Category Archives: Argentina

Salmon farming in the Beagle Channel enters troubled waters | Hannah Summers

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Victory for community concerned about the industry’s environmental costs strengthens calls for shakeup of rules along Chilean coast

A growing wave of resistance to the expansion of salmon farms along the Chilean coast has led to an important victory in the fight to protect a pristine fjord in southern Patagonia, home to indigenous groups and an array of stunning wildlife.

Dolphins, whales and colonies of penguins thrive in the 240km-long Beagle Channel, an area of outstanding natural beauty between Chile and Argentina which attracts tourists from all over the world.

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Plunging peso, grinding poverty: Argentina hears echoes of 2001 crisis

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Fiery ex-president Cristina Kirchner is making a comeback as the number two on a resurgent centre-left ticket

Father Guillermo Torre, known as Willy to his parishioners, has been through this before. “I arrived here 20 years ago in 1999, right before the economic collapse of 2001,” he said.

“Here” is Villa 31, a giant slum that sprawls beside the luxurious Recoleta and Retiro neighbourhoods of central Buenos Aires, a city within a city of which Torre is the parish priest. “Back then Villa 31’s population was 12,500; now it is 45,000,” he says, accepting a constant stream of greetings and hugs from recuperating addicts arriving at his drug rehabilitation centre.

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Pair face jail over leaked Emiliano Sala mortuary images

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Sherry Bray and Christopher Ashford admit accessing CCTV of postmortem examination

Two people are facing prison sentences after they admitted accessing footage of the footballer Emiliano Sala’s postmortem examination.

The Argentinian’s body was recovered from a plane wreck on 6 February, two weeks after it crashed into the Channel.

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Should a notorious Buenos Aires slum become an official neighbourhood?

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Turning Villa 31 into a barrio will bring greater stability and prosperity, say city authorities, but the plan is stirring deep resentments about ownership and identity

For many Argentinians, especially those from Buenos Aires, Villa 31 is a household name. It is the most famous – and notorious – slum in Buenos Aires, synonymous with poverty and violence (it has the second-highest murder rate in the city), and with the narcotráficantes (organised drug gangs) and paco, a cocaine paste that destroys communities in Argentina.

As inflation climbed to 55% last year and the national poverty rate crept to 32%, the neighbourhood lurched further into the grip of gangs, such as the Sampedranos. Murder stories from the villa dominate headlines, the most recent one being the discovery of a woman’s dismembered corpse in March.

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César Pelli, architect behind the Petronas Towers, dies at 92

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The Argentinian-American architect designed some of the world’s tallest buildings

The architect César Pelli, who designed some of the world’s tallest and best-known buildings, has died. He was 92.

Anibal Bellomio, a senior associate architect at Pelli’s studio in Connecticut, confirmed that the Argentinian-born American citizen died peacefully on Friday at his home in New Haven.

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Give endangered jaguars legal rights, Argentina campaigners ask court

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With fewer than 20 left in the South American country’s Gran Chaco forest – the big cats could be classed as a ‘non-human person’

Argentina’s supreme court has been asked to recognize the legal rights of the South American jaguar, of which fewer than 20 individuals remain alive in the country’s Gran Chaco region.

The largest cat in the Americas once roamed the continent as far north as the Grand Canyon, but is now in decline across the entire western hemisphere.

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Italian court jails 24 over South American Operation Condor

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Dictatorships of six countries conspired to kidnap and kill political opponents in 1970s

An Italian court has sentenced 24 people to life in prison for their involvement in Operation Condor, in which the dictatorships of six South American countries conspired to kidnap and assassinate political opponents in each other’s territories.

Related: How an Argentinian man learned his 'father' may have killed his real parents

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Total solar eclipse: thousands in Chile and Argentina marvel at ‘something supreme’

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Best views were in the Atacama desert, where a total eclipse has not occurred since 1592

Hundreds of thousands of tourists scattered across the north Chilean desert on Tuesday to experience a rare and irresistible combination for astronomy buffs: a total eclipse of the sun viewed from beneath the world’s clearest skies.

A solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun, plunging the planet into darkness. It happens only rarely in any given spot across the globe.

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Millions across South America hit by massive power cut

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Failure leaves people in Argentina and Uruguay without electricity

Tens of millions of people across South America were left without electricity early on Sunday after a massive power failure left Argentina and Uruguay almost completely in the dark.

The Argentine newspaper Clarín said the “gigantic” power collapse – which it called the worst in Argentina’s recent history – had struck at just after 7am local time, affecting virtually the entire country as well as Uruguay, Paraguay and some cities in Chile.

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Argentinian ex-army officer accused of murder found on holiday in Sicily

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Reporters discovered Carlos Luis Malatto, accused of five counts of crimes against humanity, in Messina

Human rights groups have expressed outrage after a former Argentinian army officer accused of committing murder and forced disappearances during the 1976-83 military dictatorship was found enjoying a beach holiday in Sicily.

Reporters from la Repubblica discovered Lt Colonel Carlos Luis Malatto in a tourist village in the province of Messina, even though he is currently on trial in Rome for crimes committed in Argentina, which is also seeking his extradition.

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Argentina and Algeria stamp out malaria in ‘historic achievement’

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Improvements in detection, diagnosis and treatment hailed by World Health Organization as ‘a model for other countries’

Algeria and Argentina have been declared malaria-free by the World Health Organization, in what has been described as a “historic achievement” for both countries.

