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Local officials are often thrilled to see their communities featured on National Geographic specials. But the mayor of Valparaiso, Chile, isn't smiling about the "Ultimate Earthquake" episode, reports the Santiago daily El Mercurio.
The program, airing Sunday in Chile, simulates the catastrophic effects of a magnitude 9.5 quake off the tectonically active Chilean coast. A quake on May 22, 1960, centered near Valdivia, south of Valparaiso, reached magnitude 9.5, making it the most powerful quake ever recorded. That event shook the coast and sent tsunamis rolling across the Pacific.
Valparaiso Mayor Aldo Cornejo worries that the gripping, simulated images of tumbling buildings, buckled roadways and an inundated coastal city could hurt tourism and scare residents. Posted by Patrick J. McDonnell and Andrés D'Alessandro in Buenos Aires
A flotilla of skiffs and dinghies guided by green-thinking Argentine activists didn't deter the inauguration of a port for a new paper mill on a river separating tiny Uruguay and its huge neighbor, Argentina.
The project by Finnish pulp producer Botnia has opened a cavernous rift in the normally close relations between the two nations, which share much in history, culture and ethnic makeup. It has become a classic conflict of conservation versus globalized investment.
Argentina opponents, who say the plant will poison the scenic Uruguay River, have been thwarted in efforts to halt the $1-billion-plus project, which is on the Uruguayan side of the river. An entire ecosystem is being sacrificed to produce tissues, critics say. "Botnia go home," read a banner hoisted by protest craft Wednesday near the new port and the mill's looming smokestack.
Uruguayan officials and the company deny allegations of heightened contamination, saying the latest clean technology will be used. The plant will use Uruguayan-grown trees to yield pulp for paper products marketed in Europe and Asia. Production is to begin this year.
In an article in La Nación, commentator Jorge Elias lamented that both nations had failed to avert a controversy "that divides something beyond the waters of their shared rivers."
Posted by Patrick J. McDonnell and Andrés D'Alessandro in Buenos Aires
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) launched an emergency appeal this week for $850,000 to benefit up to 250,000 victims of the recent earthquake in Peru. The magnitude 8.0 temblor hit near the southern cities of Pisco and Ica on Aug. 15, killing more than 500 people in the worst quake to hit Peru in 35 years.
The UNFPA request was part of a wider U.N. "flash appeal" to member nations for $37 million to help Peru respond to the earthquake. The agency plans to use the money to improve emergency reproductive health services, said Michele Montas, a spokeswoman for the U.N. secretary-general.
The funds would also be used to finish a rapid assessment of local health services, especially those available to the residents of rural mountain villages, Montas said.
Posted by Nicole Gaouette in Washington
A State Department official denied Wednesday that the United States was trying to undermine the Bolivian government.
Deputy spokesman Tom H. Casey was responding to a reporter who asked him to comment on senior Bolivian officials’ allegations that the U.S. was funneling aid to groups intent on overthrowing the government. “There is absolutely no truth to any allegation that the U.S. is using its aid funds to try and influence the political process or in any way undermine the government there,” Casey said during a regular news briefing.
He noted that the U.S. sends Bolivia approximately $120 million in aid. “Those funds go to support some fairly basic humanitarian and development needs of the people there,” he said. “We don't use aid money for partisan purposes.”
Citing the “long, cooperative” relationship between the U.S. and Bolivia, particularly in areas such as drug fighting, Casey said, “If the Bolivian government has any concerns or questions about our activities, I'm sure our ambassador, as well as our aid officials there, will be happy to clarify any questions they might have.”
Posted by Nicole Gaouette in Washington
More than two months after Colombian President Alvaro Uribe unilaterally released leftist guerrilla leader Rodrigo Granda and dozens of other rebels in hopes the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, might reciprocate, none of the 56 political hostages the leftists are holding has been freed.
On Friday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez arrives in Bogota for talks with Uribe on ways he might act as a mediator to secure the hostages’ release. But a seemingly insuperable obstacle remains: The rebels are insisting on the creation of a neutral zone in central Colombia where they can make the exchange and install themselves free of military harassment.
Uribe opposes such a zone, saying that a similar concession by former President Andres Pastrana did not bring the rebels any closer to a peace agreement, and that the rebels used the zone as a base for drug trafficking.
In any case, the families of the hostages, which include three U.S. defense contractor employees and presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, are hoping Chavez, who is admired by the rebels, can work a miracle.
