The Petronio Álvarez Festival will visit Africa - Cali - Colombia

The Petronio Álvarez Pacific Music Festival will be present from next week at the African Performing Arts Market (Masa).

The organization of the contest, managed by the researcher Germán Patiño Ossa, will bring all its cultural heritage, as well as the richness of its sounds and the ancestrality of its flavors to this event that will take place in the Ivory Coast, from this Saturday until the 12th of same month.

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The director of Petronio Álvarez, Ana Copete, explained that el Masa is a cultural platform aimed at promoting African performing arts, whose main purpose is to support issues related to the creativity and productions of black demonstrations.

Given this scenario and as a way to recognize the cultural process that has been advanced since the Colombian Pacific festival, the Masa decided to have it among its guests.

“We are going to have the opportunity to tell programmers from all over the African continent what Petronio Álvarez is and the opportunities for the exchange of knowledge that we have, opening new possibilities of circulation. This is how we are expanding our twinning networks with Afro-diasporic platforms in the world”, affirmed Copete.

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The Cali Secretariat of Culture highlights the leadership of this Cali cultural platform, which, under the direction of Ana Copete, has gained significant momentum since 2020, taking into account the difficulties generated by the pandemic in the world. That is why he assured that he will bring to the Masa the emblematic elements of the coastal culture, as well as his experiences.

Ana Copete, director of the festival.

Photo:

COURTESY ANA COPETE

“Entering these international cultural circuits represents an important step for Petronio Álvarez, who for this 2022 has announced an innovative, powerful version, which is committed to the expansion of culture and the circulation of its artists on the world scene”, they highlight from the Secretary of Culture of the city.

The organization of the Petronio Álvarez Festival is already working on what will be this year’s edition. One of his first decisions was to have a friendly bet with the environment and in its gastronomic component.

“We dream of an oxygenated Petronium and that is why we have coordinated with those who know that the Festival says goodbye to single-use plastic. This is an exercise in responsibility with the planet and pedagogy towards the entire country,” argued the Secretary of Culture of Cali Ronald Mayorga.

CALI

50 Years after Nixon Visit, US-China Ties as Fraught as Ever

BEIJING — At the height of the Cold War, U.S. President Richard Nixon flew into communist China’s center of power for a visit that, over time, would transform U.S.-China relations and China’s position in the world in ways that were unimaginable at the time.

The relationship between China and the United States was always going to be a challenge, and after half a century of ups and downs, is more fraught than ever. The Cold War is long over, but on both sides there are fears a new one could be beginning.

Despite repeated Chinese disavowals, America worries that the democratic-led world that triumphed over the Soviet Union could be challenged by the authoritarian model of a powerful and still-rising China.

“The U.S.-China relationship has always been contentious but one of necessity,” said Oriana Skylar Mastro, a China expert at Stanford University. “Perhaps 50 years ago the reasons were mainly economic. Now they are mainly in the security realm. But the relationship has never — and will never — be easy.”

FILE – Then U.S. President Richard Nixon and then first lady Pat Nixon lead the way as they take a tour of China’s famed Great Wall, near Beijing, Feb. 24, 1972.

Nixon landed in Beijing on a gray winter morning 50 years ago on Monday. Billboards carried slogans such as “Down with American Imperialism,” part of the upheaval under the Cultural Revolution that banished intellectuals and others to the countryside and subjected many to public humiliation and brutal and even deadly attacks in the name of class struggle.

Nixon’s 1972 trip, which included meetings with Chairman Mao Zedong and a visit to the Great Wall, led to the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1979 and the parallel severing of formal ties with Taiwan, which the U.S. had recognized as the government of China after the communists took power in Beijing in 1949.

Premier Zhou Enlai’s translator wrote in a memoir that, to the best of his recollection, Nixon said, “This hand stretches out across the Pacific Ocean in friendship” as he shook hands with Zhou at the airport.

For both sides, it was a friendship born of circumstances, rather than natural allegiances.

China and the Soviet Union, formerly communist allies, had split and even clashed along their border in 1969, and Mao saw the United States as a potential counterbalance to any threat of a Soviet invasion.

Nixon, embroiled in the Watergate scandal at home, was seeking to isolate the Soviet Union and exit a prolonged and bloody Vietnam War that had divided American society. He hoped that China, an ally of communist North Vietnam in its battle with the U.S.-backed South, could play a role in resolving the conflict.

FILE – Then U.S. President Richard Nixon and then first lady Pat Nixon looks at a sculpture depicting a mythical beast on the palace grounds of Beijing’s Forbidden City as heavy snow falls on Feb. 25, 1972.

The U.S. president put himself “in the position of supplicant to Beijing,” said June Teufel Dreyer, a Chinese politics specialist at the University of Miami. Chinese state media promoted the idea that a “prosperous China would be a peaceful China” and that the country was a huge market for American exports, she said.

It would be decades before that happened. First, the U.S. became a huge market for China, propelling the latter’s meteoric rise from an impoverished nation to the world’s second largest economy.

Nixon’s visit was a “pivotal event that ushered in China’s turn outward and subsequent rise globally,” said the University of Chicago’s Dali Yang, the author of numerous books on Chinese politics and economics.