The declaration follows warnings that the global fight against malaria has slipped off track in recent years, with cases rising in many of the countries worst affected by the disease.

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Argentinian politician seriously injured in Buenos Aires shooting

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Héctor Olivares critically ill and provincial official dies after incident near congressional building

An Argentinian politician has been seriously injured and a provincial official killed in one of the most brazen political attacks in the South American country since it returned to democracy in 1983.

Héctor Olivares, the representative of La Rioja province in Argentina’s lower house of congress, was shot at about 7am local time on Thursday near the congressional building in Buenos Aires, officials said. He is being treated for gunshot wounds that pierced his abdomen and affected vital organs.

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‘For me, it was everything’: the trailblazing school for trans people | Natalie Alcoba

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At 15, bigotry drove Viviana Gonzalez from school. Decades on, a dedicated school in Buenos Aires is putting wrong to right

Viviana Gonzalez vividly remembers her first day of high school.

She was 12, and imagined a future as a doctor, a teacher or an artist. But the school administrator in her home town in Argentina looked at her long hair, noticed the boy’s name on her ID and kicked her out “like a dog”, admonishing her for wearing “a costume”. She refused to cut her hair and wear a tie. “I was already Viviana. I didn’t want to dress up like a boy.”

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Pope Francis on Lionel Messi: ‘He’s great, but he is not God’ – video

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The five-times Ballon d'Or winner Lionel Messi has earned the nickname 'D10S', a combination of his shirt number and the Spanish word for God - Dios - but Pope Francis has said 'it is a sacrilege' to give the Barcelona captain that title.

In an interview with La Sexta, the leader of the Catholic Church, praised his Argentinian compatriot saying: 'He's great to watch - but he's not God.'

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‘They don’t think we’re human’: Buenos Aires market traders fight eviction

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A recent protest by street vendors was met with a violent crackdown – but was their eviction necessary to ‘order’ the city’s public space?

An unsettling quiet has fallen over a stretch of the usually noisy Feria de San Telmo Sunday market. Artisans should be lining these cobbled streets selling intricate macrame jewellery and Argentinian leather purses to crowds of tourists from all over the world. Deafening percussion bands, accompanied by dancers, and street vendors selling empanadas and arepas should be making their way up the road.

The market is one of the largest handicrafts and antiques fairs in Buenos Aires, popular with tourists and locals alike, and runs the length of Defensa, the main thoroughfare in the barrio of San Telmo.

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Argentina: five-year-old boy rescued after 22 hours lost in desert

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Benjamín Sánchez lost sight of his mother while playing hide-and-seek on visit to El Salado, a semi-desert region

A five-year-old boy who was lost for 22 hours in an Argentinian mountain wilderness inhabited by dangerous snakes, cougars and scorpions has been reunited with his family.

Benjamín Sánchez lost sight of his mother while playing hide-and-seek on a visit to El Salado, a semi-desert region of the province of San Juan in western Argentina.

“My mother was chasing me and I started to run,” he told the Clarín newspaper after his rescue. “I could hear her at first but then I got lost. I leaned on a rock. I started to call her but she couldn’t hear me.”

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‘Thousands’ of young girls denied abortion after rape in Argentina

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Anti-choice doctors and health officials accused of obstructing legal terminations after 11-year-old girl gave birth to rapist’s child

The lives of thousands of girls in Argentina are being put at risk as legal abortions are delayed and obstructed by doctors trying to force pregnancies to full term.

The issue of anti-choice doctors, medical institutions and government officials deliberately trying to hold up legally sanctioned terminations was brought into sharp focus last week when it emerged that an 11-year-old girl’s baby was born alive because health officials delayed her request for an abortion. The girl had fallen pregnant after being raped by her grandmother’s boyfriend.

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Forget tango: the murga of Buenos Aires is a riot of sequins and salvation

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Freelance photographer Kate Stanworth has been following a Buenos Aires murga group for 10 years, as they perform in an energetic street carnival that is little known beyond Argentina

Argentina’s charismatic capital, Buenos Aires, might be more famous for tango, steak and football than colourful carnival parades. However, murga – a feisty, home-grown form of street dance and percussion performed during carnival season, once unfairly thought of as only performed by drop-outs and drunks – has flourished in recent years, providing a source of pride, happiness and salvation for the predominantly working class families that dedicate their lives to it.

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Girl, 11, gives birth to child of rapist after Argentina says no to abortion

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Campaigners condemn authorities who ignored girl’s plea ‘to remove what the old man put inside me’

An 11-year old girl who became pregnant after being raped was forced to give birth after Argentine authorities refused to allow her the abortion to which she was entitled.

The authorities ignored repeated requests for an abortion from the child, called “Lucía” to protect her identity, as well as her mother and a number of Argentine women’s right activists. After 23 weeks of pregnancy, she had to undergo a caesarean section on Tuesday. The baby is unlikely to survive.

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Study warns of global rise in autocratic leaders ‘hijacking’ laws for own ends

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Poland the worst offender as global justice index identifies decline in checks on government power for second successive year

Autocratic rule is on the rise throughout the world, with a growing number of authoritarian leaders “hijacking” laws to consolidate their own power, a study of global justice has found.

Poland demonstrated the most significant turn towards authoritarianism over the past four years, followed by Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. In all, 64% of 126 countries surveyed made similar moves towards autocratic rule in the past year alone, according to an annual rule of law index published by the World Justice Project.

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