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’
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.
Continue reading...‘Now it’s the girls’ dream’: Mara Gómez on becoming Argentina’s first trans footballer
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.
Continue reading...Argentina’s lower house approves landmark abortion bill
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.
Continue reading...Argentina moves closer to historic abortion legalisation
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.
Murder Me, Monster review – a grisly mystery that stays boldly unsolvable
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
Continue reading...Argentine prosecutors investigate death of Diego Maradona
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.
Continue reading...Diego Maradona’s personal doctor denies responsibility for death
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.
Continue reading...Director Asif Kapadia: ‘Diego and Maradona were two different people’
Film director recalls the long and rocky road to meeting the mercurial subject of his film
Football is a huge part of my life. I was 14 when Diego Maradona scored the two goals against England – the hand of God and the wonder goal. Despite the first goal, I always thought he was the best player in the world. I’ve always been a fan of outsiders, rebels.
Everyone wanted to be Maradona. He was the global phenomenon. The pope wanted to meet him. Fidel Castro would sit and listen to Diego tell a story.
Continue reading...‘It’s like my old man died’: Argentinians flock to palace for Maradona goodbyes
- Thousand queue to pay their respects to national hero
- Tears, football chants and tributes ring out for El Diego
The death of Diego Maradona brought Argentina to an almost complete standstill on Thursday as the nation turned its gaze to the Casa Rosada presidential palace where thousands of people queued up to file, slowly, reverently and one-by-one, past the iconic footballer’s coffin.
Tears and sobbing could be heard from the mourners of all ages and classes who had gathered from the early morning to pay their respects to Maradona as his body lay in state. Among the lamentations, football chants rang out, chief among them: “¡Olé, olé, olé, olé, Die-go! Die-go!”
Continue reading...World reacts to death of Diego Maradona – in pictures
From Kolkata to Mexico City, people around the world have paid tribute to the football legend, who has died aged 60
Continue reading...Diego Maradona: the achingly human superstar who embodied Argentina | Marcela Mora y Araujo
Maradona was a perfect representation of the human ability to be contradictory, to convey ugly and beautiful at once
“A man of genius is unbearable, unless he possesses at least two things besides: gratitude and purity” – Friedrich Nietzsche, on love, perseverance, and moving beyond good v evil.
Diego Maradona said that when you’ve been to the moon and back, things get difficult. “You become addicted to the moon and it’s not always possible to come back down.”
Continue reading...Diego Maradona, one of the greatest footballers of all time, dies aged 60
- World Cup winner dies of heart attack in Buenos Aires
- Argentina declares three days of national mourning
- Maradona dies aged 60: tributes and reaction – latest updates
Argentina, Naples, and the world of football were in mourning on Wednesday at the death of Diego Maradona, in many people’s eyes the greatest player of all time, following a heart attack. He was 60.
The Argentinian president Alberto Fernández, who declared three days of national mourning, said that Maradona had taken his country to the “highest of the world” with his virtuoso performances in the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. “You made us immensely happy,” he wrote. “You were the greatest of all. Thanks for having existed, Diego. We will miss you all our lives.”
Continue reading...Diego Maradona to undergo brain surgery in Argentina
- Argentina legend has a subdural haematoma
- His personal physician says procedure is ‘routine surgery’
The former Argentina captain and World Cup winner Diego Maradona will undergo surgery for a subdural haematoma, a blood clot on the brain, his personal physician said on Tuesday, after he was admitted to hospital in La Plata, about an hour from Buenos Aires. Maradona coaches the local club Gimnasia y Esgrima.
The operation was expected to begin on Tuesday to address the condition, which is a pool of blood, often caused by a head injury, that can put pressure on the brain.
