Category Archives: Americas

How Pinochet’s economic model led to the current crisis engulfing Chile

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President Sebastián Piñera has chance to lay foundation of a real welfare state as protests reflect country’s discontent with inequalities

After 12 days of mass demonstrations, rioting and human rights violations, the government of President Sebastián Piñera must now find a way out of the crisis that has engulfed Chile.

Analysts have correctly interpreted the wave of protests as a reflection of discontent with the material, political and social inequalities engendered by the economic model imposed by the country’s former dictator Augusto Pinochet.

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The Guardian view on Lebanon and Chile: too little, too late for protesters | Editorial

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Mass unrest has seized both countries. The long-term causes will not be resolved quickly or easily

The events which have brought two countries to the brink were precipitated by apparently small policy shifts that proved emblematic of the ruling elite’s inability to answer or even understand their people’s basic needs while enriching themselves. Chile’s biggest political crisis since the return of democracy almost 30 years ago was triggered by a 3% rise in metro fares, the protests which have engulfed and paralysed Lebanon by a proposed tax on WhatsApp calls. But the underlying causes run far deeper, and have been building for much longer. There is deep anger at political and economic systems that have ignored most of the population.

These countries are, of course, very different. Lebanon has been staggering along for years, due to both political dysfunction and endemic corruption. The central bank governor warns that its economy – long shored up by remittances from overseas – is now days away from collapse. Recently it emerged that, before he became prime minister, Saad Hariri gave $16m to a South African model: a sum encapsulating the gulf between the lives of those at the top and the rest.

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Calypso calamity! Hunt for the lost tapes of 100-year-old Walter Ferguson

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The songwriting storyteller recorded thousands of cassettes for visitors to Cahuita, his paradise town in Costa Rica. Now the race is on to rediscover them

‘Welcome to Cahuita town, welcome one and all,” Walter Ferguson sings on the song Cahuita Is a Beautiful Place, offering an invitation to drink some rum and listen to calypso in this corner of Limón, Costa Rica. Its charming lyrical bounce and layered guitar sounds like the work of more than one man, although it is his work alone – and a song that might never have been heard if not for a project aimed at locating the thousands of one-of-a-kind cassettes that Ferguson recorded at home for friends and visitors wanting to take home a piece of this “beautiful place”.

In the run up to Ferguson’s 100th birthday in May, his son Peck (the 10th of Ferguson’s 11 children) and Swiss calypso fan Niels Werdenberg have spent two years on a labour of love: the Walter Gavitt Ferguson Tape Hunt. Their goal is to track down these lost gems, digitising songs that, in 2018, the Costa Rican government designated part of the country’s cultural heritage.

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Chile: protesters light bonfires and clash with police despite cabinet reshuffle

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Fresh upheaval erupts shortly after president Sebastían Piñera announces firing of hardline officials

Fresh street battles and fires have broken out in downtown Santiago just hours after Chile’s embattled president, Sebastían Piñera, fired hardline members of his cabinet in an attempt to defuse the country’s biggest political crisis since the return to democracy in 1990.

Bands of protesters lit bonfires along the central Alameda Avenue and clashed with riot police as clouds of teargas and smoke engulfed the centre of the city.

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Cristina Fernández de Kirchner celebrates comeback win in Argentina elections – video

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In a dramatic return, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, one of Argentina’s most popular presidents during her two terms in 2007-15, has been voted back into office as vice-president. A large crowd of supporters celebrated outside the Frente de Todos (Everyone’s Front) party headquarters in Buenos Aires on Sunday, when preliminary official results gave the victory to the centre-left presidential candidate, Alberto Fernández, and his running mate, Fernández de Kirchner. The incumbent, Mauricio Macri, conceded defeat on Sunday night

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Argentina election: Macri out as Cristina Fernández de Kirchner returns to office as VP

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Victory of Alberto Fernández’s presidential campaign puts an end to the pro-business economic policies of Macri’s administration

In a dramatic comeback, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, one of Argentina’s most popular presidents during her two terms in 2007-2015, has been voted back into office as vice president.

A large crowd of supporters burst into a roar outside the Frente de Todos (Everybody’s Front) party bunker in the Chacarita neighbourhood of the capital city of Buenos Aires at 9pm when preliminary official results gave the victory to presidential candidate Alberto Fernández and Fernández de Kirchner.

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Mexico’s Day of the Dead festival rises from the graveyard and into pop culture

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Mexico City’s parade has grown bigger each year as the holiday becomes a part of Halloween festivities outside of Mexico

The models welcoming guests to an exclusive nightclub for a party to launch Mexico’s annual Formula One race, were tall, mostly blonde and non-Mexican.

Each one had her face painted with the boney features of La Calavera Catrina, the elegant female skeleton once used to mock the rich Mexicans who aspired to be Europeans, but increasingly seen as the personification of the Day of the Dead – and a symbol of Mexican cool.

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Student in Peru makes history by writing thesis in the Incas’ language

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Quechua is still spoken by 8 million people across the Andes, but Roxana Quispe Collantes hopes she can give it added value

A doctoral student in Peru has made history by becoming the first person to write and defend a thesis in Quechua – the language of the Incas, which is still spoken by millions of people in the Andes.

