 Five photo negatives of the Cuban revolutionary figure Ernesto "Che" Guevara that went on sale at the Mexican auction house Louis C. Morton over the weekend were withdrawn from the auction after failing to attract a buyer, Milenio newspaper reports.
Mexican students might love the Argentine now credited as one of the most important figures in the Cuban Revolution, alongside Fidel Castro, but it doesn't appear that art and antique buyers feel the same way.
One of the negatives up for auction was an image of Guevara addressing the First Latin American Congress of Youth in 1960.
The bidding for the negatives started at 80,000 pesos (around $6,075) but were withdrawn due to the lack of interest, reports the newspaper.
As we reported in January, when the first part of Steven Soderbergh's film "Che, the Argentine" premiered here, Guevara is popular among the sprawling student population in Mexico City, where he and Castro, then an exiled lawyer, planned the Cuban Revolution over dinner and cigars on July 3, 1955.
The myth and heroic image of Che have replaced a real understanding of the complex man that he was. His face is often seen emblazoned on flags and T-shirts at student protests and commonly evoked as a universal symbol of social struggle.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Image: Alberto Korda's 1960 photograph of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, not one of the negatives up for auction, has been painted, printed, silk-screened and sketched on nearly every surface imaginable. Credit: Alberto Korda.
Though half a world away from Argentina, the shy Finns have a passion for the melancholy music and dance, writes the Christian Science Monitor's Stacy Teicher Khadaroo.
"Finland. A nation of reindeer, saunas, Nokia cellphones, and its own special version of ... tango?
"Yes. It seems the melancholic music is a perfect match for the typical Finnish soul. 'It's a little bit sad, and it's beautiful,' a woman tells me at a dimly lit Helsinki restaurant that regularly hosts dances. Paradoxically, when she moves to these sad melodies, she feels happy. (She didn't want to be named, her reason being another national trait: shyness.)
"When Finns first laid their eyes on performances of the Argentine tango nearly 100 years ago, they latched on and soon made it their own. By the 1930s, songwriters were penning original Finnish lyrics, setting the stories in their own snowy landscape."
Read more about the Finnish passion for Tango here.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Looking for advice on where to enjoy a caffeine-filled afternoon in Argentina's capital? Well, Oliver Balch, an Argentina-based journalist and author of the book "Viva South America," lists the top cafes in Buenos Aires for Britain's Guardian newspaper. He writes:
The city's cafes are more than just venues for intravenous pick-me-ups. They're where friends meet for a gossip, where neighbours pop in to read the freebie paper, and where office workers wile away their afternoons when the boss is away.
Read on »
The Latin American cities of Buenos Aires, Panama City and Santiago have been included in a global list of 29 cities where men would most like to live, reports Reuters.
The list, assembled by AskMen.com, put Chicago at the top, helped perhaps by President Obama's association with that city.
AskMen.com used eight rating categories -- livability, sports and entertainment, culture, fashion, sex and dating, health, power and money and the good life -- when judging the winners.
Ratings took into account a list of factors including the rate of unemployment, income growth, ratios of single women to men, the cost of a pint of beer and the rate of male heart disease. An initial list of 60 was cut to 29.
AskMen.com's editor-in-chief James Bassil said the unexpected appearance of cities such as Panama City and Santiago reflected that "the cost of living is low and there is cool development and suddenly they are appropriate places to live in 2009."
Click on the AskMen.com link to read the article on its website.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
 The Guadalajara International Film Festival, one of Mexico’s most important film events, kicked off Thursday.
The festival, which runs until March 27, is expecting visits from such figures as Gael Garcia Bernal, Mexican director Guillermo del Toro and actor and director John Malkovich, who was recently in Mexico overseeing the production here of the play “The Good Canary.”
Serbian director Emir Kusturica, who along with Garcia Bernal will be honored with one of the festival’s top prizes, is expected to unveil his documentary on Argentine football legend Diego Maradona.
Colombia is the guest of honor this year. Documentaries and both short and long film features by Colombian directors will be screened at the event.
The festival received more than 650 film entries seeking to compete for its coveted prizes.
A number of Mexican films will premiere during the festival, and the festival will also celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC).
Check in here for reporting from the Guadalajara International Film Festival on La Plaza. You can check out the festival's YouTube channel here.
