Category Archives: Americas

Hostages held in Haiti escaped by slipping past armed guards in the night

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Twelve kidnapped in October, including an infant and small child, walked hours by moonlight to safety

Kidnapped missionaries in Haiti found freedom last week by making a daring overnight escape, eluding their kidnappers and walking for miles over difficult, moonlit terrain with an infant and other children in tow, according to the agency they work for.

Ransom money was raised to pay for the release of the missionaries who were abducted on 16 October, but a dozen of them managed to flee, navigating by the stars to reach safety, Christian Aid Ministries said on Monday

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Gabriel Boric’s triumph puts wind in the sails of Latin America’s resurgent left

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The decisive victory reflects Chileans’ revolt against a threadbare welfare system and a society systematically stacked in the favour of the rich

At the age of 14, Gabriel Boric – the great-grandson of a Croatian migrant and an avid reader of Marx and Hegel – formed a city-wide student union in the Chilean city of Punta Arenas.

At 21, and by then a law student, he led a campus sit-in for 44 days in Santiago, Chile’s capital, to oust a senior professor accused of plagiarism and corruption. Two years later, in 2011, he was elected figurehead of a massive student rebellion against profiteering private universities, and in 2013 became a congressman for his remote home region.

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Leftwing millennial to be Chile’s new president – video

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Gabriel Boric, a leftwing former student leader, will become Chile’s youngest president after storming to a resounding victory in a run-off vote against his ultra-conservative far-right opponent, José Antonio Kast.

With nearly 97% of the vote counted, the 35-year-old claimed 55.8% to take a 12 percentage point lead over Kast, who quickly accepted his defeat and called Boric to congratulate him.

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Gabriel Boric vows to ‘fight privileges of the few’ as Chile’s premier

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Leftist former student has vowed to unite country and tackle poverty and inequality

Gabriel Boric has vowed to unite Chile, fight “the privileges of the few” and tackle poverty and inequality after winning a decisive victory over his far-right opponent to become the South American country’s youngest premier.

The 35-year-old leftist former student leader won 56% of the vote in Sunday’s second-round presidential election, cruising past his ultra-conservative opponent, José Antonio Kast, who took 44.2%.

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Chilean election offers stark choice: a leftist or an admirer of Pinochet

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The campaign has resurfaced deep divisions and revived bitter memories of the country’s recent past

Chilean voters headed to the polls on Sunday to chose between two presidential candidates offering starkly contrasting visions for the future, in the country’s most divisive elections since it returned to democracy in 1990.

Leftwing candidate Gabriel Boric, a tattooed former student protest leader, has pledged to empower women and Indigenous people and raise taxes and spending in order to create a fairer Chile.

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‘A Francoist daydream’: how Spain’s right clings to its imperialist past

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A Peruvian author fears her adopted home is far from an apology for its Latin American abuses

The Plaza Mayor, where tourists gather to drink steep beers and feast on overpriced paella, may be better known. So may Puerta del Sol, where locals ring in the new year by eating a grape on each of the 12 chimes.

But Madrid’s Plaza de Colón, a 25-minute walk from these spaces, has come to play its own special part in the social, political and historical life of the capital – and the rest of Spain.

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Bolsonaro threatens to identify officials who approved Covid jabs for children

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Brazilian president plans to reveal identities despite health officers receiving death threats

The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has asked for the names of health officials who approved Covid vaccines for children, saying he planned to make their identities public despite previous death threats.

In late October, Brazil’s health regulator, Anvisa, released a statement saying five of its directors had received death threats over the possible approval of vaccinations for children of five-11. The agency granted such approval for the Pfizer shot on Thursday.

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Culture in a bowl: Haiti’s joumou soup awarded protected status by Unesco

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The dish, originally cooked by slaves for their owners, has come to symbolise hope and dignity in the troubled Caribbean country

Haiti’s joumou soup, a symbol of hope and dignity for the world’s first black-led republic, has been awarded protected status by Unesco.

The soup, made from turban squash and originally cooked by enslaved African people for their owners in Haiti, was on Thursday added to Unesco’s prestigious list of intangible cultural heritage. It is Haiti’s first inclusion on the list, and the country’s Unesco ambassador, Dominique Dupuy, cried as the announcement was made. The decision is expected to be officially endorsed by Unesco’s general assembly next year.

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Widow of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet dies age 99

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For opponents of the dictatorship Lucía Hiriart was a reviled symbol of the violent authoritarian regime and its bitter legacy


Lucía Hiriart, the widow of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, has died at her home at the age of 99.

Hiriart – an intensely divisive figure in Chile – had rarely been seen in public in recent years and her health has been kept a closely guarded secret.

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Music producer Flow La Movie among nine dead in Dominican Republic jet crash

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Private jet, which carried seven passengers and two crew members, was headed towards Orlando, Florida

Nine people died in a jet crash on Wednesday in the Dominican Republic, including acclaimed Puerto Rican music producer Flow La Movie.

The private jet, which carried seven passengers and two crew members, took off from La Isabela international airport in El Higüero and was headed towards Orlando, Florida. However, the pilots quickly declared an emergency and attempted to divert the flight to the nearby Las Américas international airport, crashing the plane in an attempted emergency landing.

