Cuba-Venezuela relations article

We’re working on finalizing our print article on Cuba-Venezuela relations and their importance to students in Miami.

We’re going to go to a Venezuelan bakery sometime soon to ask Venezuelans on video what they think about the relationship their country has with Cuba. We’re probably going to try Biscotti Gourmet Bakery, an upscale joint in Doral.

I’m going to see if I can find a place to photograph a Cuban and Venezuelan flag together, or make a graphic in Photoshop.

I’ll update when the site goes up.

Spanish language school story research

We recently began a story on “Centro Venezolano de Espanol,” a center in Little Havana that offers an immersion in the Latin culture in Miami for students to learn Spanish. The organization was started in Venezuela and many of its staff are Venezuelan.

We spoke to one professor who told us how they educate people from the United States in the language using their unique immersion techniques.

It is a good story, but just doesn’t fit the aim of our publication – to be an in-depth look at an underreported segment of the population. Although it’s frustrating to make so many phone calls and work as hard as we did on a story that won’t end up panning out, it’s an important lesson in knowing your niche. We would have to stretch to fit the story in with our aim of covering stories related to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals and it’s better to look elsewhere and return to this one only if we can find an angle that is more impactful.

Tracking down the Venezuelan consul general

We went to the Venezuelan consulate the other day to speak with a representative about some official figures on Venezuelans in Miami.

Unfortunately, the consul general is the only one authorized to give these statistics and he’s in Venezuela until March 1.

But the consulate itself seems worth mentioning. It’s located downtown on Brickell on the third floor of a tall office building. There is a metal detector and x-ray scanner before you can walk in and take a number to wait for one of about ten walk-up booths that look like ticket windows. You have to leave everything electronic outside, including cell phones, which would have been nice to know ahead of time.

The waiting area consists of several rows of seats with TVs on the wall showing Venezuelan tourism videos. An automated voice calls out numbers and tells their holders which window to go to.

It isn’t the crazy picture of screaming babies and screaming mothers that I had envisioned, but it’s still pretty busy.

The funny thing to me was that the Dominican consulate is located across the street, but in what looks more like a small Latin house from the 1950s. It looks like it was the first thing built on Brickell and all these nice modern buildings just built around it.