Speaking as the first sitting US president to visit Cuba since the 1959 revolution, Obama switched to Spanish to say “El futuro de Cuba tiene que estar en las manos del pueblo cubano” — “the future of Cuba must be in the hands of the Cuban people.” His words mark a significant shift, we will be discussing whether they can be realised.

Chaired by Juliana Ruhfus, journalist, filmmaker, and senior reporter at Al Jazeera English, People and Power.
The panel:

Michael Voss is the CCTV correspondent based in Cuba. He moved there in 2007 for the BBC and has reported on the political and economic changes along with a broad range of social and cultural issues. He has been covering Latin America since the mid 1990’s when he was the BBC’s South America Correspondent.

Emilio San Pedro is one of the editors of BBC Monitoring and regional manager for Latin America. He was the Americas Editor for the BBC World Service and travelled frequently to Latin America and Cuba. He was in Cuba last year for a BBC World Service series of reports on the changes in the country. He was born and raised in Miami and is the son of Cuban exiles.

Helen Yaffe, a fellow in the Economic History department at the London School of Economics (LSE). Since 1995 she has spent time living and researching in Cuba, her publications have focused on Cuban political economy and regional economic integration.

Will Grant (via Skype) is the BBC’s Cuba Correspondent based in Havana. He has been studying and working in Latin America for 20 years, and covering the region for the BBC since 2001.

Photo: merc67 / Shutterstock.com

Author of the critically acclaimed El Narco, Ioan Grillo has covered Latin America since 2001 and has gained access to every level of the cartel chain of command in what he calls the ‘new battlefields of the Americas’. In his new book Gangster Warlords, he writes about a new kind of criminal kingpin that has arisen: part CEO, part terrorist, and part rock star.

Moving between militia-controlled ghettos and the halls of top policymakers, Grillo will be joining us, in conversation with journalist and media consultant Susana Seijas, to share what he has discovered – a disturbing new understanding of a war that has spiralled out of control and urgently needs to be confronted.

Ioan Grillo is a journalist and writer based in Mexico City. He has covered Latin America since 2001 for TIME magazine, CNN, Reuters, The Houston Chronicle, The Associated Press, GlobalPost, France 24, CBC, The Sunday Telegraph, Letras Libres and many others. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, the BBC and the Guardian. He is author of Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields and the New Politics of Latin America and El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency.

Ciudad Juárez, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua just across the border from El Paso, Texas has a reputation as the most murderous city in the world.

At the age of sixteen, Vicente Leon Chavez, along with two of his high school friends murdered his mother, his father, and his little sister. Through this inexplicable triple murder, journalist Sandra Rodríguez Nieto has sought to explore the culture of extreme violence that has developed in Juárez. Her in-depth investigation offers an insight into the thought process of the three young boys, the fabric of the city they grew up in and the drug cartels that wage war in its streets.

We are pleased to welcome Sandra Rodríguez Nieto to the Frontline Club in conversation with Ed Vulliamy, writer for the Guardian and Observer. They will be discussing the poverty, deep levels of corruption, incapacitated government institutions and US meddling that have combined to create an explosion of violence in Juárez.

Sandra Rodríguez Nieto has won international plaudits for her reportage in Mexico, including the Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism, the Reporteros Del Mundo award from the Spanish newspaper El Mundo for outstanding work in a conflict zone, and the Los Angeles Times Media Hero list for reporting in one of the most dangerous cities on earth. In 2012, she published La Fábrica del Crimen (The Crime Factory) and this year The Story of Vicente, Who Murdered His Mother, His Father and His Sister: Life and Death in Juarez.

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL BE FILMED AND STREAMED LIVE ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL

Despite the constant threat, she continues to work tirelessly to investigate armed conflict, drug trafficking, organised crime and issues around women and violence. Currently working for the national newspaper El Tiempo, in 2012 she was one of 10 women awarded the International Women of Courage Award and in October this year she was named as one of the 100 most influential journalists covering armed violence and conflict around the world, by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV).

We are honoured to welcome Jineth Bedoya Lima to the Frontline Club, she will be talking to Ed Vulliamy, a writer for The Guardian and Observer, about her prolific career as a journalist in Colombia, the work she does on conflict-related sexual violence and the ongoing peace process.