Two years after Mao’s death in 1976, new leader Deng Xiaoping ushered in an era of partial economic liberalization, creating a mix of state-led capitalism and single-party rule that has endured to this day.

China’s wealth has enabled a major expansion of its military, which the U.S. and its allies see as a threat. The Communist Party says it seeks only to defend its territory. That includes, however, trying to control islands also claimed by Japan in the East China Sea and by Southeast Asian nations in the South China Sea, home to crucial shipping lanes and natural resources.

The military has sent a growing number of warplanes on training missions toward Taiwan, a source of friction with the United States. China claims the self-governing island off its east coast as its territory. The U.S. supplies Taiwan with military equipment and warns China against any attempt to take it by force.

Still, Nixon’s trip to China was touted afterward as the signature foreign policy achievement of an administration that ended in ignominy with Watergate.

Embarking on the process of bringing China back into the international fold was the right move, but the past half-century has yet to put relations on a stable track, said Rana Mitter, professor of Chinese history and modern politics at Oxford University.

“The U.S. and China have still failed to work out exactly how they will both fit into a world where they both have a role, but find it increasingly hard to accommodate each other,” he said.

Chinese officials and scholars see the Nixon visit as a time when the two countries sought communication and mutual understanding despite their differences. Zhu Feng, the dean of the School of International Studies at Nanjing University, said the same approach is key to overcoming the current impasse.

“The commemoration of Nixon’s visit tells us whether we can draw a kind of power from history,” he said.

FILE – Then U.S. President Richard Nixon and then China’s Premier Zhou Enlai join the applause at a gymnastic show in Beijing on Feb. 23, 1972 as they stand in the official box under a capacity crowd with a portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong above.

Though his trip to China gave the U.S. leverage in its Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union, America now faces a new geopolitical landscape — with echoes of the past.

The Soviet Union is gone, but the Russian and Chinese leaders, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, are finding common cause as they push back against U.S. pressure over their authoritarian ways. The Vietnam War is over, but America once again finds its society divided, this time over the pandemic response and the last presidential election.

U.S. President Joe Biden has said he wants a more predictable relationship with China but major differences over trade and human rights make mutual understanding elusive. The prospect of long-term stability in ties raised by Nixon’s visit seems to be ever farther out of reach.

“China-U.S. relations are terrible,” said Xiong Zhiyong, a professor of international relations at China Foreign Affairs University. “There are indeed people hoping to improve relations, but it is utterly difficult to achieve.”

UN Chief 'Determined' Human Rights Chief Visit Xinjiang

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday he is “determined” that his human rights chief should conduct a “credible” visit to China’s semi-autonomous Xinjiang province, where ethnic Uyghur and Turkic Muslim minorities live.

“It is in the interest of China — if they are convinced that they are not doing what people accuse them to do — it is in the interest of China to have a credible visit of the high commissioner, and we will be doing everything we can to make sure that it happens,” Guterres said. “If it won’t happen, of course the high commissioner will take the decisions that correspond to her mandate.”

The U.N. chief made the remarks in Germany at the Munich Security Conference, in response to a question from the conference chairman, Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has been trying to negotiate a visit to Xinjiang for the past three years. Chinese officials said recently that she would be allowed to come to have an exchange, but not an investigation. Beijing denies it violates the rights of Uyghurs and says it is combating terrorism.

Rights groups and the U.S. government accuse Beijing of serious abuses of Uyghur rights, including torture, forced sterilization, sexual violence and forced separation of children. They are subjected to widespread surveillance and more than a million Uyghurs have been sent to detention camps.

China has dismissed the accusations as groundless and says Xinjiang enjoys stability, development and prosperity. Beijing has also lashed out at other nations for interfering in its internal affairs.

Guterres visited Beijing earlier this month as a guest of the International Olympic Committee for the opening ceremony of the Winter Games. He also had a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, during which his spokesman said he told them he expects the government to allow a “credible visit” for Bachelet.

“What I have been telling the Chinese authorities, and I’m telling publicly, is that in Xinjiang human rights must be fully respected, but not only human rights must be fully respected, policies must guarantee that the identity – the cultural and religious identity of minorities is respected — and at the same time they have opportunities to be part of the society as a whole,” the secretary-general said in Munich.

Human Rights Watch welcomed the U.N. chief’s remarks.

“These are Guterres’ strongest remarks on the human rights crisis in Xinjiang to date,” Human Rights Watch U.N. Director Louis Charbonneau told VOA. “Obviously a “credible” visit by the high commissioner has to mean unfettered and unmanaged access in Xinjiang, which the secretary-general clearly recognizes.”

Charbonneau noted that the Chinese government has not yet been willing to grant that.

“The Chinese have said they’ve maintained a clear and consistent position, and there are no signs of change of heart in Beijing,” he said. “But whether or not the high commissioner visits China, she should publish her long-delayed report on Xinjiang immediately. There’s no reason to keep denying member states her office’s assessment of the massive and widespread human rights abuses in Xinjiang, which we at Human Rights Watch have determined amount to crimes against humanity.”

