About Cuban Colada

From the streets of Havana to the White House. From local nightclubs to hospital rooms across the island. From radio chatter to covert documents. From the sugar cane fields to exclusive affairs. History, politics, culture, business, medicine and the exile community: This is the daily journal where the information foam rises to the top of the Cuban Colada on and off the island.

About the bloggers

Alfonso Chardy

Alfonso Chardy covers the Cuban-American community. He attended journalism courses at the University of Indiana under a State Department program in the early 1970s, then worked for The Associated Press in Argentina and Colombia, United Press International in Panama and Central America and finally The Miami Herald in Washington, Israel and Miami.

John Dorschner

Business reporter John Dorschner has been a staff writer for The Miami Herald for more than 30 years. He is co-author of The Winds of December, published in 1980, a popular history narrating the downfall of Batista and the coming to power of Castro. In 2001, he was a Fulbright Scholar in Romania, studying post-Communist economies and how the Romanian example might apply to a post-Communist Cuba. He has written a number of reports about Cuban health care.

Jordan Levin

Latin music critic Jordan Levin has been covering Latin and Cuban music and culture, dance and other subjects fulltime for the Miami Herald since 1999. Jordan began as a freelance journalist in 1992, and in addition to the Herald wrote for the Los Angeles Times, Ocean Drive Magazine, Billboard Magazine, Detour, Code, Dance Magazine, The New York Times, and numerous other publications. Before becoming a journalist, she worked as an arts presenter and producer for various Miami area non-profit organizations. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College in 1981 with a degree in dance and liberal arts, Jordan moved into New York’s Lower East Side, where she was a dancer and performer with cutting edge artists such as Tim Miller and Yoshiko Chuma, and a regular on the downtown club scene. She is a huge fan of Cuban music, and has traveled to Cuba.

Renato Pérez Pizarro

Renato Pérez Pizarro was the Herald's translator from 1993 to 2007. Previously, he was editor of the Hispanic magazine Vista and assistant photo editor of The New York Times from 1965-1985.

Frances Robles

Frances Robles covers Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic for the Herald’s World Desk. A graduate of New York University, she began her journalism career in 1990 at The Plain Dealer, in Cleveland, Ohio. Since joining the Herald in 1993, she has covered higher education, crime, courts, Central America and was bureau chief in Bogotá, Colombia. She was a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University.