In Mexico officials put the number of deaths from narco violence at 70,000 in the last six years, with another 27,000 missing. In her new book Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their God Fathers, Hernández explores how Mexico has become a base for the mega-cartels of Latin America, and the links between the cartels and government and business complicity at the very highest levels.

Anabel Hernández has worked on national daily newspapers including Reforma, Milenio, El Universal and its investigative supplement La Revista. She currently contributes to the online news site Reporte Indigo. Her previous books include La familia presidencial, Fin de fiesta en los pinos, and Los cómplices del presidente. In 2012, she was awarded the Golden Pen of Freedom by the World Association of Newspapers in recognition of her fearless work exposing drug cartels.

Provoking adoration and revulsion in equal measure, Hugo Chavez is a leader like no other. In October last year his loyal supporters came out to vote him back into office for his fourth presidential term.

In his new book, Comandante, acclaimed journalist Rory Carroll sheds light on the inside story of Chavez’s life and his political court in Caracas. He will join the The New Yorker‘s Jon Lee Anderson and others to ask, after more than 13 years in power, what Chavez’s legacy will be.

With his inauguration indefinitely postponed and the severity of his medical condition unclear, we will be looking back at Chavez’s rule, examining his time in power and what the future holds for Venezuela.

Chaired by Richard Lapper, the director of Brazil Confidential, the FT‘s research service on Brazil.  He was Latin America Editor at the FT newspaper between 1998 and 2008, during which time he visited and reported from Venezuela regularly.

The panel:

Rory Carroll is the Guardian‘s US West Coast Correspondent based in Los Angeles and author of Comandante: Inside Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. For the past five years, throughout the writing of his book, Carroll has been stationed in Caracas as the Guardian‘s chief correspondent in South America.

Jon Lee Anderson is foreign correspondent for The New Yorker, and is the author of many books including The Fall of Baghdad and Guerrillas: Journeys in the Insurgent World.

Diego Moya-Ocampos is a senior political risk analyst for Venezuela for IHS Global Insight and IHS Jane’s. He previously worked as a lawyer for a private firm in Venezuela advising government agencies and private businesses on constitutional, regulatory and environmental issues, and as Chief Secretary at the Venezuelan Attorney-General’s Office.

After three years focusing on the drug related violence destabilising Mexico, photographer and anthropologist Teun Voeten has just released his latest photobook Narco Estado. Voeten photographed the drug violence capital, Ciudad Juarez, as well as other hot spots such as Culiacan and Michoacan.

Voeten will present his images and speak about the collaborative and anthropological approach he adopted for the book, using introductory essays by El Paso based anthropologist Howard Campbell as well as Culiacan based writer Javier Valdez Cardenas. Voeten‘s images and the text combine to achieve a punchy work which tries to explain why the drug violence in Mexico can no longer be ignored as a fringe criminal problem.

This event will be moderated by Peter Watt, Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the University of Sheffield. He is co-author of Drug War Mexico: Politics, Violence and Neoliberalism in the New Narcoeconomy, published earlier this year by Zed Books.

Teun Voeten has covered the conflicts in the Former Yugoslavia, Colombia, Rwanda, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, Honduras, DR Congo and Libya for magazines such as Vanity Fair, Newsweek, The New Yorker and National Geographic. He has also worked for the International Red Cross, Human Rights Watch and the UNHCR. He gave a talk at the Frontline Club in 2010 about his book Tunnel People, a journalistic and anthropological account of five months living with an underground homeless community in New York.

Narco Estado is available to purchase online via Teun Voeten’s website.

The international sex trade criss-crosses the globe using a sinister network made up of criminal masterminds, local handlers, corrupt policemen, wilfully blind politicians, eager consumers, and countless hapless women and children.

In a ground-breaking new work of investigative reporting internationally renowned Mexican journalist and campaigner Lydia Cacho follows the trail of the traffickers and their victims from Mexico to Turkey, Thailand to Iraq, Georgia to the UK. She exposes the trade’s hidden links with the tourist industry, internet pornography, drugs and arms smuggling, the selling of body organs, money laundering, and even terrorism.