A report on the situation of the Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities has been expected from Bachelet’s office for some time, but so far it has not come out.

German Leader's Stance on Russia Looms Over First Visit to US

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz set off Sunday for Washington seeking to reassure Americans that his country stands alongside the United States and other NATO partners in opposing any Russian aggression against Ukraine.

Scholz has said that Moscow would pay a “high price” in the event of an attack, but his government’s refusal to supply lethal weapons to Ukraine, bolster Germany’s troop presence in Eastern Europe or spell out which sanctions it would support against Russia has drawn criticism abroad and at home.

“The Germans are right now missing in action. They are doing far less than they need to do,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat and member of the Armed Services Committee, recently told an audience of Ukrainian Americans in his state, Connecticut.

This sentiment was echoed by Republican Sen. Rob Portman, who questioned why Berlin hadn’t yet approved a request to let NATO member Estonia pass over old German howitzers to Ukraine. “That makes no sense to me, and I’ve made that very clear in conversations with the Germans and others,” Portman told NBC.

Ahead of his trip, Scholz defended Germany’s position not to supply Kyiv with lethal weapons but insisted that his country is doing its bit by providing significant economic support to Ukraine.

Asked about the future of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that seeks to bring Russian natural gas to Germany under the Baltic Sea, bypassing Ukraine, Scholz refused to make any explicit commitments.

“Nothing is ruled out,” he told German public broadcaster ARD.

Germany has come under criticism over its heavy reliance on Russian energy supplies and the gas pipeline has long been opposed by the United States. But it is strongly supported by some in Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party, including former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

The 77-year-old Schroeder is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and heads the shareholders’ committee of Nord Stream AG and the board of directors of Nord Stream 2.

In a move likely to embarrass Scholz ahead of his first official trip to Washington, the Russian state-owned gas company Gazprom announced Friday that Schroeder — who has accused Ukraine of “saber-rattling” in its standoff with Russia — has been nominated to join its board of directors.

Scholz’s spokesman declined repeated requests for comment on Schroeder’s ties to Putin.

Despite Germany’s reluctance to officially put the new pipeline — which has yet to receive an operating permit — on the negotiating table with Russia, the United States has made clear that even without Berlin’s agreement the project is dead should Moscow launch an attack.

“One way or the other, if Russia invades Ukraine, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward,” U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told “Fox News Sunday.”

Scholz will meet President Joe Biden and members of Congress on Monday to try to smooth out differences. The 63-year-old’s performance in Washington could have broad implications for U.S.-German relations and for Scholz’s standing at home.

While former President Donald Trump frequently slammed Germany, accusing it of not pulling its weight internationally, his successor has sought to rebuild relations with Berlin.

“Biden has taken some real risks, including on the the issue of the German-Russian gas pipeline,” said Jeff Rathke, president of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies.

“(Scholz’s) visit to Washington is an opportunity for him to try to turn that page,” said Rathke.

Having succeeded long-time German leader Angela Merkel last year, Scholz also needs to appease doubters at home who accuse him of pulling a diplomatic vanishing act compared to his European counterparts. With the phrase “Where is Scholz?” trending on social media last week, German conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz called for “clear words” from the government on the Ukraine crisis.

“We must rule nothing out as a reaction to a further military escalation,” the leader of Merkel’s center-right bloc said, though he too has been skeptical about sending possible German arms shipments to Ukraine.

Others in Scholz’s three-party governing coalition have struck a harsher tone toward Russia.

Speaking alongside her Russian counterpart in Moscow last month, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock of the Green Party branded Russia’s troop deployment at the border with Ukraine a “threat.” She plans to visit Ukraine on Monday and Tuesday and inspect the front line between Ukrainian troops and areas held by Russian-based separatists in the east.

Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, a member of the Free Democrats who chairs Germany’s parliamentary defense committee, said Schroeder’s work for Moscow “harms the country he should serve” and suggested removing the privileges he enjoys since leaving office.

Whatever Germany does to support Ukraine will likely come at a cost.

Berlin’s approval of 5,000 helmets for Ukrainian troops last week drew widespread mockery. Kyiv has since asked Germany for more military hardware, including medium-range and portable anti-aircraft missile systems, as well as ammunition.

Meanwhile, some German officials worry that any mention of further sanctions against Russia, let alone a full-blown conflict, could drive up Europe’s already high gas prices. Constanze Stelzenmueller, a specialist on trans-Atlantic relations at the Brookings Institution, noted that Europe will bear the brunt of blowback costs from economic sanctions against Russia.

“You have populists in Europe always looking for ways to exploit political differences and tensions,” she said. “That’s what’s at stake here.”

In an uncharacteristic outburst at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Scholz — who was then Germany’s finance minister — announced that he would be pulling out a figurative “bazooka” to help businesses cope with the crisis by setting aside more than 1 trillion euros ($1.1 trillion) in state aid.

Scholz may need to make a similarly expansive gesture to ease concerns in Washington and beyond, said Rathke.

“Germany is going to have to show that it is not only committed to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, but that it’s putting real resources behind it now, not just pointing to what it’s done in the past,” he said.