Posted by Chris Kraul in Bogota
The Latin American press follows the movements of Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona pretty closely. How closely was evidenced by headlines in Wednesday's papers that said the sports idol spent last weekend in Bogota having his smile worked on by orthodontist Marlon Becerra. The good doctor said Maradona was anything but a difficult patient. Rather, the 46-year-old was calm and a "good guy."
Maradona came to Colombia a few years ago for weight loss treatment.
Posted by Chris Kraul in Bogota
A U.S. congressman visiting Mexico this week sharply criticized his hosts for allowing so many of their citizens to migrate to the U.S. and said Mexican officials had no incentive to stop the flow of people.
 Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), a staunch conservative on immigration issues, was discussing his tour to Mexico to examine migration issues Monday with CNN host Lou Dobbs, also a fierce critic of illegal immigration. King noted that Mexico gained $25 billion to $30 billion a year in remittances sent by immigrant workers in the U.S. He also told Dobbs that of an estimated $65 billion in illegal drugs that entered the U.S. from Mexico, "somewhere between $13 billion and $48 billion of that finds its way back to Mexico. The incentives in Mexico for them to help us with this really aren't there."
Dobbs commented that Mexicans didn't find it "offensive to export poverty and 20% of their population to the United States." King agreed. "It's no way to run a country," he said.
Oddly enough, King said the trip, which he made with other representatives, including California Democrats Lois Capps and Zoe Lofgren, was meant to "expand our relations with Mexico."
Posted by Nicole Gaouette in Washington
Photo: Sen. Steve King (R-Iowa) Credit: Saul Loeb AFP/Getty Images
United Nations officials announced this week that Afghanistan had elbowed Latin America aside to claim the record number of farmland acres used for drug cultivation.
The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime released its annual opium survey in Kabul, the Afghan capital, showing that the amount of Afghan land used for opium production now exceeds the combined total land used to cultivate coca, the source material for cocaine, in all of Latin America.
Michele Montas, a spokeswoman for the U.N. secretary-general, described the Afghan situation as "frightening," and added that UNODC director Antonio Maria Costa considered the situation grim but not hopeless.
Posted by Nicole Gaouette in Washington
Could former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon be a distant cousin of Ernesto "Che" Guevara?
 Maariv, an Israeli daily, recently reported its improbable finding that the pair were related. Scholars of the iconic Argentine revolutionary are dubious.
Efraim Davidi, an Israeli journalist and historian who wrote a biography of Guevara, emphatically denies the Guevara-Sharon link, says the Argentine daily Clarin.
The Maariv article says Guevara's mother, Celia de la Serna, was a Russian Jewish emigre related to Sharon. Mom supposedly informed her son of this secret. Guevara himself was reported to have traveled to Israel in clandestine fashion to meet with Sharon.
No way, says Davidi. Guevara's mother had Spanish Catholic roots, not Russian Jewish. (El Che's father, Ernesto Guevara Lynch, was of Spanish and Irish stock.) And Guevara is never known to have entered Israel, though he did visit several Palestinian refugee camps.
El Che was executed in 1967 during an ill-fated guerrilla campaign in Bolivia. Sharon remains in a coma from a stroke suffered in 2006.
Guevara is more popular than ever, the subject of a new biopic project directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Che look-alike Benicio Del Toro as the middle-class Argentine physician who met Fidel Castro in Mexico. The rest, as they say, is history.
Posted by Patrick J. McDonnell and Andrés D'Alessandro in Buenos Aires
Photos: Ernesto "Che" Guevara (Couturier Gallery), left, and Ariel Sharon (AP)
After a torrent of criticism, the Peruvian government has backed down from a plan to sponsor a special post-earthquake edition of the national liquor pisco, a much-beloved libation distilled from grapes.
 Peruvian officials and distillers had previously unveiled with some fanfare the production of a limited-edition "Pisco 7.9," referring to the initial magnitude given to the Aug. 15 earthquake that devastated Peru. Hardest hit was the city of Pisco, a center of production of the namesake liquor.
The idea was to provide the commemorative bottles gratis to aid donors as a sign of gratitude. Not so fast.
Wasn't this bad taste, many wondered, considering that the quake killed more than 500 people, injured more than 1,000 and left tens of thousands homeless?
"Can you imagine the United States releasing a whisky called 9/11?" asked one Pisco executive quoted in the daily La República.
No one seemed to recall any special bottlings linked to past tragedies -- not even a Lockerbie 103, after the Pan Am flight blown up in 1988 over whiskey-besotted Scotland.
