Journal
Reports, analyses and features from all 195 countries - the journalism behind the journeys.
The Island That Invented an Instrument
The steelpan is the only acoustic musical instrument invented in the twentieth century. It was invented in Trinidad, out of oil drums, by people the colonial authorities had banned from drumming and then banned from playing bamboo. What that says about carnival, calypso and the country is most of the story.
Two Countries, One Island
Hispaniola is the only Caribbean island split between two states, and the border is one of the sharpest economic gradients in the world. The oldest colonial city in the Americas, the massacre of 1937, a contested citizenship ruling — and a country most of whose visitors never leave the resort strip.
Two Currencies, One Island
For nearly thirty years Cuba ran two currencies and two parallel economies, which put surgeons behind the wheel of taxis. The unification of 2021 removed the duality and arrived alongside shortages, blackouts and the largest emigration in modern Cuban history. A portrait that holds both sets of facts at once.