Category Archives: Argentina

‘A huge surprise’ as giant river otter feared extinct in Argentina pops up

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Conservationists thrilled at the sighting of the wild predator, last seen in the country in the 1980s

“It was a huge surprise,” said Sebastián Di Martino, director of conservation at Fundación Rewilding Argentina. “I was incredulous. An incredible feeling of so much happiness. I didn’t know if I should try to follow it or rush back to our station to tell the others.”

The cause of the excitement was the sighting, last week, of a wild giant river otter – an animal feared extinct in the country due to habitat loss and hunting – on the Bermejo River in Impenetrable national park, in north-east Argentina’s Chaco province. The last sighting of a giant otter in the wild in Argentina was in the 1980s. On the Bermejo, none have been seen for more than a century.

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‘People die in less than a week’: Covid wave catches Argentina off-guard

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Cases have risen from a daily total of about 5,000 in early March to a record 35,000 this week amid relaxed restrictions and a low vaccination rate

It is 1am, and intensive care doctor Vanina Edul is trying vainly to remember the names of all the Covid patients who have died on her watch.

The 47-year-old physician still remembers the first patient she saw die of Covid last year. “He was 60, and we were surprised because that was young for that long-ago time. We thought only old people died. How wrong we were,” she says.

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Two pandemics: as we ease up, virus sweeps the world’s poor

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Latin America and Africa face new wave as politicians and scientists urge rescue packages

World leaders have been warned that unless they act with extreme urgency, the Covid-19 pandemic will overwhelm health services in many nations in South America, Asia, and Africa over the next few weeks.

Only billions of pounds of aid and massive exports of vaccines can halt a humanitarian catastrophe that is now unfolding rapidly across the planet, scientists and world health experts said.

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Latin America’s lack of a united front on Covid has had disastrous consequences | Andre Pagliarini

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The regional coordination of the pink tide era has given way to various governments, left and right, going it alone

A terse report filed from São Paulo, Brazil, appeared in the 17 March 1919 edition of the New York Times. It read: “Influenza again has appeared here in epidemic form. The Government is taking steps to prevent the spread of the disease.” Just over one hundred years later, faced with another pandemic, the Brazilian government has taken a different approach. President Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right extremist elected in 2018, has repeatedly downplayed the coronavirus, urging citizens to suck it up and get back to work so that the economy can once again get moving.

The president has frequently appeared in public places without a mask, stopping to greet supporters, creating potential super-spreader events as a matter of course. Bolsonaro’s recklessness has had terrible consequences: Latin America’s largest nation has been ravaged by the pandemic, with more than 13m cases.

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‘The heart of darkness’: neighbors shun Brazil over Covid response

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Latin American countries scramble to protect themselves from a country where nearly 60,000 people are expected to die in March alone

It has long been regarded as a soft power superpower, the sun-kissed, culturally blessed land of Bossa Nova, Capoeira and Pelé.

But Brazil’s shambolic response to coronavirus under far-right president Jair Bolsonaro has cast Latin America’s largest country in an unfamiliar and unpleasant role: that of a Covid-riddled, science-shunning, politically-unstable outcast on whom many regional neighbors are now shutting the door.

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‘Reclaim These Streets’ and rubber duck rallies: human rights roundup – in pictures

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Coverage on recent struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Cardiff Bay to Thailand

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Activists demand sexual violence against Argentina’s indigenous people be classified a hate crime

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The attacks are common in northern Argentina against women and children – including one victim who was just four years old

Ana* was on her way home from school with her young cousin when it happened. “She managed to run away, but I didn’t,” she said, her voice trembling. “They put me in a car. They were white men. And they raped me.”

Ana’s ordeal wasn’t an isolated incident, but part of a horrific pattern of brutal sexual violence inflicted on indigenous children and women in northern Argentina by non-indigenous men, often in groups.

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Carlos Menem, flamboyant former Argentine president dies, aged 90

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Menem delivered short-lived economic stability in the 1990s and was known for his tabloid personal life

The flamboyant Argentine ex-President Carlos Menem died on Sunday at age 90 after long-term health problems, the country’s current president, Alberto Fernandez, announced in a tweet.