The number of bottles of Pisco 7.9 ultimately produced, and who holds the now-coveted items, remains a mystery.
In the end, Pisco 7.9 became even more of a collector's item than anyone ever imagined.
Posted by Patrick J. McDonnell in Lima, Peru
Photo: Pisco 7.9; Credit: AP
In July, plans were announced for a new 64-story, 984-foot-tall building in Mexico City, one that would be the tallest in Latin America. The Bicentennial Tower (Torre Bicentenario) would be built on the edge of Chapultepec Park and just inside the Lomas de Chapultepec neighborhood, home to some of the city’s wealthiest residents.
On Aug. 18, a group of 500 protesters surrounded the site of the proposed building, saying it would destroy valuable parkland and add to the creeping commercialization of Lomas de Chapultepec.
The newspaper Excelsior sent a reporter and photographer, who found that some of the well-heeled protesters brought along their bodyguards — a bodyguard (almost always in a suit) is a de rigueur accessory for the rich and famous here. Excelsior ran the story with a headline that declared “The people, well-dressed, will never be defeated” (El pueblo bien vestido jamás sera vencido) a play on the famous Latin American protest chant “The people, united, will never be defeated” (El pueblo unido jamás sera vencido).
If the construction is allowed to go forward, the building will open in 2010, Mexico’s bicentennial.
Posted by Héctor Tobar in Mexico City
Fancy an old dictator’s threads? The son of late Chilean strongman Augusto Pinochet has put up for sale some of his dad’s former wardrobe, the Chilean daily La Tercera reports.
Pinochet’s eldest son, Augusto Pinochet Hiriart, said the collection includes "street clothes without historic significance: suits and old jackets that my father gave to me."
There are none of the garishly teutonic uniforms from "emblematic or special moments," nor anything dad wore while in custody on human rights charges in London during 1998-2000.
A Santiago tailor is said to be offering the collection, discreetly. Why the son needs the cash remains unclear, since papá allegedly stashed away millions in secret funds for his family.
The infamous captain general, who died last December at 91, was finicky about his look, even ordering an extra-big hat size so his chapeau would rise above those of inferior rank.
Posted by Patrick J. McDonnell and Andrés D’Alessandro in Buenos Aires
Mexico City’s air quality is so putrid that city officials are proposing banning the capital’s car owners from using their vehicles for one Saturday per month.
The plan would be an extension of the so-called Hoy No Circula (roughly, Don't Drive Today) program that requires vehicles 10 years of age or older to stay parked for one working day per week.
The latest proposal, which would apply to all but the newest cars, adds Saturday to the list. It is being hailed by environmentalists as a needed weapon in Mexico City’s fight to breathe easier. Cars and trucks are the capital’s single largest source of air pollution.
But some critics are dubious of the benefits of a Saturday ban, which could lead to more cars, rather than fewer. Why? When Hoy No Circula began in 1989, it prompted many capital dwellers to buy second cars to drive while their old heaps sat idle for a day, according to Sergio Sarmiento, a political analyst and columnist with the national daily Reforma.
Saturday is a prime day for Mexico City residents to run errands or to escape the concrete jungle. If the city’s plan becomes law, many might be tempted to buy used junkers so they can keep on trucking on the weekends.
Posted by Marla Dickerson in Mexico City
Death just isn't what it used to be, the Associated Press reports.
The Death Saint, once represented by a skeletal grim reaper, has been given a makeover by devotees in Mexico. It's now embodied by a beatific woman in a flowing gold dress.
The group that worships in the Santa Muerte sanctuary in the rough Tepito neighborhood of Mexico City has denied that the new image is related to its struggle for government recognition.
David Romo, the Traditional Mex-USA Church's archbishop, told the Associated Press that the new incarnation of the saint appeared to a woman in a dream in December. The apparition reportedly instructed the dreamer to ask Romo to commission a new statue.
A new documentary on the cult, "La Santa Muerte," written, produced and directed by Eva Aridjis, was shown at the L.A. Film Festival recently.
Posted by Geoffrey Mohan in Los Angeles
Jalisco Gov. Emilio Gonzalez wasn’t happy about the Condom Fair staged Sunday by his own health department to combat AIDS/HIV in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second largest city.
Volunteers gave away information pamphlets and condoms.
"Why only condoms?" he later fumed to local reporters. "Maybe we should be giving out six-packs and motel vouchers so the government can pay for all the young people’s fun. I don’t think so."
