Daily Headlines: September 29, 2016

* Argentina: Nearly one in three residents in Argentina live below the poverty line according to the first data on the subject published by the government since October 2013.

* Colombia: Days after a peace accord was signed with Colombia’s largest guerilla army, the ELN rebels claimed to be ready to officially start peace talks with the government.

* Chile: “I believe that women should have legally the possibility of making their own choices,” said Chilean President Michelle Bachelet over a proposal that would relax the country’s ban on abortion under all circumstances.

* United States: A PricewaterhouseCoopers study concluded that Hispanic television viewers prefer English-language programs over those in Spanish with stronger preference in each subsequent generation for shows in English.

YouTube Source – CCTV America (New data from the Argentinian government seems to confirm the findings of a 2014 World Bank report warning that a third of the population is vulnerable of falling into poverty.)

Online Sources – Voice of America, The Latin Americanist, Deadline, BBC News, ABC News

Daily Headlines: August 10, 2016

* Brazil: Amid the fervor of the Rio Games, Brazil’s Senate voted in favor of holding an impeachment trial against suspended President Dilma Rousseff.

* Puerto Rico: Tourism in Puerto Rico has weakened over the past few months reportedly as a result of the Zika virus outbreak that has affected most countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

* Chile: President Michelle Bachelet in a televised address proposed reforming the private pension system created under the rule of former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

* Venezuela: Opposition politicos are none too pleased with the Venezuelan electoral commission’s decision to likely hold a possible recall referendum against President Nicolas Maduro in 2017 instead of later this year.

YouTube Source – AFP

Online Sources – euronews, Travel Weekly, Deutsche Welle, Yahoo News

Daily Headlines: December 7, 2015

* Colombia: The Colombian government claimed to have found the world’s largest sunken treasure, a 300-year-old vessel carrying an estimated $17 billion, though the question of who owns the spoils could become a costly legal battle.

* Mexico: Seven countries including the U.S., Canada and France issued travel warnings to visitors journeying to Mexico after authorities believed that two missing Australian surfers were killed in Sonora.

* Nicaragua: “We do not want to be accomplices to the death, damages and destruction that a 3C or 4C world will represent,” declared Nicaragua’s representative to the COP21 summit after the Central American state became the first to publicly reject a global blueprint to combat climate change.

* Chile: President Michelle Bachelet reportedly signed a decree eliminating marijuana from a list of hard drugs in anticipation of an expected Congressional debate to reform Chile’s narcotics laws.

YouTube Source – euronews (“Colombia claims to have discovered what's been described as the 'holy grail' of shipwrecks of the coast of Cartagena”.)
 
Online Sources – teleSUR English, Financial Times, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor

Daily Headlines: September 2, 2015

* Argentina: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo helped positively identify the 117th child stolen and illegally adopted during military rule from 1976 to 1983.

* Puerto Rico: The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority reportedly reached a deal with one of their main bondholders to provide some relief to its $9 billion debt and potentially prevent bankruptcy.

* El Salvador: The 907 murders in August made it the deadliest month in El Salvador since the country’s civil war in the 1980s.

* Chile: Chilean President Michelle Bachelet’s approval rating hit a record low of 24% though it’s greater than the 15% support given by poll respondents to the opposition Alianza coalition.

YouTube Source – teleSUR English

Online Sources – UPI, CNBC, NBC News, Reuters

Daily Headlines: May 26, 2015

* Cuba: Tourism in Cuba grew by 14% between January and May including a 36% boost from U.S. visitors traveling to the island despite restrictions.

* South America: Police are looking into alleged e-mail threat made last month by the Islamic State against the presidents of Argentina and Chile.

* Puerto Rico: Legislators in Puerto Rico continue to hammer out the final details of a $1.2 billon tax proposal that could be signed into law as early as next week.

* Brazil: At least eight people died following a riot at a Brazilian prison built for 644 inmates but housing over 1400 prisoners.