Menem led a colourful personal life while he pushed Argentina to an economic boom, but his two-term 1989-1999 presidency crumbled under the weight of corruption scandals and he spent years plotting an unlikely comeback.

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Argentina: human rights outrage at province’s ‘abusive’ quarantine

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Formosa has the country’s lowest Covid death rate – but critics say that has been achieved by ‘flagrant, grave’ rights violations

The Argentinian province with the lowest Covid death rate in the country has been accused by human rights groups of forcibly quarantining thousands of people under inhuman conditions to achieve that result.

Related: Argentina legalizing abortion will spur reform in Latin America, minister says

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Argentina legalizing abortion will spur reform in Latin America, minister says

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‘I am very confident there will be a change,’ Elizabeth Gómez Alcorta says as new law goes into effect

Argentina’s historic decision to legalize abortion will help spur reform across Latin America, the country’s gender minister has told the Guardian, as a new law allowing the practice goes into effect.

The bill passed by congress on 30 December made Argentina the first major Latin American country to legalize abortion. It will be signed into law on Thursday evening by the president, Alberto Fernández, marking a turning point for a region where the Catholic church has been a major cultural and political influence for centuries.

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Victory for Argentina’s women as abortion charges are dropped

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Hundreds of criminal cases could be halted following landmark change in legislation

Argentina has announced it will drop criminal charges against women accused of having abortions following the government’s historic decision to legalise the procedure.

The announcement offers hope to the mostly poor and marginalised women facing criminal sanctions. But lingering problems such as obstetric violence and sexism in the justice system show the struggle for reproductive justice is not over, according to campaigners.

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Maradona lifts the World Cup: David Yarrow’s best photograph

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‘I bribed a stadium guard with whisky and got dead close just as he was lifted on to another player’s shoulders. It was like a biblical scene. He looked magnificent’

On the final day of exams at Edinburgh University in the summer of 1986, most students partied, but I flew directly to Mexico City. I was 20 years old and studying business and economics while taking photos on the side. I’d never been to the Americas before, and I wasn’t at all a good photographer; in fact, I was incredibly average.

I arrived at the 1986 World Cup under the guise of being a freelance photojournalist, but I was a Scotland fan first and foremost – they always used to say that Scottish journalists are just fans with typewriters. I did have a press pass that I’d managed to blag off the Times, which granted me access to the media pen, but I was much more interested in watching football than taking photographs of it. There was a moment in the first round of a match with Uruguay when Scotland missed an open goal. Back at the Times they were watching the TV coverage of the game and could see the striker with his head in his hands, and in the background me with my head in my hands and with my camera nowhere near the moment. And they thought: “Well this guy, Yarrow, he’s not focused on the task at all.”

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Argentina legalises abortion and pro-choice campaigners erupt in celebration – video

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Argentina has become the largest Latin American country to legalise abortion after its senate approved the law change by 38 votes in favour to 29 against, with one abstention. Elated pro-choice campaigners who had been keeping vigil outside Buenos Aires’s congressional palace erupted in celebration after more than 30 years of activism

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Maradonaland: Naples plans statues and museum to honour ‘Saint Diego’

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City’s murals of Maradona have become pilgrimage sites since footballer’s death in November

A month since the death of Diego Armando Maradona and the southern Italian city of Naples is looking more like a Maradonaland each day.

After renaming Napoli football club’s San Paolo Stadium and a train station in his honour this month, local authorities are planning a large museum, commissioning statues and dedicating an entire square to the Argentinian who took the city’s football team to glory and is regarded as one of the greatest players of all time.

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‘Now it’s the girls’ dream’: Mara Gómez on becoming Argentina’s first trans footballer

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Gómez made her professional debut this month, and wants to break barriers in a place where football and identity are entwined

To get a call up to your club’s first team is every Argentinian boy’s dream. Or so the traditional tango goes.

