"He can't make it, can you?" pleads the headline on a poster of an emaciated man. On the walls in FIU's breezeways, wedged between flyers and promos for South Beach clubs, the posters grab your attention. In case you've wondered, this is the work of FIU's branch of the Free Cuba Foundation (FCF), an organization credited for the release of a handful of prisoners of conscience languishing in Cuba's penal system. The group has coordinated several such efforts, as well as a flotilla that protested the sinking of a tugboat by the Cuban government.
But these days, FCF is expanding its customary role with Yara , a journal that includes a blend of commentary and literary contributions from young Cubans and Cuban-Americans.
"We are interested in using Yara as a forum to have a conversation on Cuba inviting all sides to express and defend their points of view on everything," explained John Suarez, Yara contributor and FCF member.
In addition to its usual political commentary, FCF offers a unique glimpse of contemporary popular and political culture, a view we do not often see from Miami's vantage point. FCF makes an effort to maintain contact with Cubans in the U.S. and abroad. This is how FCF keeps the FIU community informed of recent developments in Cuban social and political culture.
Yara intersperses interviews with political prisoners with features on Cuban Music, which runs from one end of the spectrum to the other - from traditional salsa to folk fusion bands like Nil Lara who are bucking traditional stereotypes about Cuban music.
"It seems that Cuban popular culture is entering a moment of transition," noted Suarez. "These moments of transition lead to an outpouring of literature, music, and the remembrance of important anniversaries."
The appearance of styles that range from folk to punk (especially as part of underground youth protest) show the cultural modernism of the island that Yara contributors are not only witnessing, but living. Its pages teem with cutting reviews of exiled musicians that appeal to their generation.
Yet, in popular culture there is plenty of looking back these days.
"The rebirth of Cuban music and sounds of Cuba from the '50s are part of this phenomenon," said Suarez. Yara's portrait of the cultural atmosphere inside Cuba is one of manic activity, despite the current regime.
Of course, Yara is also the forefront of the cultural fusion that is Miami. With various backgrounds, Yara's group represents all the distinctive facets of Miami's Cuban community. Contributing editors Viviana Mendiola and Susana Mendiola dish about their bicultural experiences. Editor Isabel M. Estrada, a Havana native, provides rare social insight of the university environment inside Cuba. With writers whose majors range from investigative journalism to international relations, Yara attains its mission of featuring essays representative of the many faces of the Cuban presence here in Florida.
For more information on Yara or the FCF visit http://www.fiu.edu/~fcf/ or e-mail them at fcf@fiu.edu