YouTube Source – Bloomberg Business (Video uploaded in March 2015).
 
Online Sources – International Business Times, Reuters, ABC News, The Guardian

Daily Headlines: March 2, 2015

* Uruguay: Tabaré Vázquez returned to the Uruguay presidency as the successor to José Mujica, the leader who helped legalize marijuana, decriminalize abortion and accept refugees from Syria.

* U.S.: Cuban-born Latin American baseball pioneer Orestes “Minnie” Minoso died on Sunday purportedly at the age off ninety.

* Brazil: In another negative sign for Brazil’s economy, financial analysts cited by the central bank predicted that the gross domestic product will decrease while inflation will grow.

* Chile: President Michelle Bachelet visited Valentina Maureira, a 14-year-old girl hospitalized with cystic fibrosis whose plea for euthanasia was rejected by the Chilean government.

Video Source – YouTube via euronews (“Uruguay has sworn in Tabare Vazquez as President replacing one leftist leader with another.”)

Online Sources – CNN; Fox News Latino; MercoPress; Bloomberg

Daily Headlines: February 2, 2015

* Brazil: Brazil's worst drought in decades has led to special alerts in four Brazilian states including Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, decreased agriculture production in Espirito Santo and water rationing in more than ninety cities.

* South America: The Argentine government wants to create a new intelligence agency in the wake of the death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman while scandal-plagued former Colombian intel chief Maria del Pilar Hurtado turned herself in to police.

* Venezuela: Is U.S. Vice President Joe Biden planning a coup against Venezuela’s government or is Nicolás Maduro searching for scapegoats amid a domestic economic crisis?

* Chile: President Michelle Bachelet proposed reforming Chile’s complete ban on abortion by legalizing the procedure in cases of rape or when the mother’s life is at risk.

Video Source – YouTube user Reuters (“Agricultural producers in Rio de Janeiro state battle with the worst drought Brazil has seen in 80 years which is killing large numbers of livestock and crops.”)
 
Online Sources – Latin American Herald Tribune; Buenos Aires Herald; BBC News; Bernama; UPI

Daily Headlines: December 30, 2014

* Brazil: The Aurelius Capital hedge fund that was reportedly ‘a leading member of a group of investors that refused to accept a debt restructuring with Argentina” is now campaigning for Petrobras to fall under default.

* Argentina: If you believe that Argentina’s president became the godmother of a Jewish baby to stop him from becoming a werewolf then there’s a bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in buying.

* Venezuela: According to the Venezuelan Violence Observatory, the South American country ranks only behind Honduras for the highest number of homicides in 2014.

* Chile: President Michelle Bachelet submitted to Congress a labor reform package aimed at promoting unionization and expanding the use of collective bargaining in contract negotiations.

Video Source – YouTube user FRANCE 24 English

Online Sources – New York Daily News; The Guardian; NBC News; Zee News; Reuters

Chile Gov’t to Propose Eliminating Amnesty Law

Chile’s government will reportedly propose overturning an amnesty law protecting former senior members of the country’s authoritarian military regime.

According to the Chilean media, the plan will be presented later today on the forty-first anniversary of the military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet against the democratically elected government headed by President Salvador Allende.

The amnesty law has been in the books since Pinochet decreed it nearly five years following the September 11, 1973 coup that brought him into power.  Although some judicial decisions have circumvented the law and helped convict 260 people to prison for human rights abuses, only sixty have been sentenced due to protections offered by the amnesty law.

An estimated 1300 disappearances and 30,000 tortures took place during the seventeen years under Pinochet’s rule.  Most of them are believed to have taken place prior to the now-late ruler’s 1978 amnesty decree.

“Enough with the painful waiting and unjust silence...It is time to come together for the truth,” declared President Michelle Bachelet at an event this morning to as part of the commemorations of the 1973 golpe.

