Film about Carlos Marighella, released in Berlin in 2019, only arrived in Brazil last month after government cancellations
The CIA considered him Che Guevara’s successor when it came to igniting new guerrilla movements in Latin America.
Brazil’s military dictatorship, whose security agents ambushed and killed him in São Paulo in 1969, called him public enemy No 1.
Continue reading...Central American country becomes latest to switch allegiances to Beijing, amid escalating tensions
Nicaragua has switched diplomatic allegiance to China, leaving Taiwan with just 14 governments around the world that formally recognise it as a country.
The announcement by the Central American country’s foreign ministry also recognised Beijing’s claim over Taiwan as a Chinese province, a dispute that is at the heart of escalating tensions in the region.
Continue reading...In 2020, Nayib Bukele’s administration ‘provided financial incentives’ to MS-13 and the Barrio 18 street gangs, US treasury says
The US has accused the government of El Salvador president Nayib Bukele of secretly negotiating a truce with leaders of the country’s feared MS-13 and Barrio 18 street gangs.
The explosive accusation on Wednesday cuts to the heart of one of Bukele’s most highly touted successes in office: a plunge in the country’s murder rate.
Continue reading...Revelations appear at odds with José Antonio Kast’s own statements about his father’s military service
The German-born father of Chilean presidential candidate José Antonio Kast was a member of the Nazi party, according to a recently unearthed document – revelations that appear at odds with the far-right candidate’s own statements about his father’s military service during the second world war.
German officials have confirmed that an ID card in the country’s federal archive shows that an 18-year-old named Michael Kast joined the National Socialist German Workers’ party, or NSDAP, in September 1942, at the height of Hitler’s war on the Soviet Union.
Continue reading...There are fears the decision will reverse the gains made by a successful vaccination campaign
The Brazilian government has been accused of seeking to turn the South American country into a haven for unvaccinated tourists after it shunned calls – including from its own health regulator – to demand proof of vaccination from visitors.
The decision – announced on Tuesday by the health minister, Marcelo Queiroga – sparked anger in a nation that has lost more than 615,000 lives to a Covid outbreak the president, Jair Bolsonaro, stands accused of catastrophically mishandling.
Continue reading...Vote seen as a blow to conservative presidential candidate José Antonio Kast, who won majority of votes in November’s first round
A historic vote granting equal marriage rights to same-sex couples in Chile has been heralded by activists as a triumph and a blow to the conservative agenda of presidential candidate José Antonio Kast.
Kast won the majority of votes in November’s first-round vote, instilling a wave of fear among the country’s LGBTQ+ community. A tight runoff between Kast and his progressive opponent, former student protest leader Gabriel Boric, is scheduled on 19 December.
Continue reading...The Royal Ballet’s phenomenal principal dancer was the fixed star at the heart of an extraordinary year for the company
It’s been an oddly fractured year for dance. Repeated lockdowns stifled talent, thwarted new ideas. Online and outdoor offerings provided some release but when theatres reopened in May, dancers emerged as if from hibernation, full of life, anxious to get on with their notoriously short careers.
None more so than Marianela Núñez. The Royal Ballet has excelled as a company this year, but she is the fixed star gleaming at its heart, never disappointing, always moving towards her aim of perfection. Her smile irradiates the stage, but it is the purity of her classical technique, the sense that you are watching someone at the absolute peak of their abilities.
Continue reading...Animals brought illegally to Colombia by the drug kingpin have been allowed to roam free and are now disrupting the fragile ecosystem
Myths and legends continue to surround Colombia’s most notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar 26 years after his death. But his legacy has had an unexpectedly disastrous impact on some of the country’s fragile ecosystems. A herd of more than 80 hippos roam free, the descendants of animals smuggled to Colombia from Africa in the 1980s and now flourishing in the wild.
Reporter Joe Parkin Daniels tells Michael Safi that when Escobar was shot dead by police on a rooftop in his hometown of Medellín, the authorities seized his estate and the animals on it. While most were shipped to zoos, the logistics of moving his four hippos proved insurmountable and they were left to wander the Andes.
Continue reading...Mother-and-daughter team scoop gong at Gourmand awards in Paris for volume of traditional leaf-wrapped recipes
A Colombian mother and daughter’s celebration of their country’s traditional leaf-wrapped dishes has been named best cookbook in the world at the Gourmand awards in Paris.
Colombia’s envueltos are part of a culinary heritage that stretches across much of Latin America, from the tamales of Mexico and Guatemala to the humitas of Chile.
Continue reading...Tulum, jewel of the Mayan Riviera, risks emulating Acapulco, another once glamorous resort now overwhelmed by violence
Bright yellow police tape fluttered in the breeze outside a restaurant just off the main strip in the Mexican resort town of Tulum, as the lights of a nearby police truck flashed blue and red.
Troops in camouflage fatigues stood guard outside the deserted late-night eatery La Malquerida, “The Unloved” – the site of a gangland shooting that killed two female tourists and wounded another three holidaymakers.
