The 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution will be commemorated by DePaul University’s Center for Latino Research with a panel discussion on Feb. 19 at 6 p.m. in the Schmitt Academic Center, Room 154, 2320 N. Kenmore Ave. The discussion is free and open to the public.

An impressive lineup of panelists will discuss “Cuba 1959-2009: Change and Future Directions.” Panelists are Maria de los Angeles Torres, professor and director of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago; Gary Marx, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent covering Latin America and the Caribbean; and George de Lama, former deputy managing editor of the Chicago Tribune and a former Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.      

De los Angeles Torres has written and lectured extensively about her native Cuba, particularly the airlifting of Cuban children, which mirrors her own experience, during Operation Pedro Pan. Marx, winner of the Tribune’s Edward Scott Beck Award for foreign reporting, was based in Cuban for five years before he was asked to leave by the government in 2007. De Lama, the son of Cuban immigrants, has enjoyed a 30-year career in journalism and was named one of the most influential Hispanics in the United States by Hispanic Business and Poder magazines.

           
The panel discussion will be moderated by Rose Spalding, political science professor at DePaul. Her scholarship focuses on the comparative politics of Mexico and Central America.