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‘Very worrying’: is a far-right radical about to take over in Chile?

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As election run-off looms, José Antonio Kast’s opponents sound the alarm

María Irene Campos was a woman on a mission.

“I want to send the message that Chile will never again be communist,” the 74-year-old retiree proclaimed as she hit the streets last Friday to catch a glimpse of the man she believes can save her South American homeland from such a fate.

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A Fight Against … review – Chilean playwright’s sparky sketches

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Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London
Pablo Manzi’s political scenes, which span several decades and are powerfully performed, could perhaps lead to a future epic

Thirty years ago, the Royal Court introduced a Chilean playwright, Ariel Dorfman, with Death and the Maiden, a much-revived, twistily structured thriller about South American human rights abuses.

While theatre can have a one-hit-and-run attitude to distant politics, the Court has commendably kept an eye on Santiago. Its international programme mentors new writers in an initiative spawning several Court stagings, including Guillermo Calderón’s B in 2017 and now, in sparky English by the same translator, William Gregory, Una Lucha Contra … by Pablo Manzi.

A Fight Against … (Una Lucha Contra … ) is at the Royal Court theatre, London, until 22 January

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Books that explain the world: Guardian writers share their best nonfiction reads of the year

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From a Jacobean traveller’s travails in Sindh to the tangled roots of Nigeria, our pick of new nonfiction books that shine a light on Asia, Africa and South America

• Share your top recommendations for books on the developing world in the comments below

You Have Not Yet Been Defeated: Selected Works 2011-2021
By Alaa Abd El-Fattah

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Toronto police ask for help identifying ‘highly suspicious’ person in billionaire murder case

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Police update public on investigation for first time in four years, after studying hours of CCTV footage from night couple were killed

Four years after the unsolved murders of pharmaceutical billionaires Barry and Honey Sherman, police in Toronto have appealed to the public to help identify a possible suspect in the case.

At a media briefing on Tuesday, homicide DS Brandon Price said police had studied hours of CCTV footage taken in the couple’s neighbourhood the night of the murders and had identified all people caught on camera – except for one person.

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At least 60 people killed in Haiti fuel truck explosion

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Total number of injured still not known after truck carrying gasoline overturned around midnight in the Sanmarie area

More than 60 people have died after a fuel truck overturned and exploded in Haiti’s second-largest city Cap-Haitien, the country’s health ministry has announced.

The death toll is expected to rise after the truck carrying gasoline overturned at about midnight in the area of Sanmarie on the eastern end of the city, according to local media.

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Mexicans pay tribute to Vicente Fernández, icon of ranchera music

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Family, friends and fellow musicians pay their final respects to the man known as ‘El Rey’ (the King) following his death at age 81

Mexicans are in mourning for Vicente Fernández, the elaborately mustachioed icon of ranchera music, whose ballads of love and loss, golden baritones and singular stage presence captured the raw emotions of a nation.

Fans flocked to his ranch in western Jalisco state, where family, friends and fellow crooners paid their final respects to the man known as “El Rey” (the King) – and often just by the diminutive “Chente.”

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Outrage as Quebec teacher removed from classroom for wearing hijab

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Fatemeh Anvari was told her headwear ran afoul of Bill 21, which bars some public servants from wearing religious symbols

The removal of a Canadian teacher for wearing a hijab in the classroom has sparked widespread condemnation of a controversial law in the province of Quebec, which critics say unfairly targets ethnic minorities under the pretext of secularism.

Fatemeh Anvari, a third-grade teacher in the town of Chelsea, was told earlier this month that she would no longer be allowed to continue in the role because her headwear ran afoul of Bill 21, a law passed in 2019.

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‘A police massacre’: Colombian officers killed 11 during protests against police violence, report finds

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Protesters against police brutality were met with more police brutality

Colombian police were responsible for the deaths of 11 protesters during anti-police protests that swept the capital in September 2020, according to a report published on Monday after an independent investigation backed by the mayor of Bogotá’s office and the United Nations.

“It was a police massacre,” wrote Carlos Negret, a former ombudsman of the South American country who led the investigation, in the scathing and lengthy report published on Monday. “A decisive political and operational leadership, based on rights, was needed at national and local levels to avoid this happening.”

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Chile: candidates battle for moderate votes as presidential race nears end

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Far-right José Antonio Kast and left-wing Gabriel Boric in tight race amid divided political landscape

Chile’s presidential race is hurtling towards its conclusion with the two remaining candidates battling to secure moderate votes in a deeply divided political landscape.

Far-right candidate José Antonio Kast secured a two-point victory in November’s first round, but polls show that Gabriel Boric – the leftwing former student leader he will face in the 19 December runoff – now holds a narrow lead.

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Missing Rio boys tortured and killed for stealing bird, say police

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Members of Red Command drug faction accused of crime that caused outcry across Brazil

Nearly a year after three young boys vanished near their homes in Rio de Janeiro’s rundown northern sprawl, police have accused members of the city’s largest drug faction of murdering the children in reprisal for stealing an ornamental bird.

The boys – aged nine, 11 and 12 – disappeared on the afternoon of 27 December 2020 after leaving their homes in the Morro do Castelar favela to play. They were last seen in eerie security footage showing them walking towards a local street market.

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