“Now it’s the girls’ dream … too,” Mara Gómez, who became the first trans footballer to play in a top-flight Argentinian league earlier this week, tells the Guardian. Gómez signed a contract with Villa San Carlos in the recently professionalized women’s Primera División, after years of journeying through the amateur leagues.

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Argentina’s lower house approves landmark abortion bill

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If bill approved in senate Argentina would join Cuba and Uruguay as only Latin American countries where abortion is legal

Lawmakers in Argentina’s lower house have passed a bill that would legalise abortion in most cases, in a big step forward for the legislation that could set the tone for a wider shift across Latin America.

The landmark bill, which needs approval from the country’s senate in a debate expected before the end of the year, allows for voluntary abortions to be carried out up to the 14th week of pregnancy.

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Argentina moves closer to historic abortion legalisation

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A pro-abortion movement, symbolized by a green handkerchief, has swept through Latin America, where abortion is punishable by law

Belén ended up in jail after suffering a spontaneous miscarriage. Unaware that she was pregnant, the 25-year-old went to seek medical care at a hospital in Argentina’s northern province of Tucumán when she suffered abdominal pain.

In accordance with Argentina’s stringent anti-abortion legislation, Belén (not her real name) was reported by the hospital to the authorities and sentenced to eight years in prison for homicide. She did not regain her freedom until almost three years later, in 2017, after a feminist lawyer who took up her case convinced the Tucumán supreme court to overturn her conviction.

“There are many Beléns in Argentina and this madness will continue until abortion is legalized,” said Ana Correa, pro-abortion campaigner and author of the book Somos Belén (We Are Belén).

That long-awaited moment may be about to arrive.

Argentina is expected to move one step away from becoming the first major Latin American nation to legalize abortion on Thursday, when the lower house of congress votes on a legal abortion bill sponsored by president Alberto Fernández. The president holds a majority in the lower house, and a government source said the senate could vote the move into law as soon as next week.

The push for reform in Argentina is part of a pro-abortion “green wave” sweeping through Latin America, symbolized by the green handkerchief that has become the campaign’s instantly-recognizable flag across the entire region.

“The women of Argentina now enjoy the encouragement of all Latin America, where the green handkerchief is being raised up high from north to south,” said Claudia Piñeiro, an Argentinian author who has spent years campaigning for legal abortion.

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Murder Me, Monster review – a grisly mystery that stays boldly unsolvable

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This convention-defying horror has Guillermo del Toro’s vision and David Lynch’s dreamlike logic. But what does it all mean?

Internal affairs takes on new meaning in this distinctively involuted Argentine thriller about a spate of gruesome decapitations in an Andes backwater. Police officer Cruz (Victor Lopez) is already on the case when his lover Francisca (Tania Casciani) becomes the next to have her head apparently chewed off, a mysterious green goo smeared on the stump. Her hollow-eyed husband David (Esteban Bigliardi) is suspect numero uno: he is found naked in the vicinity of the victims and, after later being carted off to an asylum, testifies to a strange voice in his head that whispers: “Murder me, monster.”

Related: My streaming gem: why you should watch The Distinguished Citizen

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Argentine prosecutors investigate death of Diego Maradona

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Officials order searches of home and office of footballer’s personal doctor, Leopoldo Luque

Argentine justice officials are investigating the death of the footballer Diego Maradona and ordered the search of properties of his personal doctor on Sunday, a local prosecutor’s office said.

Maradona died at age 60 of a heart attack on Wednesday. The search order was requested by prosecutors in the affluent Buenos Aires suburb San Isidro and signed by a local judge, according to a statement issued by the prosecutor’s office.

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Diego Maradona’s personal doctor denies responsibility for death

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Leopoldo Luque in tears after officials search his home and office in Buenos Aires

Diego Maradona’s personal physician has denied responsibility for the former footballer’s death after police raided his home and surgery on Sunday, seizing laptops, medical records and mobile devices.

Argentinian media reported that police were trying to establish if there was negligence in Maradona’s treatment and that searches of premises belonging to the neurosurgeon Leopoldo Luque were carried out as part of an investigation into involuntary manslaughter.

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