Category Archives: Chile

Latin America and Caribbean exceed 2m cases – as it happened

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Iran reports more than 100 deaths for third day in a row; UK death toll rises by 43; Chile deaths rise to more than 7,000. This blog is now closed. Follow our new blog below

We have now closed this blog, but you can stay up to date on all our live coverage of coronavirus on our new global blog below:

Related: Coronavirus live news: World Health Organization reports record daily global case increase

That’s all from me for today – I’ll hand over to my colleague Helen Sullivan to guide you all through the next bit. As always, thanks for following along.

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Global report: Trump says he ordered coronavirus testing to ‘slow down’

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Testing a ‘double-edged sword’, says Trump; Chile death toll nearly doubles; Australian state ‘absolutely at risk’ of second peak

Donald Trump told thousands of supporters on Saturday that he had asked US officials to slow down testing for Covid-19 because case numbers in the country were rising so rapidly.

Speaking at a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the US president used racist language, referring to Covid-19 as “kung flu”, and described testing for the virus as a “double-edged sword” because it led to the identification of more cases.

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Chile’s health minister quits over government response to Covid-19

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Country has one of the highest numbers of daily coronavirus cases relative to population size

A steep rise in coronavirus cases in Chile has plunged the government into crisis and prompted intense criticism of its management of the pandemic.

Divisions between the government and sectors of the medical community led to the resignation of the health minister, Jaime Mañalich, on Saturday, shortly after 234 deaths in 24 hours had been confirmed, the highest daily toll to date. Chile is among the countries with the highest number of daily cases relative to population size.

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Global report: China reports most cases since April as pandemic gathers pace in Latin America

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Second wave fears rise in China; Chile health minister resigns; British citizens evacuated from Colombia; European borders reopen

China has reported its highest daily number of new coronavirus cases in months as parts of Beijing remained under lockdown, offering a second-wave warning to the rest of the world as the pandemic rages in South America and global cases approach 7.8 million.

The shock resurgence in domestic infections on Sunday has rattled China, where the disease emerged late last year but had largely been tamed through severe restrictions on movement that were later emulated across the globe.

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Pussy Riot and Chilean group join forces against state repression

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Activists release manifesto, calling on civilians to set the institutions of the state on fire – ‘in a figurative sense’

Governments around the world are using the coronavirus as an excuse to step up repression and push back civil liberties, warns a new song by Pussy Riot, released alongside a new manifesto written with the Chilean feminist collective Lastesis.

Related: Chile security forces' crackdown leaves toll of death and broken bodies

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Naming of Pinochet’s great-niece as Chile women’s minister sparks outrage

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Macarena Santelices has praised the ‘good side’ of the 1973-90 dictatorship in which over 300 women were raped under torture

Chile’s rightwing president, Sebastián Piñera, has prompted a firestorm of criticism after naming an open supporter of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship as the country’s new minister for women’s rights and gender equality.

Controversy over the appointment of Macarena Santelices – who is also the dictators’s great-niece – has focused on a 2016 interview in which she praised the “good side” of the 1973-90 dictatorship in which more than 3,000 people were murdered or disappeared by security forces and many thousands more imprisoned and tortured.

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Chile: pandemic highlights health crisis as lockdown halts inequality protests

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Coronavirus arrives against backdrop of unresolved social tensions that fueled last year’s explosion of protests

For six months, Chile was shaken by a wave of protests in which millions took to the streets to protest against inequality. Residents of the capital, Santiago, grew accustomed to the raucous crowds thronging the main square to sing and chant against the government.

Now, with parts of the capital on coronavirus lockdown, wind rasps through an empty Plaza Italia as a handful of shoppers hurry past security forces enforcing the stay-at-home order.

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Chilean author, campaigner and escapee Luis Sepúlveda dies aged 70 of Covid-19

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Dramatic career took in escapes from Pinochet’s regime in the 70s, sailing with Greenpeace and writing books including The Old Man Who Read Love Stories

The celebrated Chilean author Luis Sepúlveda, who was exiled by the dictator Augusto Pinochet in the 1980s, has died from Covid-19.

Best known for his 1992 novel The Old Man Who Read Love Stories and 1996’s The Story of a Seagull and The Cat Who Taught Her To Fly, Sepúlveda died in hospital on Thursday. He first began showing symptoms from coronavirus on 25 February, after returning to his home in Spain from a festival in Portugal. On 1 March, it was confirmed that Sepúlveda was the first case of Covid-19 in the Asturias region, where he had lived for 20 years.

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Chile: Pinochet-era military agents could be freed from jail to slow Covid-19 spread

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Inmates at Punta Peuco prison convicted of human rights violations could be included in bill to release low-risk offenders

Former Chilean military agents convicted of serious human rights violations under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet could be freed by a controversial new ruling that seeks to halt the spread of the coronavirus among the country’s prison population.

