Daily Headlines: December 12, 2014

* Vatican: Argentine-born Pope Francis presided over an extraordinary mass at the Vatican in honor of the day of the patroness of Latin America, Our Lady of Guadalupe.

* Cuba: Cuban musician Aldo Rodriguez Baquero denied receiving money from an allegedly secret U.S. program to fund hip-hop artists and promote anti-Castro sentiment among young people.

* Argentina: Government spokesman Jorge Capitanich claimed that Argentina will not give in to “extortion” from creditors involved in a tense debt dispute.

* Mexico: Malala Yousafzai acknowledged that there are “problems in Mexico” after a young man carrying a Mexican flag briefly interrupted the Nobel Peace Prize acceptance ceremony on Thursday.

Video Source – YouTube via Rome Reports (“Argentinian singer Ariel Ramírez composed the 'Creole Mass' 50 years ago. His son Facundo, along with Argentinian pop singer Patricia Sosa interpreted the music in St. Peter's Basilica, as Pope Francis celebrated the Mass in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe.”)

Online Sources – Fox News Latino; Miami Herald; CBC News; Latin American Herald Tribune

Daily Headlines: December 11, 2014

* U.S.: Television newcomer “Jane the Virgin,” which is an adaptation of a Venezuelan series, received two Golden Globe bids including a best comedy actress nomination for Gina Rodriguez.

* Latin America: Several thousand marched in Nicaragua against the construction of an interoceanic canal while hundreds of Catholic Dominicans participated in an anti-abortion protest.

* Venezuela: U.S. President Barack Obama will likely sign into law a bill passed by Congress this week to place sanctions against Venezuelan officials accused of human rights abuses during political unrest this year.

* Brazil: Mines and Energy Minister Edison Lobão claimed that the government is working on a plan to help Petrobras refinance about $3.4 billion in debt.

Video Source – YouTube user The Paley Center for Media
 
Online Sources – Financial Times; Variety; Time; Dominican Today; NBC News

Daily Headlines: December 10, 2014 (Update)

* Peru: Peru’s government are none too pleased with Greenpeace activists who placed a massive banner next to the iconic Nazca lines.

Update: Greenpeace has apologized "without reservation" for the protest.

* Mexico: “Please, Malala, they are killing us. Don't forget Mexico!” declared a man carrying a Mexican flag who briefly interrupted the Nobel Peace Prize acceptance ceremony.

* Argentina: Malaysia’s Petronas signed a $550 million agreement with YPF to develop extensive shale resources in Argentina.

* Latin America: According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the number of people in Latin America and the Caribbean suffering from hunger has nearly fallen in half over the past twenty years.

Video Source – YouTube user No Comment TV

Online Sources including Update – U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization; Financial Times; Mashable; The Guardian; BBC News

Daily Headlines: December 9, 2014

* Venezuela: The U.S. Senate approved imposing sanctions against Venezuelan officials accused of human rights abuses but it could be all for naught unless the bill is passed by the House this week.

* Brazil: The World Cup held in Brazil and the country’s presidential election was among the top three topics most discussed among Facebook users this year.

* Puerto Rico: Legislators on the cash-strapped commonwealth passed a $2.9 billion borrowing plan that includes financing public transportation.

* Latin America: Seven Latin American countries including Costa Rica, Peru and Mexico vowed to protect about 49 million acres of degraded land.

Video Source – YouTube user AFP (“Protesters take part in a demonstration in front of the White House in Washington, on May 9, 2014, urging US President Barack Obama to impose sanctions on those responsible for human rights abuses against protesters in Venezuela.”)
 
Online Sources – Bloomberg; ABC News; Miami Herald; Inside Costa Rica

Daily Headlines: December 8, 2014

* Haiti: Thousands of people marched in anti-government protests over the weekend and called on President Michel Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe to resign from their posts.

* Bolivia: Survivors of one of the worst floods to hit Bolivia in decades last February reportedly “have found themselves destitute, hungry, thirsty, and prone to fevers, infections and mosquito-borne diseases.”

* Uruguay: President José Mujica said that six Guantanamo military prison detainees that arrived in Uruguay yesterday are classified as refugees and, hence, “can leave the country whenever they wish.”

* Mexico: Culture, education and technology are the three primary themes of the latest Ibero-American Summit starting today in Veracruz, Mexico.

Video Source – YouTube user euronews
 
Online Sources – MercoPress; euronews; The Guardian; Al Jazeera

Mexico: Investigators ID One of 43 Missing Students

Forensic experts in Argentina have reportedly identified the charred remains of Alexander Mora Venancio, one of forty-three Mexican students missing since September 26th.