Roxana Quispe Collantes received top marks from Lima’s San Marcos university, the oldest in the Americas, for her study on Peruvian and Latin American literature, which focused on poetry written in Quechua.

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Chile’s congress evacuated as inequality protests paralyse Santiago

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Legislature in Valparaíso empties after protestors try to force entry to grounds; up to 1 million rally in Santiago

Chile’s Congress has been evacuated after protestors tried to force their way on to the building’s grounds, in a new challenge to a government struggling to contain deadly unrest over economic hardship.

Police fired teargas on Friday to fend off hundreds of demonstrators on the perimeter as some lawmakers and administrative staff hurried out of the legislative building, which is in the port city of Valparaíso.

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Mexico: 27 drugs suspects released a week after El Chapo’s son freed after gun battle

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Suspects had been arrested after drugs, money and rocket launchers seized in Mexico City

Twenty-seven of 31 suspected drugs cartel members arrested this week in a Mexico City raid have been freed by a judge, marking the government’s second high-profile blow on policing the drugs war in as many weeks.

The suspects were nabbed by security forces in a central district of the capital on Tuesday after authorities seized two laboratories used to produce synthetic drugs, 50 kg (110 pounds) of chemical precursors, more than two tonnes of marijuana and 20 kg of cocaine, as well as an unspecified amount of money, rocket launchers and grenades.

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Canada: Somali man found guilty of attempted murder in truck attack

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Abdulahi Hasan Sharif stabbed officer and struck four pedestrians while trying flee to September 2017 incident, authorities say

A Somali immigrant who ran down a Canadian police officer with a truck and then stabbed him repeatedly was found guilty on Friday of attempted murder, the crown prosecutor’s office said.

Related: Edmonton terror attacks: suspect was known to Canadian security services

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Why people are protesting in Haiti – video report

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Weeks of widespread protest have paralysed parts of Haiti. Demonstrators are calling for the country's president, Jovenel Moïse, to resign from office, but despite violence and charges of corruption he has so far refused to stand down

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Protests rage around the world – but what comes next?

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Unrest is seemingly everywhere. We look at the some of the reasons for and responses to it in Hong Kong, Lebanon, Chile, Catalonia and Iraq

In Lebanon they are against a tax on WhatsApp and endemic corruption. In Chile, a hike in the metro fare and rampant inequality. In Hong Kong, an extradition bill and creeping authoritarianism. In Algeria, a fifth term for an ageing president and decades of military rule.

The protests raging today and in the past months on the streets of cities around the world have varying triggers. But the fuel is familiar: stagnating middle classes, stifled democracy and the bone-deep conviction that things can be different – even if the alternative is not always clear.

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Glacial rivers absorb carbon faster than rainforests, scientists find

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‘Total surprise’ discovery overturns conventional understanding of rivers

In the turbid, frigid waters roaring from the glaciers of Canada’s high Arctic, researchers have made a surprising discovery: for decades, the northern rivers secretly pulled carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a rate faster than the Amazon rainforest.

The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, flip the conventional understanding of rivers, which are largely viewed as sources of carbon emissions.

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An explosion of protest, a howl of rage – but not a Latin American spring

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From Chile to Ecuador and Bolivia to Haiti police and protesters are clashing on the streets, but what are the common threads and will they lead to change?

Tanks on the streets in Chile. Barricades and bloodshed in Bolivia. Weeks of unrest that have pushed Haiti to the brink and forced Ecuador’s president to relocate his government.

“This is a social revolution,” said Andrea Lyn, a 61-year-old actor who took to the streets of Santiago this week. “It is us saying: ‘No more’.”

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Presidential apology and reform pledge fail to quell Chile protests

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  • Thousands take to streets of Santiago for sixth day running
  • Piñera scraps fare hike and raises pensions and minimum wage

Tens of thousands of protesters have flooded Chile’s capital, setting up flaming barricades and clashing with riot police after an apology and promises of economic reforms from President Sebastián Piñera failed to quell unrest and rioting has led to at least 18 deaths.

Trade unionists in the world’s top copper-producing country joined demonstrators with a general strike in a movement that started with anger at a small rise in subway fares, but expanded into protests against inequality and to demand improvements in education, healthcare and wages in one of Latin America’s wealthiest, but most unequal nations.

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Evo Morales alleges coup attempt as Bolivia opposition claims ‘giant fraud’

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President said in a televised speech the right ‘prepared the coup’ with foreign powers amid growing tensions over the election

Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, has accused opposition leaders and foreign powers of attempting a “coup” against him amid growing tensions over the result of Sunday’s desperately tight election.

In an angry televised speech on Wednesday, Morales said: “A coup d’etat is under way. The right wing prepared the coup with international support.”

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Chilean leader tries to calm unrest with wage rises and taxes on rich

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Sebastián Piñera announces plans after riot police use teargas to disperse protesters

The Chilean president, Sebastián Piñera, has called for modest rises to low incomes and increased taxes on the rich after the fifth night of anger on the streets raised the death toll in the unrest to 15.

Rioting, arson attacks and violent clashes wracked Chile on Tuesday night. About half of the normally stable country’s 16 regions remained under an emergency decree and some were subject to a military curfew, the first since Chile returned to democracy in 1990, barring natural disasters.

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