The Chilean capital, Santiago, has seen a significant roll-out of riot police after more than a week of mass fare evasion on the city's metro in protest over rising prices. Police and metro management said there had been more than 200 incidents of largely schoolchildren and students jumping barriers and forcing gates to access trains. Metro stations were closed or blocked and in some cases police responded with teargas and batons
Continue reading...Category Archives: Chile
The big picture: boy with balloons in Santiago, Chile
Magnum photographer David Alan Harvey pays homage to Cartier-Bresson’s ‘decisive moment’
David Alan Harvey’s photograph of a boy with balloons on a street in Santiago, Chile, was taken in 1997. It is included in Streetwise, a new collection of pictures from the archives of the Magnum agency. The Magnum name became synonymous with street photography in the 1950s and 1960s under the guiding influence of co-founder Henri Cartier-Bresson. The current volume pays homage to Cartier-Bresson’s black-and-white “decisive moments” and examines the way that that spirit has been taken forward, particularly after advances in digital photography and printing enabled a revolution in colour in the 1980s.
Harvey was elected into the agency – there is a voting process among the membership – in the year that this picture was taken. By then, as a staff photographer for National Geographic, he had been taking pictures for more than three decades. A principle subject was the Hispanic diaspora on both sides of the Atlantic – the “divided soul”, as he terms it, of Latin culture.
Continue reading...Thatcher sent Pinochet finest scotch during former dictator’s UK house arrest
- New revelation adds colour to close relationship between pair
- Pinochet oversaw death and torture of thousands of Chileans
While he was under house arrest in Surrey in 1999, the former Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet received a fine malt from an old friend.
Related: 'Where are they?': families search for Chile’s disappeared prisoners
Continue reading...Bolsonaro taunts UN rights chief over her father’s torture by Pinochet regime
Brazilian president said without the dictator ‘Chile would be a Cuba today’ after Michelle Bachelet criticized rising police killings
Jair Bolsonaro has taunted Michelle Bachelet, the UN high commissioner for human rights, over the Chilean dictatorship that tortured her and her parents, after she criticised rising police killings and a “shrinking” space for democracy in Brazil.
“She is defending the human rights of vagabonds,” the Brazilian president told reporters on Wednesday. “Senhora Michelle Bachelet, if Pinochet’s people had not defeated the left in 73 – among them your father – Chile would be a Cuba today.”
Continue reading...Salmon farming in the Beagle Channel enters troubled waters | Hannah Summers
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.
Continue reading...G7 cash for Amazon fires is ‘chump change’, say campaigners
World leaders offer $20m now plus reforestation plan, but critics want major policy shifts
The G7’s pledge of $20m (£16m) to douse the fires in the Amazon has been dismissed as “chump change” by environmental campaigners, as concerns grow about political cooperation on deforestation and other climate issues.
The summit host, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, told reporters he would try to deal with the long-term causes by creating an international alliance to save the rainforest, with details of a reforestation programme to be unveiled at next month’s UN climate meeting in New York.
Continue reading...A city suffocating: most polluted city in Americas struggles to change
Wood smoke smothers Coyhaique, Chile, in June and July. Yet despite the WHO ranking its air worst in the Americas, residents are reluctant to alter their habits
Photographs by Claudio Frías
“I was born and raised beside a roaring fire,” says Yasna Seguel proudly, as wet snowflakes tap against the kitchen window behind her and orange flames warm an outstretched palm. A tobacco-yellow stain soaks into the table cloth as she sets her mate gourd down to select a fresh log for the fire.
Every evening through the bitterly cold winter months of June and July, the southern city of Coyhaique, the most populous in the region of Aysén in Chilean Patagonia, is smothered by a thick, fragrant blanket of damp wood smoke that clings to the hillsides.
Continue reading...Italian court jails 24 over South American Operation Condor
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
Continue reading...Timelapse captures moment sky darkens for total solar eclipse – video
A dramatic timelapse at Chile's Coquimbo region captured a rare total solar eclipse on 2 July.
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. Some of the best views this time were in Chile's Coquimbo region, where a lack of humidity and city lights combine to create some of the world's clearest skies.
Total solar eclipse: thousands in Chile and Argentina marvel at ‘something supreme’
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.
Continue reading...Chile bishop resigns after suggesting there is a reason the Last Supper had no women
Carlos Eugenio Irarrazaval stands down, weeks after appointment by pope to clean up church’s public image
A Chilean auxiliary bishop appointed by Pope Francis less than a month ago has resigned, just weeks after he made controversial comments about the lack of women in attendance at the Last Supper.
Carlos Eugenio Irarrazaval was appointed by the pope in an effort to rebuild the church’s credibility following a pervasive sex abuse scandal that exposed hundreds of allegations now being investigated by Chilean criminal prosecutors.
Continue reading...Easter Islanders call for return of statue from British Museum
Museum delegation to discuss preservation of island’s statues but indigenous tribes say they want Hoa Hakananai’a back
A delegation from the British Museum will arrive on Easter Island on Tuesday aiming to discuss how to help preserve more than 1,000 of the island’s renowned statues.