According to a post published on December 6th on the Escuela Normal de Ayotzinapa Facebook post, what was left of Mora was found amidst where in a garbage dump where three detained hit men claimed that the young adults where tortured, killed and had their remains burnt.

Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam confirmed the news at a December 7th news conference. He claimed that the remains of the twenty-one-year-old were identified by a team from Austria that compared a bone fragment with the DNA of Venancio's parents.

"Using data from the University of Innsbruck, it was determined that the remains belong to a male with a probability a billion times higher, that’s ‘b’ for billion, of being the biological son of Ezequiel Mora Chavez and the sibling of Omar Mora Venancio and Hugo Mora Venancio than for any other unrelated person,"  asserted Murillo Karam.

He also claimed that the results support his hypothesis presented last month alleging that the students were allegedly kidnapped by police from the town of Iguala and subsequently massacred by a local drug gang.

"This is scientific proof that the remains found at one of the scenes (of the crime) along with the confessions of some of the detained suspects coincide with our investigation," Murillo Karam said.   
Austria team though the result were tipped off to a parent of one of the missing students.

Today's Video: The Holiday Spirit

Nearly three thousand people gathered in Honduras on December 1st to break the Guinness world record for the world's largest human Christmas tree.  The 2945 participants dressed in red, green and other holiday colors as they broke the previous record done in Argentina last year.



"In Honduras, we can live in peace and tranquillity with opportunity to earn an income, to be happy and to give our children and our children's children a Honduras that will always has faith and hope," declared President Juan Orlando Hernandez after receiving recognition of the new record from a Guinness representative.  Despite the lovely gesture, it will take much more than a large human tree to bring "peace and tranquillity" to a country wracked by rampant violence.

Daily Headlines: December 5, 2014 (Updated)

* Uruguay: According to an Uruguayan media report the country will take in six Guantanamo military prison detainees before the end of this month.

Update: U.S. defense officials on December 7th confirmed the transfer of the six Guantanamo prisoners to Uruguay.

* Mexico: President Enrique Peña Nieto visited Guerrero state for the first time since forty-three students went missing about ten weeks ago but did not go to the village of Iguala where the disappearances occurred.

* Latin America: International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde warned that shifting “economic and financial conditions worldwide” could affect Latin America in the near future.

* U.S.: The Latino unemployment continues to decline and fell to 6.6% last month, which is more than 2% compared to November 2013.

Video Source – YouTube user teleSUR English (Video uploaded in August 2014).

Online Sources – Bureau of Labor Statistics; BBC News; Times of India; ABC News

Daily Headlines: December 4, 2014

* Venezuela: The U.S. State Department condemned the Venezuelan government for charging opposition activist Maria Corina Machado with conspiring to kill President Nicolás Maduro.

* Latin America: According to Transparency International, Uruguay and Chile are the least corrupt countries in South America while Paraguay and Venezuela are the region’s most corrupt.

* Colombia: The FARC guerillas and Colombian government agreed to resume peace talks that were suspended following the capture of several hostages including an army general.

* Chile: Four women tortured during the military dictatorship led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet are seeking stronger punishments for those accused of raping political prisoners.

Video Source – YouTube user euronews (English)

Online Sources – U.S. Department of State; Fox News Latino; The Guardian; Transparency International

Daily Headlines: December 3, 2014

* Peru: As the U.N. Climate Change Conference is underway in Lima, Peruvian officials have tried to downplay the country’s environmental problems.

* Guatemala: A court ruled that former strongman Efrain Rios Montt can remain under house arrest until a new trial to face charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

* Cuba: The White House and several Cuban-American legislators have called on the prompt release for aid worker Alan Gross as today marks the fifth anniversary of his capture.

* Dominican Republic: Francisco Dominguez, the Dominican Republic’s top prosecutor, reportedly met with his Vatican counterpart to discuss the case against an archbishop accused of sexual abuse.

Video Source – YouTube user DW (English)

Online Sources – Deutsche Welle; GlobalPost; USA TODAY; Radio Vatican

Daily Headlines: December 2, 2014

* Mexico: As Enrique Peña Nieto enters his second year as Mexico’s president, ten of thousands of protesters in Mexico City called on him to quit and leave office.

* Latin America: Thirty-four prisoners reportedly broke out of a Haitian jail while a Venezuelan human rights group claimed that forty-one inmates died after being intoxicated last week.

* Brazil: President Dilma Rousseff chose Armando Monteiro, the former head of Brazil’s “most powerful business lobby”, as the next minister of industry and trade.

* Colombia: General Ruben Dario Alzate resigned from his post in the Colombian military about thirty-six hours after he was released by the FARC guerillas.