“Forty-one years have passed and the survivors and victims who saved their lives…are elderly people.  Most of them have died waiting for justice while others have kept silence,” added the president who was tortured at imprisoned and tortured at the infamous Villa Grimaldi detention center in 1975 and before fleeing into exile.

Daily Headlines: September 10, 2014

* Guatemala: The Guatemalan Constitutional Court recently suspended the “Monsanto Law,” which would have forced farmers to obtain permission from firms like Monsanto, DuPont or Bayer in order to grow certain crops.

* Chile: President Michelle Bachelet announced a series of legal reforms including strengthening a Pinochet-era anti-terrorism law in response to a bombing in Santiago, Chile on Monday.

* Peru: Four indigenous environmental activists were murdered in a remote area of Peru allegedly at the hands of illegal loggers.

* Haiti: At least twenty-three people died and thirty-two were injured when a bus fell into a ravine in southern Haiti yesterday.

Video Source – teleSUR English via YouTube

Online Sources –VOXXI; Fox News Latino; The Latin Americanist; Voice of America; Reuters

Chile: Gov’t Blames “Terrorists” for Bombing (Updated)

Chilean officials believe that an explosion in the Santiago subway system on Monday was a terrorist attack.

“This is an act that has all the hallmarks of a terrorist deed,” declared government spokesman Alvaro Elizalde regarding the incident that has left at least eight people injured including two in serious condition.

“There is no doubt. And it has been carried out with the intention of hurting innocent people,” he added.

 “I was having lunch, I felt the noise and we went out to see and we saw a lot of smoke, people running and shouting,” said Joanna Magneti, an eyewitness to the explosion that occurred at a fast food restaurant by the Military Academy metro station.

First responder Fernando Zapata told the press that among the wounded was a cleaning woman who lost several fingers due to the explosion.

Update: President Michelle Bachelet urged her countrymen to remain calm in light of the bombing on Monday.

"This is a cowardly act because it has as its objective to hurt people, create fear and even kill innocent people," said Bachelet to the press after she visited some of the injured at a Santiago medical clinic.

"We're going to use all the weight of the law, including the anti-terrorist law, because those responsible for these acts have to pay," she added.

Daily Headlines: July 11, 2014

* Cuba: Cuban lawyer Ernesto Vera claimed that he worked for the state security agency and pretended to be an opposition activist in order to “discredit the dissidents.”

* Uruguay: Luis Suárez may be serving a harsh suspension for biting an Italian player at a World Cup match but that hasn’t stopped the Uruguayan from reportedly being transferred from to F.C. Barcelona as part of a $129 million deal.
  
* Latin America: A new U.N. report found that Mexico City and Sao Paulo, Brazil are in the top five of the world’s most populated cities though their ranking is expected to fall by 2030.

* Chile: President Michelle Bachelet of Chile criticized landlocked Bolivia’s appeal to the International Court of Justice seeking access to the sea.

Video Source – AFP via YouTube (Ernesto Vera alleged that he infiltrated the Ladies in White protest movement, seen here during a 2010 march, as part of his work as a Cuban state security agent).
 
Online Sources – Fox News Latino; Bernama; The Latin Americanist; The Guardian

Daily Headlines: April 25, 2014

* U.S.: Streaming media service Netflix ordered its first Spanish-language series, which will be a comedy on professional soccer and starring Mexican actor Louis Gerardo Méndez.

* Brazil: Riot police clashed again with dozens of residents of a Rio de Janeiro favela who were still angry at the authorities for possibly causing the death of a local professional dancer.
 
* Latin America: Several Latin American figures were named to TIME magazine’s list of the “100 most influential people in the world” including Argentine-born Pope Francis, Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón and the presidents of Chile, Uruguay and Venezuela.
 
* Cuba: Conrado Marrero, the oldest former Major League Baseball player, died in Havana this week just two days prior to his 103rd birthday.
 
Video Source– YouTube user Film Festivals and Indie Films (Actor Louis Gerardo Méndez and director Gaz Alazraki worked on the Mexican film Nosotros los Nobles and they will reunite for Netflix’s first Spanish-language series).