Continue reading...‘We are meant to gather’: organisers of global dance festival refuse to cancel – or give refunds
Ticket holders are angry that organisers insist the Global Eclipse festival will go ahead in Argentina, despite the government there banning international tourists
Thousands of people from around the world partying for 10 days in the middle of the Argentinian wilderness sounds like an ambitious endeavour even before Covid-19. But a global pandemic has done little to sway organisers of the Global Eclipse –Patagonia Gathering, who are determined to charge ahead and refusing to refund ticket holders.
Despite Argentina nearing 1 million Covid-19 cases and authorities currently refusing to let international tourists into the country, the electronic dance music (EDM) trance festival is still scheduled for December 2020.
Continue reading...‘Total destruction’: why fires are tearing across South America
Wildfires, mostly caused by land clearing for cattle grazing and soya production, have set four nations ablaze
Primatologist Martin Kowalewski is measuring the scale of the fires raging across Latin America not in satellite images, but in the number of caraya monkeys (black-and-gold howlers) that have succumbed to the flames.
“Of the 20 family groups that we used to trace in the wild, each group consisting of seven or eight monkeys, at least five groups were burned alive,” he tells the Guardian. Other animals have also perished at San Cayetano, a nature reserve in Argentina’s northeastern province of Corrientes. “Carpinchos (giant South American rodents), otters, two species of fox, guazú deer, yacaré caimans, turtles, snakes. Birds are better at escaping the fire, but that was before all the deforestation. Now they have nowhere to go because there is nowhere else. The forest is so fragmented that they have nowhere to nest.”
Continue reading...Argentina president under pressure to keep election promise on abortion
Over 1,000 public figures call for Alberto Fernández to stay true to his election pledge despite distraction of coronavirus pandemic
Pro-choice campaigners are renewing pressure on president Alberto Fernández to make good on his electoral pledge to legalise abortion in Argentina.
More than 1,000 public figures, writers, journalists and artists added their names to an advert published in three Argentinian newspapers on Sunday, calling for the government to keep its commitment.
Continue reading...‘We’re suddenly drowning in people’: Argentinians flock to Uruguay amid pandemic
About 15,000 to 20,000 Argentinians are estimated to have moved to Uruguay since the pandemic began
Agustina Valls’ phone is ringing off the hook.
“It started as a trickle when the pandemic first hit Argentina, but now we’re getting over 20 calls a day,” she said from her office in Uruguay’s luxury beach resort of Punta Del Este.
Valls runs a thriving business guiding well-off Argentinians through the red tape of acquiring Uruguayan residence – a skill she learned arranging her own residency application after marrying a Uruguayan lawyer last October.
China’s billion dollar pig plan met with loathing by Argentinians
Chinese investment in Argentina’s hog industry would boost exports, but environmentalists fear risk of pandemic
A government-sponsored plan to turbocharge Argentina’s hog industry with Chinese capital is generating unprecedented resistance among its supposed beneficiaries – the Argentinian general public.
Nearly 400,000 people have signed petitions opposing the move. “We never had such a huge response before,” said environmental lawyer Enrique Viale, one of the group who banded together last month to challenge the government’s initiative. His petition currently has 200,000 signatures; another on change.org has almost 120,000 additional signatures, and three separate petitions on the same platform have clocked up another 55,000 between them.
Continue reading...Again Once Again review – elegant meditation on the pains of motherhood
This engaging, philosophical film unpicks the challenges faced by a young mother trying to reconnect with the life she had before her son’s birth
A woman leaves her boyfriend to visit her mum in Buenos Aires, taking their three-year-old son with her – not sure yet if it’s a holiday or a breakup. She hasn’t worked since her son was born and is having an emotional and intellectual crisis. She feels almost non-existent. “I don’t see myself. Who am I?”
This is an elegant, elusive debut from the Argentinian playwright Romina Paula, who picks away at the fantasy that motherhood leads to instant fulfilment. Her film is like an arthouse version of the sitcoms Motherland and Catastrophe, with fewer laughs and more philosophical introspection. It has the feel of a feminist essay that has been semi-dramatised for screen – with Paula starring as a fictional version of herself and her real-life mum and son Ramón playing themselves.
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