See a review of one of the films showing at the festival -- writer-director Cary Joji Fukunaga's "Sin Nombre" -- here in today's Los Angeles Times.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Photo: The poster for this year's festival. Credit: http://www.guadalajaracinemafest09.com/es/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/cartelficg24rgb.jpg
Steven Soderbergh, director of the two-part movie "Che, the Argentine," about the life of the doctor turned revolutionary, answers questions about the epic in an interview with the Oregonian here. Q: Inevitably, you've been attacked for glorifying a Communist and killer. How do you respond to that charge?
A: All I can say is if you can't sit and watch the whole four-and-a-half hours and understand that it's not a glamorization of his life or a commercial for his ideology, then you haven't looked at it objectively. And there are things on the screen that you have chosen to ignore or not see. I stand behind the movie, and I feel that in 10 or 20 years' time it will be viewed for what it is, which is a dispassionate portrayal of certain periods in his life. For people who entirely define Che by what happened at La Cabana [NOTE: a Cuban prison where executions were held after the Revolution], the only part that will be satisfying will be the last 30 minutes of part two, which will be like political porn for them. I had total creative control over the movie. Nobody was telling me what to do. His actions never really had an impact on my upbringing or the upbringing of anyone around me. I came into this not knowing much about him. And I came away admiring certain aspects of his character and disagreeing with certain other aspects of his character. And there's no question: we're very clear that this guy killed people. We're very clear on that. And he was willing to be killed. Again, if you're anti-Che, you've gotta be happy with the way it ends. He's executed, without a trial, in a 12-by-12 room, and he would've been the first person to say, 'That's the risk I took.'
Read on »
The daughters of Joni and Joan are alive and well and living these days in places like Buenos Aires and Portland, Ore. They also were on stage Tuesday night at the Troubadour, in West Hollywood, demonstrating to a transfixed crowd how they've absorbed the lessons of the aforementioned Mitchell, Baez and other elder stateswomen of the singer-songwriter sisterhood, writes Reed Johnson.
But Argentine Abstract Expressionist Juana Molina, who headlined Tuesday's show, and Oregonian urban folkie Laura Gibson, who helped open it, also are finding inventive new ways to update and transmute two distinctly feminine singing styles and sensibilities.
Read more on the link above in today's Calender section.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Image: Juana Molina, the Argentine singer-songwriter performing at the Troubadour in West Hollywood with a full band on Feb. 17. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times
There were no rabble-rousing speeches, but Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the film version, was greeted by an eager audience at the nearly full Julio Bracho cinema, which hosted the premier of the first part of Steven Soderbergh’s long-awaited portrait of the Argentine revolutionary last night.
“Che, the Argentine,” got its first Mexican screening on the sprawling campus of Mexico’s most influential university, the UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico). The movie has, like all upcoming major releases here in Mexico, been selling for weeks now on stands that deal in pirated DVDs, but there remain those who want to see the film on the big screen. The audience was a mixture of all ages, from amorous teenage couples to unaccompanied gray-haired men, and they received the portrait of the much-adored revolutionary with gusto.
Read on »
More affordable computers and an expanding broadband network are two of the factors helping to push Internet use in Latin America, according to a survey conducted by Pyramid Research for Google.
The Miami Herald reports that the recent expansion of Internet users in Latin America has been dramatic.
In 2007, for example, Colombia added 5.4 million Internet users, or about 12% of its population of 45 million -- an 80% increase in the number of Colombia's Internet users that year.
Brazil added 7.4 million Internet users in 2007 (17% growth), Mexico more than 2.2 million (an 11% increase) and Venezuela 1.58 million (38% growth).
Read the full report through the link above.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Argentina soccer hero Diego Maradona, famed in Britain for his “Hand of God” goal against England during the 1986 World Cup, could have been the cause of a fire scare in Manchester, England, over the weekend before the Chelsea club was due to take on Manchester United.
According to Tribal Football, Maradona's love of Cuban cigars was said to be behind the evacuation of Manchester's Radisson Edwardian Hotel at 7 a.m. Sunday, just nine hours before kickoff at Old Trafford.
After the hotel's smoke alarms went off, Chelsea's players had to wait outside in bitterly cold conditions for 40 minutes before they could return to their rooms. Chelsea went on to be defeated by Manchester United 3-0. Argentina coach Maradona was in Manchester to watch Carlos Tevez, a striker from his own team who plays for Manchester United.
The British newspaper The Sun quotes a firefighter at the scene saying: "It looks as though it was set off by Diego and his entourage smoking cigars on the 14th floor."
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
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Chris Kraul
Mexico City:
Deborah Bonello
Ken Ellingwood
San Diego:
Richard Marosi
Washington:
Nicole Gaouette