Online Sources – The A.V. Club, BBC News; LAHT; The Latin Americanist; Reuters

Bolivian President Renews Push for Coastline

Bolivian President Evo Morales yesterday urged the international community to support his landlocked country’s push for a coastline that it lost to Chile 135 years ago.

“Today, in our America, different winds are blowing. Today, we are a continent of peace. We seek to find peaceful solutions to historical injustices without wars nor confrontations,” said Morales at a public speech to commemorate the local Day of the Sea holiday. 

The remarks by Morales occurred at an event in a La Paz plaza named after Eduardo Abaroa, a Bolivian national hero who lost his life in the War of the Pacific in 1879.  It was during this brutal conflict where Chile annexed tens of thousand of square miles of Bolivian and Peruvian land including some 260 miles of Bolivian coastline.

“Bolivia wants access to the sea before all of the area’s natural resources are exhausted and exploited by the international companies,” he added in apparent reference to billions of dollars Chile earns yearly by exports from copper, silver and minerals extracted from land formerly controlled by Bolivia.

“If a dictator like (former Chilean strongman Augusto) Pinochet proposed access to the ocean for bolivar in the 1970s, then the current socialist and democratic government can make this a reality in the 21st century,” Morales mentioned in a message to recently inaugurated Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.

Since Bachelet retook the presidency on nearly two weeks ago, she has indicated that it will differ from that of her conservative predecessor, Sebastián Piñera, on issues like the treatment of the indigenous Mapuche and the planned HidroAysen hydropower complex.  Moreover, both Bachelet and Morales held bilateral negotiations during her first term in the presidency yet it appears like Bachelet in her second period in office would not sway from Piñera’s stance against the need to redraw boundaries.

Daily Headlines: March 13, 2014

* Venezuela: Three people were killed in Venezuela on Wednesday on the one month anniversary of clashes between opposition protesters and pro-government activists in Caracas.

* Mexico: Some areas of Mexico may be hit by drug-related violence but that hasn’t stopped international tourism in the country from increasing by 17.4% in January 2013.

* Haiti: A new class action lawsuit was filed in a U.S. federal court this week against the U.N. to hold the international body responsible for a cholera epidemic that killed thousands across the Americas.

* Chile: “Chile must value the diversity that characterizes Latin America and effectively tackle the challenges presented by our relations with neighbors,” declared new president Michelle Bachelet during her inauguration address on Tuesday.

Video Source – YouTube user ExcelsiorTV (“Venezuela marks one month of protests and the violence has apparently not ceased.  24 people have died.”)

Online Sources- Reuters; SBS; The Guardian; Xinhua

Daily Headlines: March 11, 2014

* Chile: Leaders from around the Americas will attend the presidential inauguration of Michelle Bachelet who returns to Chile’s Palacio de la Moneda for a second non-consecutive term.

* Mexico: Mexico's Gallos Blancos de Queretaro first division soccer team could be relegated over suspicions that the squad was used to illegally launder money.

* Bolivia: An Amnesty International report found that victims of human rights abuses during the dictatorship period of 1964-82 in Bolivia were being denied proper access to compensation.

* Venezuela: Medical professionals upset at a shortage of medicines in hospitals and the importing of thousands of doctors from Cuba have become the latest group to protest against the Venezuelan government.
 
Video Source – euronews via YouTube (Michelle Bachelet was reelected as Chile's president in a landslide victory last December.)
 
Online Sources- GlobalPost; BBC News; Mercopress; The Miami Herald

Daily Headlines: December 12, 2013

* Vatican: On the same day that Argentine-born Pope Francis was selected as Time magazine’s Person of the Year a new poll found that 92% of Catholics in the U.S. support the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires.

* Mexico: The lower house of the Mexican congress approved a controversial energy reform bill that would help break up the country’s 75-year oil monopoly.

