Today’s Video: One Street, Two Tragedies

We'll be back over the weekend to look at several news stories from the Americas that took place over the past week.

One of the biggest headlines from the past few days was the train crash in Buenos Aires on Wednesday that killed fifty-one people and injured over 670.

In December 2004 another tragedy took place near the site of Wednesday's accident: the fire at the República Cromañón nightclub. A portion of the Bartolomé Mitre Street was subsequently closed after a makeshift memorial was built in honor of the 194 concertgoers who died in the Cromañón blaze. Yet it was claimed in a few Argentine press articles that closing the one-block stretch impeded the quick access of rescuers and emergency services to the Once train station.

In the aftermath of the accident Buenos Aires authorities announced that they would reopen the closed part of Mitre Street to traffic and relocate the memorial. Some relatives of the victims of the Cromañón fire were not pleased with the decision such as one who asked the local press "Why don't they show some respect and search for those still missing in the crash?"

On Friday afternoon local officials and some of the victims' families of the Cromañón fire reportedly reached a compromise. The temporary monument would remain undisturbed while a new parallel road would be created that would allow for vehicular traffic.

Is the creation of the new road next to Mitre Street a fair and just resolution or a problematic solution? We'll let you judge for yourselves with the help of the following video from Argentina's Noticias C5N:

Video Source - YouTube via c5n

Online Sources - BBC News, The Latin Americanist, Buenos Aires Herald, Todo Noticias, La Razon, Diario Panorama

Daily Headlines: February 24, 2012

* Latin America: According to Mexican and British researchers a severe drought led to the demise of the Mayan civilization over one thousand years ago.

* Argentina: The blame game into the cause of Wednesday’s train crash that killed fifty people continued with allegations of government corruption and malfeasance by the heads of the private firm that runs the Buenos Aires passenger rail network.

* Venezuela: President Hugo Chavez is expected to arrive in Cuba today in order to undergo an operation for a new lesion in the same area where a cancerous tumor was removed last year.

* El Salvador: Ex-defense minister Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova may soon be deported from the U.S. to his native El Salvador where he awaits trial for alleged “war-related crimes.”

Image Source – Flickr via Mike_fleming (Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza in southern Mexico). (CC BY 2.0)

Online Sources- BBC News, IOL, The Latin Americanist, CNN, UPI

Daily Headlines: May 1, 2008

*Argentina: French firm Alstrom won a contract to construct a high-speed rail line between Buenos Aires and Cordoba.

* South America: Local currencies did not do well in trading yesterday as the Brazilian real and Chilean peso fell by 0.95 and 1.39%, respectively.

* Colombia: There may be rhetoric over "Hollywood liberals" yet the head of the Motion Picture Association of America is strongly in favor of a U.S.-Colombia free trade deal.

* Cuba: How have Cubans reacted to reforms under Raul Castro? Al Jazeera looks into it:


Sources- Reuters UK, Reuters, International Herald Tribune, YouTube

Argentina: Concession nullified a week after rail riot

Argentina’s government cancelled a firm's concession to operate two major rail lines one week after a riot at a Buenos Aires train station. “We will keep all the workers on the job and ticket prices will remain the same,” said Planning Minister Julio De Vido earlier today as the government will temporarily control the dual train lines that had been run by private company Metropolitano S.A.

Image- Sydney Morning Herald (Buenos Aires riot police inside the Constitucion train station last Tuesday)

Sources- Bloomberg, CNN, The Latin Americanist