Category: BROWSE BLOG
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Carnival, Culture and COVID-19: A Moment to Reflect
By Dr. Antonio Carmona Báez Sint Maarten’s annual Carnival celebration, traditionally held in April, is by far the island’s most attended and money moving cultural event attracting locals and tourists in the thousands. Even after the devastating effects of Hurricane Irma in 2017, Carnival loyalists came back in April 2018 to support the rebuilding of the…
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A Natural Mystic April: COVID-19 and St. Martin’s Turn to Home-Growing
By Dr Antonio Carmona Báez On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the spread of the novel coronavirus and its subsequent disease COVID-19 a pandemic; meaning that it is highly contagious, affecting all countries and societies globally. Within days countries came under lockdown, schools were closed and much of the economic activity requiring…
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Cultural Xpression March 2020 | Giving Purpose to the Intangible
This month was quite a journey and it seem to have just begun. From the new Corona Pandemic that will seem to reshape the way we do things in our daily lives, to taking a trip to Saba and Statia with a group of researchers seeking to address the catastrophic environmental challenges facing Caribbean islands…
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Giving purpose to the intangible.
By Dr. Antonio Carmona Báez “For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.” – Franz Fanon. Can we divorce the tangible from intangible culture? I would like to argue that we can, but that the…
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Enhancing Agritourism
By Dr. Antonio Carmona Báez For decades now, farming communities across the world have looked to agri-tourism as a means to secure economic diversification and rural socio-economic development. More recently, as commercial and mass tourism (cruise ships, resorts and more recently AirBnB) find the need to reconcile its business practices with the impact of climate change,…
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Caribbean Researchers Tackle Climate Change
By Dr. Antonio Carmona Báez On an island-hopping tour from 2 to 14 March, a team of scientific researchers, governmental agencies, NGOs and grassroots organizations from the Caribbean and The Netherlands joined forces to address the catastrophic environmental challenges facing Caribbean islands and their inhabitants. Led by former University of St. Martin (USM) president Professor Dr. Francio…
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Week 3 – Plant Science and Soil Types a success
Week 3 was an amazing week despite the interruption of the rain. The group’s focused this week was on Plant Science and Soil Types. This session was important for them to grasp the basic understanding of the parts a plant, layers of the soil and diffrent soil type and amendments.. The mission is always to…
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Week 2 a Success – Identifying Seeds Types, Cloning, Cuttings and Seed germination
This last week of Feb was great as the group got together again for another interesting learning session. Identifying Seeds Types, Cloning, Cuttings and Seed Germination was the topic of discussion. I was pleased to see more people joined the group this week in effort to learn more about Agriculture. This week we look at…
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CX Feb 2020 | Exclusive Interview Dr Antonio Carmona Baez
In this months edition of Cultural Xpression we touch base with a very interesting person with a passion for higher education of his fellow man. Dr Carmona Baez currently holds the position of President of the University St Martin and seem determine to improve the current situation at our local university so others and country…
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Work visit European Parliamentarian Samira Rafaela and Dutch Parliamentarian Rob Jetten
On Feb 27th, 2020 I was grateful to get a chance to have a one on one discussion with European Parliamentarian Samira Rafaela and Dutch Parliamentarian Rob Jetten during their work visit here to St Maarten. I was contacted a few weeks back by trainee Ms Shantinelly Martes at the European Parliament with Member of…