local news from other places
Twenty-thirteen was a banner year for bad news in Córdoba. When I arrived in December the local newsstand was plastered with headlines announcing another burst of inflation. A magazine cover featured a photo of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner posing nude (on purpose) and across the street municipal workers were still sweeping up broken glass from a 35-hour strike…
“You can do what you want but tonight I am going to work,” he said. Using flashlights and the flat back of the blade we walked the creek until 1 a.m. and brought in 36 fish, most of them perch about the size of a woman´s hand. Ramallo, 42, owns 16 hectares in the town of…
SANTA CRUZ DE LA SIERRA – The big story right now in Bolivia is the Aerocon plane that crashed last week in the northern amazon city of Riberalta, killing eight passengers including one eight-year-old girl. What wasn’t immediately clear from the initial reports were the circumstances by which the victims died. Thanks to the work…
EL ALTO, BOLIVIA – Today I watched Bolivian President Evo Morales’ speech commemorating the 10th anniversary of Black October, Oct. 17, the most violent episode in the country’s recent history. In October 2003 government troops, under the administration of President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, killed an estimated 80 people and injured nearly 500 in an…
Nothing tells the story better than the hard facts: Potosí, the capital of the poorest department of the poorest country in South America, cradles what was once the richest mountain on earth. During the Spanish colonial era of the 16th and 17th centuries, indigenous and african slaves extracted veins of pure silver two-meters-wide and several…
During the 24-hour strike in Potosí Wednesday, Jhonny Llally Huata, president of the Potosí Comité Cívico, answered a call from an assistant to the Governor of the Department of Potosí at the desk of his second floor office. “This is not for me, this is for Potosí,” he said and hung up before giving the caller…
A wise editor once told me, “Names make news.” Without names you have no sources, and without sources you have no story. This story has no named sources, because there are not many people in Potosí – the poorest region of the poorest country in South America – who are willing to put their name…
After standing for nearly 18 hours in the Plaza 9 de Julio in downtown Salta, Argentina, the pilgrims finally ceased their songs of prayer and I repaired to a small cafe to read the reportages of Alma Guillermoprieto, a Mexican journalist who covered this region for the New Yorker magazine in the early 1990s. Being here…
In the 1990s articles about government corruption and scandal sold a lot of newspapers in Argentina. However, over the last two decades, as most major Latin American countries passed their first freedom of information laws, Argentina’s Congress has yet to be sold on government transparency. This cultured country of 41 million people remains, along with…
BUENOS AIRES – Argentines have long been known for their passion for wine, steak and tango. But the unspoken object of desire for the past few decades has been the cash U.S. dollar, which sells for about double the official exchange rate on the black market here. On a brief stroll down Calle Florida in…