A day later, Gonzalez thought he’d better clarify his position after critics howled: "AIDS is the result of promiscuity, not not using condoms," he said. Instead of promoting condoms, he added, the government ought to be "promoting sexual abstinence among youth and fidelity among couples."
Posted by Cecilia Sanchez and Sam Enriquez in Mexico City
Bolivian President Evo Morales has experts shaking their heads about his bold prediction that Bolivia, generally regarded as South America’s poorest nation, ``could become Switzerland in the next, 10, 15, 20 years.’’
The Daily La Razón promptly ran a chart illustrating some of the differences, like Switzerland’s almost $400 billion GNP, beside Bolivia's $11 billion, and Switzerland's top-10 rank in per capita income beside Bolivia's ranking of 115.
Bolivia does have some advantages: it’s more than 20 times larger than Switzerland and has vast deposits of natural gas and other resources.
The two disparate nations share a landlocked status. But Morales hopes to work out a deal with long-time nemesis Chile for a sea corridor, possibly in exchange for gas sales. But the sea-lane-for-gas notion remains in the realm of the theory.
``The president must have a magic formula,’’ concluded Napoleon Pacheco, an economist.
Others gave the president credit for thinking big. ``If we accept the challenge, it’s very interesting, said Gonzalo Chavez, another economist. ``Very positive.’’
Posted by Patrick J. McDonnell and Andrés D’Alessandro in Buenos Aires
Jamaican reggae pioneers Bob Marley and Peter Tosh may have worshipped a different divinity than their countrymen of the Anglican Church but the believers of both faiths will soon be singing from the same songbooks.
In a move aimed at celebrating the late Rastafarian artists’ contributions to Caribbean culture and spirituality, the Anglican Church of Jamaica has announced that it will include Marley’s “One Love” and Tosh’s “Psalm 27” in a modernized collection of hymnals soon to be printed and distributed throughout the island.
“They may have been anti-church, but they were not anti-God or anti-religion,” Anglican Church spokesman Rev. Ernle Gordon said in announcing the first inclusion of reggae songs in mainstream religious materials.
Marley, who has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, died in 1981 at age 36 after refusing surgical treatment to remove cancerous tissue, in accordance with Rastafarian belief that the body should remain whole. Tosh was killed in a botched robbery attempt at his home in 1987.
Posted by Carol Williams in Miami
No more koala hugs in the halls of the Chilean Congress. Please.
“It is not the role of the Parliament to be doing koala dances,” Sen. Eduardo Frei admonished his colleagues. “We’re here to do other things.”
This rebuke followed an embarrassing infiltration into the congressional sanctum by several scantily clad and stiletto-heeled dancers of “Team Koala,” whose impromptu hugs and hip shakes are featured on Chilean television.
One artiste leaped into the arms of a smiling Congressman Manuel Rojas, whose photos with the cavorting lovelies ignited a scandal.
“I did nothing wrong,” protested Rojas.
Outraged Chilean legislators, not particularly known for their collective sense of humor, are considering new access limits.
“Congress is the place where the laws of the Republic are created,” one lawmaker told El Mecurio. “It merits a certain solemnity and respect.”
Posted by Patrick J. McDonnell and Andrés D’Alessandro in Buenos Aires
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has had it with the boos already. But he’s trying to be philosophical. "God made us perfect, with two ears, one to hear jeers and the other to hear applause," Lula mused this week. "Boos and applause are two moments of human reaction." Catcalls and hisses have greeted the chief executive in recent weeks, notably at the opening of the Pan-American games three weeks ago in Rio de Janeiro’ storied Maracanã stadium. Lula compared his Rio rebuff to arriving at a friend’s birthday party, only to find he wasn’t welcome.
``I’m certain that’s not the way people in Rio de Janeiro think,’’ Lula said.
More boos followed his government’s widely perceived mishandling of the country’s air-travel scare, brought on by the July 17 crash that killed 199 people at Congonhas international airport in Sao Paulo.
From the perspective of Lula and many of his supporters, the jeers largely come from prosperous Brazilians who have never warmed to Brazil’s first working-class president, despite his fiscally conservative economic policies that have helped make many rich.
``Those who are booing,’’ said Lula, ``are the ones with the most reason to applaud.’’
-- Posted by Patrick J. McDonnell in Buenos Aires
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Chris Kraul
Buenos Aires:
Patrick McDonnell
Caribbean:
Carol Williams
Mexico City:
Hector Tobar
Deborah Bonello
Marla Dickerson
Ken Ellingwood
Reed Johnson
San Diego:
Richard Marosi
Washington:
Nicole Gaouette