Continue reading...Maximiliano Contenti’s horror flick attempts to unpick voyeurism but lacks the sophistication of others in the genre
Nostalgia for idiosyncratic analogue film style is the simplest explanation for the recent giallo revival – but maybe there’s more to it than that. This most stylised of horror modes is perfect for our over-aestheticised age, so the newcomers – such as Berberian Sound Studio, Censor and Sound of Violence – make artists and viewers accessories to violence, often unleashed through that giallo mainstay, the power of the gaze. Set almost entirely in a tatty Montevideo rep cinema, Uruguayan slasher The Last Matinee joins this voyeuristic club, even if it ends up more in the raw than the refined camp.
On a rainswept night in 1993, engineering student Ana (Luciana Grasso) insists on taking over projectionist duties for a screening of Frankenstein: Day of the Beast (an in-joke – it was released in 2011 and was directed by Ricardo Islas, who plays the killer here). She shuts herself in the booth, trying to ignore the inane banter of usher Mauricio (Pedro Duarte) – but neither have noticed a heavy-set trenchcoated bogeyman enter the auditorium to size up that night’s film faithful: three teenagers, an awkward couple on a first date, a flat-capped pensioner and a underage kid stowaway (Franco Durán).
Continue reading...A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to Manila
Continue reading...The country became the world’s newest republic this week. While Britain is still racked by arguments over empire, others have already passed judgment
The contrast could hardly be more striking. In Britain, the removal of the statue of a slave trader, name changes for institutions and apologies from some who profited from slavery have produced reams of fevered arguments and fulminations. In Barbados, this week’s removal of the Queen as head of state was as calm and straightforward as the process leading to the change.
Yes, there was a ceremony to swear in the new president, Sandra Mason (at which Rihanna provided rather more excitement than Prince Charles, as the prime minister, Mia Mottley, had savvily realised). But this symbolic moment was not one of high passion or drama.
Continue reading...Floods and landslides in British Columbia devastated livestock in ‘easily the costliest natural disaster in Canada’s history’
Floods and landslides that battered the Canadian province of British Columbia last month killed hundreds of thousands of farm animals and forced nearly 15,000 people from their homes, new figures revealed, as officials described the scope of the devastation – and the challenges of recovery.
As many as 628,000 chickens, 420 dairy cattle and 12,000 pigs were killed by the floods. An estimated 3 million bees in 110 hives were also submerged.
Continue reading...The US has struck a deal with Mexico to make asylum seekers wait south side of the border while their applications are processed
The Biden administration’s move to revive Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy will subject thousands of people to “enormous suffering” and leave them vulnerable to kidnap and rape as they languish in dangerous Mexican border cities, migration advocates have warned.
After reaching a deal with Mexico, the US will by 6 December start returning asylum seekers from other Latin American countries to Mexico where they will be obliged to wait while their case is assessed.
Continue reading...Javiera Rojas remembered as ‘an emblematic activist who was dedicated to the process of resistance’
Environmental activists in Chile have called for justice after a 42-year-old land defender was found dead with her hands and feet bound.
The body of Javiera Rojas was found buried under a pile of clothes in an abandoned house on Sunday in Calama in the northern region of Antofagasta.
Continue reading...Legal team faces daily threats as it works to protect displaced families from landowners, ecosystems from mining and indigenous groups from oil companies
Julia Figueroa never leaves her house without security. She travels with two bodyguards and an armoured vehicle. Her home and office are watched around the clock. She carefully monitors any devices that might contain compromising information about her clients.
As the director of the Luis Carlos Pérez Lawyers Collective Corporation (CCALCP), threats to her life are a daily occurrence. The all-female group of lawyers provides legal representation to small-scale farmers and indigenous communities affected by the armed conflict in Colombia. Their work includes defending displaced peoples and victims of state crime, but also defending environmental rights, including fighting mining companies that seek to extract resources, often at the expense of the local water supply and the surrounding environment.
Continue reading...Inter-American court of human rights orders Central American country to reform harsh policies on reproductive health
The Inter-American court of human rights has ruled that El Salvador was responsible for the death of Manuela, a woman who was jailed in 2008 for killing her baby when she suffered a miscarriage.
The court has ordered the Central American country to reform its draconian policies on reproductive health.
Continue reading...The armed group broke into the jail in Tula and opened fire, injuring a guard and a police officer
Mexican gangsters used a convoy of vehicles – including a truck with homemade armour-plating – to ram their way into a prison before opening fire at guards and rescuing nine inmates.
Several other vehicles were also set on fire in the spectacular plot targeting the jail in the central city of Tula. The escapees include José Artemio Maldonado Mejía, alias “El Michoacano”, the leader of a local crime organisation known as Pueblos Unidos.
Continue reading...Xiomara Castro has said she will foster ties with Beijing in what experts see as a move to counter US influence
Xiomara Castro’s victory in the Honduras presidential elections has placed the Central American nation at the heart of an intensifying diplomatic tug-of-war between Taiwan and China.
Honduras is one of only 15 remaining countries that recognizes the sovereignty of Taiwan, which China claims as part of its own territory. But Castro made a manifesto pledge to end that decades-long relationship and establish diplomatic ties with Beijing.
Continue reading...