* Honduras: The Honduran electoral tribunal confirmed the victory of ruling party candidate Juan Orlando Hernandez in the presidential elections though it remains to be seen if his “law-and-order platform” can stem the tide of high violence and massive poverty.

* Chile: Educational reform, economic inequality and gay marriage were among the issues discussed by Michelle Bachelet and Evelyn Matthei during the final televised debate before Chile’s presidential election on Sunday.

Video Source – YouTube use NTDTV (During his visit to Brazil last July, Pope Francis “issued the first social manifesto of his young pontificate, telling slum dwellers that the world's rich must do much more to wipe out vast inequalities between the haves and the have-nots”.)

Online Sources- Pew Research Center; FRANCE24; Prensa Latina; Bloomberg

Chilean Expats Opt for Bachelet in “Virtual” Election

Chilean expats who do not have the right to vote gave their support to former President Michelle Bachelet in a “virtual” election for the South American country’s presidency.

Much like the real vote that took place on Sunday, the country’s first female president won easily over her eight opponents with 34.9% support among the thousands of registered participants living in more than 100 countries. The 4249 votes in her favor were more than twice that of second-place candidate Marcel Claude but not enough to avoid a runoff according to the “symbolic” election results.

Ruling party candidate Evelyn Matthei ended in fourth among expats though she will participate in a second round against Bachelet in Chile next month.  The conservative ex-minister was one of two candidates that did not publicly back the “virtual” election that was held via Internet between November 10th and 16th. 

“Nearly 12,500 Chileans living abroad took part and their enthusiasm showed that they want to be a part of the Chilean electoral process,” reportedly said a statement from Voto Ciudadano, a group sponsoring the online plebiscite.  “We are still Chileans (despite living abroad) and its time that we are granted the right to vote,” added the group via its Facebook page.

The Chilean Senate in September approved a constitutional amendment that would grant eligible Chilean expats the right to vote in presidential elections and national referendums.   The proposal has been opposed to mainly by conservative politicians such as senator Carlos Larraín who claimed that Chileans living abroad “don’t pay taxes, are absent from the effects of political policies and are unaware of the occurrences of Chilean life”.  (According to one article, the real reason for the opposition may be since some expats are exiles that left Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship).

Conversely, the amendment has received support among leftist politicians such as Bachelet who yesterday lamented that Chilean expats “cannot exercise a right (to vote) that is allowed in many other nations.”

Daily Headlines: October 31, 2013

* U.S.: David “Big Papi” Ortiz was named as the Most Valuable Player in the World Series after he helped power the Boston Red Sox to their third title in the last nine years.

* Puerto Rico: Hector Pesquera announced that he would resign as head of a police force beleaguered by corruption and a high murder rate on the island.

* Chile: Recent polls indicated that ex-President Michelle Bachelet would easily avoid a runoff in next month’s elections.

* Brazil: Eike Batista, who was once Brazil’s wealthiest man with $34.5 billion in assets, filed a bankruptcy protection request for the oil firm he controls.

Video Source – MLB.com (World Series MVP David Ortiz batted .688 in six games while his the Red Sox teammates hit .234).
 
Online Sources- Boston Herald; Reuters; The Guardian; Xinhua

Daily Headlines: October 18, 2013

* Peru: Disgraced ex-President Alberto Fujimori was once again in court and could receive another eight years in prison on top of the 25-year sentence he’s currently serving for human rights abuses during his rule.

* Caribbean: The Caribbean Community gave its “regret” over a recent Dominican court decision that could eliminate the citizenship of thousands of citizens with a Haitian background.

* Chile: With roughly a month to go in Chile’s presidential election, former leader Michelle Bachelet leads the polls but may not be able to avoid a runoff.

* Mexico: Mexican officials admitted that they would likely miss a second deadline to certify hundreds of thousands of police nationwide.

Video Source – YouTube via Univision Noticias 

Online Sources- Los Angeles Times; Reuters; The Latin Americanist; Caribbean Journal; ninemsn