Video Source – Fusion via YouTube

Online Sources – Bloomberg; ABC News; Reuters; The Guardian

Daily Headlines: December 1, 2014

* Uruguay: Tabaré Vazquez returns to the Uruguayan presidency, and will surely continue plans for a law legalizing the production and sale of marijuana.

* Venezuela: President Nicolás Maduro announced last Friday that government spending will be slashed amid plunging oil prices but ruled out cuts to social programs.

* Puerto Rico: San Juan’s public transportation system is paralyzed today as a result of a strike over a proposed oil tax increase.

* Mexico: The China Railway Construction Corporation will reportedly bid again on a high-speed railway line even though Mexican officials recently revoked a Chinese-led bid.

Video Source – euronews via YouTube
 
Online Sources – MercoPress; ABC News; Reuters

Mexican Comic Icon "Chesprito" Dies

Famed Mexican comedian Roberto Gómez Bolaños passed away on Friday at the age of eighty-five at his home in Cancún.

Prior to becoming an actor, Bolaños was an amateur boxer, studied engineering in college and wrote scripts for film and TV.  He short stature and prolific writing earned him a nickname that was a play on words from "Little Shakespeare" and would remain with him throughout his life: "Chespirito".

His big break came in 1968 with a sketch comedy show that allowed him to develop numerous comic characters over the years including wacky medic "Dr. Chapatín", petty crook "El Chompiras" and bumbling superhero "El Chapulín Colorado". Yet he was best known for his role as "El Chavo del Ocho", an orphan who resided in a barrel located inside a lower-class Mexico city neighborhood.  An episode of El Chavo often showed his good-nature hijinks with his child friends and adult neighbors though his penchant for wordplay sometimes masked social commentary.

"El Chavo interprets every word in the literal sense and, thus, suffers the injustice of the world.  He questions society and our relations of power and friendship by emphasizing the significance of language," noted Colombian television critic Omar Rincón.

Bolaños' humor made him a superstar across the Spanish-speaking world where numerous countries still show his programs even though he stopped recording TV material roughly twenty-five years ago.  El Chavo-themed restaurants in Puerto Rico and Colombia have dishes named in honor of the characters from the program homage while visitors can travel to an official Chavo theme park in Venezuela. Bolaños himself claimed in a 1999 interview "this may sound blasphemous in Mexico but in Peru I'm seen as the most important Latin American comic of the millennium. And I believe it."

The First Thanksgiving

The following post was first published in 2013:

Today is the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S. and it is generally believed that the first Thanksgiving feast took part between the Pilgrims and Native Americans in Massachusetts in 1621.  But as we first mentioned back in 2007, the first Thanksgiving really occurred in 1565 when Spanish explorers and Timuca natives in St. Augustine, Florida got together and dined on bean soup.

The following brief video via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette delves into the history behind the first Thanksgiving nearly 450 years ago:

Although Thanksgiving is not typically celebrated in Latin America, many Latinos in the U.S. do celebrate the holiday.  Some households modify the holiday and add traditional Latin American details such as feasting on tamales or (in the case of my family) serve yellow rice as one of the side dishes to the Thanksgiving turkey.

Video Source - The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via YouTube

Online Source - The Latin Americanist; Latino Post

Daily Headlines: November 27, 2014

* Brazil: A spokesman for Brazilian soccer legend Pelé confirmed that he was taken to a “special care” unit of a Sao Paulo hospital in order to be treated for a urinary tract infection but is soon expected to be discharged.

* Venezuela: At least thirteen Venezuelan inmates who had gone on hunger strike to protest prison conditions died after breaking into an infirmary and ingesting medications.

* Peru: The Peruvian Supreme Court refused to listen to appeal from president Alberto Fujimori seeking to overturn his twenty-five year prison sentence for human rights abuses.

* Cuba: Several Cuban dissidents thanked Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo for urging the island's government to permit former political prisoners to safely leave the country.

Video Source – YouTube user FRANCE 24 English (“The 74-year-old football legend admitted 3 days ago with a urinary infections suffers from complications after surgery and has been transferred to the 'special care unit' in hospital.”)

Online Sources – ABC News; GlobalPost; Latin American Herald Tribune; Reuters

Daily Headlines: November 26, 2014

* Mexico: Human rights groups accused the authorities of cracking down against protesters marching at a rally on November 20th to protest the disappearance of forty-three students missing for more since September 26th.

* Cuba: Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo urged the Cuban government to accelerate economic reforms and allow previously imprisoned dissidents to leave the country.

* South America: Will the South American Pacific Alliance and Mercosur trading blocs soon merge together?

* El Salvador: Salvadoran police blamed gang violence for the murders of eight people at a graduation party on Tuesday.

Video Source – Fusion via YouTube 

Online Sources – The Guardian; The Washington Post; Buenos Aires Herald; Reuters