Lydia Cacho will be joining us at the Frontline Club in conversation with executive director of Article 19, Dr Agnès Callamard to talk about her expansive investigation into this world and the work she does reporting on domestic violence, child prostitution, organised crime and political corruption, whilst teaching workshops on how to help victims of trafficking.

Since Mexican President Felipe Calderon initiated a large scale crackdown on drug cartels in 2006 funded by millions of dollars in US military aid, the death toll in the country is believed to have reached 50,000 or more.

Human rights violations have increased, as has the murder rate, with Ciudad Juárez on the northern border now recognised as the most dangerous city on the planet. Meanwhile, the supply of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine from Mexico has continued to increase.

As a new president prepares to take office following the 1 July elections, we will be exploring the challenges ahead and the different forces at play in this long and bloody war, assessing how successful the policies of the US and Mexican governments have been in breaking up and destroying the drug cartels.

Chaired by BBC correspondent Katya Adler

With:

Rupert Knox, Amnesty International Mexico Researcher.

Juan Carlos Gutiérrez Contreras, a Mexican lawyer who specialises in criminal law and human rights. He has been a consultant for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights–Mexico; Director for the Program of Cooperation on Human Rights Mexico-European Union, and Regional Director of Centre for Justice and International Law (CEJIL). Currently he is General Director of the Mexican Commission of Defence and Promotion of Human Rights.

Peter Watt, Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the University of Sheffield. His research field covers Latin American politics and history, with a particular focus on issues of human rights, political repression, narcotrafficking, freedom of expression and censorship in Mexico. Co-author of Drug War Mexico: Politics, Neoliberalism and Violence in the New Narcoeconomy.

Silvia Vazquez, a lawyer working in Baja California. She was working in the State Human Rights Commission (Baja California Commission for Citizen Protection and Human Rights) as a General Examiner before she had to leave her job and flee because of fears that her life was in danger as a result of her human rights activism.

Ed Vulliamy, a writer for the Guardian and Observer, and author of Amexica: War Along the Borderline.

Nearly one year on since Raul Castro officially took power from his brother, Fidel, and with a new US president about to take office, the change that has inevitably been creeping up on Cuba looks set to continue into 2009. Amid celebrations of the Cuban Revolution’s 50th anniversary, we remember its achievements and  legacy, while assessing the implications of Obama’s Presidency for the island.

How have Cubans and the exiled community received the news of Obama’s election and what are the expectations on his promises to open dialogue with Cuba and lift the embargo? Has the inevitable "opening up" of the economy and wider access to the internet and communications changed the nature of Cuban society? And are the glory days of the Cuban Revolution now firmly in the past?

Richard Gott is a British journalist and historian with forty years experience of Latin America. He was for many years on the staff of The Guardian newspaper in London. He is currently an honorary research fellow at the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of London. He has recently published Cuba: A New History (Yale University Press), and Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution (Verso).

Pedro Pérez-Sarduy  is a poet, writer, journalist and broadcaster living in London. He is the author of Surrealidad (Havana 1967), Cumbite and Other Poems (Havana 1987 and New York 1990), and a new novel, Las Criadas de La Habana, The Maids of Havana. He has been a radio journalist since 1965, beginning with Cuban national radio as a current affairs journalist and with Cuban television on the first African and Caribbean music show. He was then with the BBC Latin American Service from 1981 to 1994. His latest book of poetry Malecón Sigloveinte (2005), has just been published in Cuba.

Stephen Wilkinson first visited Cuba in 1986 and has been travelling to and writing about the island ever since. Now assistant director at the International Institute for the Study of Cuba, Stephen has a PhD on the subject of Cuban literature. He has written numerous articles on such questions as the history of US-Cuba relations, Cuban attitudes and policy towards homosexuals and the nature of the Cuban state. Stephen’s book: Detective Fiction in Cuban Society and Culture was published in 2006 by Peter Lang. He frequently comments on Cuba issues on The Guardian newspaper’s Comment is Free website.

Emilio San Pedro has been the BBC World Service’s Americas Editor for the last three years, and worked as a journalist for two decades, mostly in radio. He is currently based in Miami.

Nick Caistor is a former BBC Latin American analyst and is now a freelance writer on the region for various publications. He has been an expert on Haiti since 1990, when Aristide first came to power.