wins over followers continuously. The hits and comments to his work in the blog show it, supported by the appropriate use of new technologies and its associated potentialities. Art and profession get along harmoniously in Massola's lens.