Related: Chile doctors fear complacency over Covid-19 after initial successes

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Britons on virus-hit ship wait for Panama Canal green light

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Passengers on cruise liner where four died and its sister ship hope to be flying home soon

Hundreds of passengers, many of them British, on a coronavirus-stricken cruise trip where four people have died are confined to their cabins awaiting the go-ahead to pass through the Panama Canal.

Dozens have fallen ill on the Zaandam cruise ship, which was stranded off the Pacific coast of Panama after several Latin American countries refused to let it into port. Some passengers were transferred to a second ship – the Rotterdam – on Saturday night.

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Chile moves to postpone constitutional referendum amid coronavirus crisis

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Chilean lawmakers have voted to postpone a much-anticipated referendum on a new constitution as safety concerns around the coronavirus outbreak take precedence over politics.

The vote on rewriting the country’s Pinochet-era constitution was originally due to take place on 26 April – a date that the country’s health ministry now predicts will be the height of the virus outbreak in the country.

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Pick up truck crashes into Easter Island sacred stone statue – video

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A Chilean man was arrested after he drove a truck into one of the famous Easter Island statues and toppled it. The mayor of Easter Island has called for vehicle restrictions to be introduced around its archaeological sites after the truck caused 'incalculable' damage

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Anger on Easter Island after truck crashes into sacred stone statue

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Mayor calls for vehicle restrictions around famous structures after Chilean man causes ‘incalculable’ damage

The mayor of Easter Island has called for vehicle restrictions to be introduced around its archaeological sites after a pickup truck hit one of the famous stone statues, causing “incalculable” damage.

A Chilean man who lives on the island, in Polynesia, was arrested after the incident on Sunday and has been charged with damaging a national monument, according to the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio de Valparaíso. The platform on which the statue stood was also damaged in the crash, it reported.

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Will green technology kill Chile’s deserts? – video

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The Atacama in northern Chile is the driest desert in the world, and may be the oldest. It also holds 40% of the world's lithium – an essential ingredient in the rechargeable batteries used in green technology. Indigenous leaders and scientists say Chile's plans to feed a global green energy boom with Atacama lithium will kill the desert. As violent protests rock the country, they are fighting for the mining to stop 

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Chile’s drastic anti-obesity measures cut sugary drink sales by 23%

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Experts welcome example of nation once drinking more per head than any other

The world’s toughest controls over the promotion of sugary drinks, brought in by a nation beset by obesity, have cut purchases by nearly a quarter in two years, research has shown.

Instead of a sugar tax, which the UK and other countries have chosen to impose, Chile has banned sales in schools and adopted stark black and white labels aimed at warning and educating families about the health dangers of junk food and drinks for their children.

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Scenes from Santiago: Chile’s protests spill from streets to stage

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The city’s theatre is emotional, indignant and polemical finds our critic on a whirlwind trip through a dozen shows

The sparky young performers on stage thank us for coming out tonight. There are so many other things we could have been doing, they tell us, before launching into their show, Too Much Sexual Freedom Will Turn You Into Terrorists. “Burning subways” gets the biggest laugh. We are, after all, in Santiago, where only three months ago people took to the streets and did exactly that. Even now, in spite of soaring summer temperatures, Chileans continue to protest every weekend. Their list of complaints ranges from inadequate private pensions to an out-of-touch president.

The graffiti creeping across every surface calls for an end to police violence, for the renationalisation of water and for the indigenous Mapuche people to fight back. Sprayed everywhere is the figure 6% – President Sebastián Piñera’s popularity rating.

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More than 300 human rights activists were killed in 2019, report reveals

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Colombia was the bloodiest nation with 103 murders and the Philippines was second, followed by Brazil, Honduras and Mexico

More than 300 human rights defenders working to protect the environment, free speech, LGBTQ rights and indigenous lands in 31 countries were killed in 2019, a new report reveals.

Two thirds of the total killings took place in Latin America where impunity from prosecution is the norm.

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‘The salt they pump back in kills everything’: is the cost of Chile’s fresh water too high?

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Antofagasta, situated on the edge of the Atacama Desert, relies on a vast desalination plant which provides the city with drinking water – but the waste brine is killing wildlife, say fishermen

As Eduardo Muñoz drifts his ageing skiff into Antofagasta’s harbour, flecks of paint peeling from its prow, he looks disconsolate.

“I used to get twice as many clams from every dive,” he mutters bitterly, hauling two large sacks of shellfish on to the dock and ruffling the salt from his hair.

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Chilean air force chief says cause of Antarctic plane crash may never be known

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Investigators may never recover enough wreckage to know why the Hercules crashed, killing 38

The commander-in-chief of the Chilean air force has said that the struggle to recover the remains of a Hercules that crashed en route to the Antarctic two weeks ago could make it difficult to ever determine what happened to the plane.

The Hercules C-130 cargo plane, which was carrying 17 crew and 21 passengers, disappeared shortly after taking off on 9 December from the southern city of Punta Arenas in Chilean Patagonia.

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