Rapa Nui leaders will introduce their visitors to their culture – but they also want to talk about the possible return of the world-famous statue that has stood in pride of place in the museum’s Wellcome gallery for the last 150 years.
Continue reading...The Guardian view on abortion: protecting a human right | Editorial
Cruel laws risk lives and harm women around the world. Attempts to extend them must be resisted
No law can end abortions, however severe its restrictions and however harsh its penalties. Each day almost 70,000 unsafe abortions are carried out around the world, and they are vastly more likely to happen in countries with strict laws. What such legislation does do is force some women to continue pregnancies against their wishes, while risking the lives and wellbeing of others. Women in the US have seen their ability to terminate pregnancies dismantled piece by piece. Now states are racing to outlaw or dramatically curb abortions with extreme and unconstitutional bills. The aim is to directly challenge Roe v Wade, the US supreme court ruling that established that abortion is legal before the foetus is viable outside the womb, at around 24 weeks. Last Tuesday, the governor of Georgia signed a bill essentially banning abortions after six weeks from 2020. Some described it as a sign that men who wish to control women’s bodies have no idea of how they actually work. More likely, those who pushed hardest for the change understand all too well that many women will not know they are pregnant until it is too late.
Five other states have signed similar bills; several more are considering them. (Others have introduced more incremental curbs.) The Alabama senate will this week consider a near-total ban on abortion – with prison sentences of up to 99 years for doctors – which Republicans initially tried to sneak through without even a vote. The state’s lieutenant governor said he believes Roe v Wade will be overturned thanks to Donald Trump’s appointment of conservative jurists.
Continue reading...The battle to save the world’s biggest bumblebee from European invaders | Alison Benjamin
In Chile the beloved native bee is venerated as carrying the spirit of the dead, but its numbers are dwindling as farmers use imported species infected with parasites to pollinate crops
The first time José Montalava saw the world’s largest bumblebee he was six years old and visiting his grandfather’s house in rural Chile. “It was in the tomato patch, a huge, loud, fluffy orange thing buzzing around. I remember trying to grab it, but it kept getting away, although it looked too heavy to fly,” he recalls.
During Montalava’s childhood, these giant golden bumblebees (Bombus dahlbomii) – which can measure up to 40mm and have been dubbed “flying mice” – were a common sight in the town where he grew up in central Chile. “It’s such a striking, charismatic, colourful bumblebee that used to herald spring,” says the 36-year-old entomologist. “Now it’s totally disappeared from my hometown and many other areas.”
Continue reading...Norway’s Kon-Tiki museum to return thousands of Easter Island artefacts
Explorer Thor Heyerdahl collected many items in his effort to prove South American immigration theory
Norway has agreed to hand back thousands of artefacts removed from Easter Island by the explorer Thor Heyerdahl during his trans-Pacific raft expeditions in the 1950s.
An agreement was signed by representatives of Oslo’s Kon-Tiki Museum and officials of Chile’s culture ministry at a ceremony in Santiago as part of a state visit by Norway’s King Harald V and Queen Sonja.
Continue reading...‘Fascist, violent, dangerous’: protests planned as Bolsonaro arrives in Chile
Leftist politicians refuse to attend lunch in honor of Brazil’s far-right leader after instruction for women to wear ‘short dress’
At the end of his first state visit to Washington DC this week, Jair Bolsonaro hailed his meeting with Donald Trump as a “historic moment”, claiming he was returning home with a sensation of “mission accomplished”. Today, Brazil’s far-right leader begins his second official trip – to Chile, where he is poised to receive a much less warm welcome.
Related: Fox News, nepotism and bigotry: Bolsonaro brings his Trump act to DC
Continue reading...Easter Island looks for help to save statues from ‘leprosy’
White spots eating away at the sculptures are softening them to a clay-like consistency and deforming their features
Within a century the emblematic stone figures that guard remote Easter Island could be little more than weathered rectangular blocks, conservation experts are warning – but Britain could be part of the fix.
The giant heads, carved centuries ago by the island’s inhabitants, represent the living ancestors of Easter Island’s Polynesian people – the Rapa Nui – and have brought it Unesco world heritage site status in its Pacific location more than 2,000 miles off the coast of Chile.
Continue reading...Easter Island statues: mystery behind their location revealed
Location of statues was based on nearby fresh water and other resources, says US study
The huge stone figures of Easter Island have beguiled explorers, researchers and the wider world for centuries, but now experts say they have cracked one of the biggest mysteries: why the statues are where they are.
Researchers say they have analysed the locations of the megalithic platforms, or ahu, on which many of the statues known as moai sit, as well as scrutinising sites of the island’s resources, and have discovered the structures are typically found close to sources of fresh water.
Continue reading...All 34 of Chile’s Catholic bishops resign in fallout from huge child sex abuse scandal
Pope Francis speaks in Santiago, Chile on January 17, 2018. His visit to Chile came at a time when a sex abuse scandal was rocking the country's Catholic Church.
Trump flips on trade pact, weighs rejoining Pacific Rim deal
In a striking reversal, President Donald Trump has asked trade officials to explore the possibility of the United States rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, a free trade deal he pulled out of during his first days in office as part of his "America first" agenda.