Coverage on recent struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Cardiff Bay to Thailand
Continue reading...Category Archives: Argentina
Activists demand sexual violence against Argentina’s indigenous people be classified a hate crime
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.
Continue reading...Carlos Menem, flamboyant former Argentine president dies, aged 90
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.
Continue reading...Argentina: human rights outrage at province’s ‘abusive’ quarantine
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
Continue reading...Argentina legalizing abortion will spur reform in Latin America, minister says
‘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.
Continue reading...Victory for Argentina’s women as abortion charges are dropped
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.
Continue reading...Maradona lifts the World Cup: David Yarrow’s best photograph
‘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.”
Continue reading...Argentina legalises abortion and pro-choice campaigners erupt in celebration – video
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
Continue reading...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.”
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