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Chile

This Happened

This Happened — October 24: Salvador Allende Elected

Salvador Allende was elected President of Chile on this day in 1970.

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This Happened — October 13: Chile Mining Rescue

On this day in 2010, the Copiapó mining accident in Chile comes to a happy end as all 33 miners arrive at the surface after surviving a record 69 days underground.

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Avon Ladies 2.0: Women Entrepreneurs Revive An Old-School Brand For The Digital Age

The 157-year-old cosmetics firm is banking on the "personal touch" and enterprise of its familiar women sales representatives to see it through the multiple threats of online retailing, changing tastes and global economic tumult.

SANTIAGO — María Obregón is 41 years old. She is married with three kids and lives in Arica in northern Chile. For 15 years she has been selling Avon beauty products, turning her work into a family business in which she has been joined by her husband and even the youngest of her children.

"We all work together," she says, "and I'm doing very well, thank God." She has excellent customers, she told América Economía speaking from home, and "excellent people around me. It's very hard work. It may not seem so, but it is. I'm so happy to do it. I feel totally fulfilled, organized and so grateful for all the opportunities given to me."

During her time with Avon — one of the world's most iconic beauty brands, founded in New York in the 19th century — Obregón has won herself vacations and other prizes including a brand-new car. She devotes a large part of her day to expanding and cultivating her customer base, promoting products on social media and now, organizing deliveries.

"Avon for me means freedom," she says with unconcealed delight. "It means independence. It means fulfilling myself as a woman, as a person."

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This Happened — October 5: Chilean Referendum

The referendum in Chile took place on this day in 1988, when citizens voted against extending General Augusto Pinochet's regime.

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Green
Carmen Contreras Tellez

Lithium Mining: How The Clean Energy Rush Repeats Old Cycles Of Global Exploitation

The search for clean energy is essential in an age of alarming climate change. Lithium extraction represents a great opportunity, but the maltreatment of communities affected by this extraction must be considered if we want to interrupt the vicious cycle of wealthy countries exploiting resource-rich countries.

COPIAPO — The scientific community continues to warn that burning fuels to obtain energy is simply not sustainable for the planet. Among all the alternatives that currently exist, perhaps the most popular one for the transportation sector is electric energy. At first glance, it sounds tempting: electric trains, cars and buses capable of transporting people over long distances, equipped with almost limitless batteries, and charging stations distributed throughout the territory.

But to make electric batteries, which are also found in mobile and portable devices, lithium is needed. This mineral is currently experiencing high demand precisely because of its large energy storage capacity. Extracting it requires large amounts of water and chemicals. This is where some people are already asking: can we justify everything, in the name of energy transition?

The largest sources of lithium in the world are found in brine deposits in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, making them the focus of attention for investors. But indigenous communities that depend on these territories and the resources found there demand prior dialogue and informed consultation before allowing the extraction of the mineral.

"To us, the salt flat represents our entire life," explains Lesley Muñoz Rivera, a representative of the Colla community in Copiapo, Chile. "The salt flat is a water reservoir. When they propose to extract large quantities and tons of water to dry them in the sun and obtain this lithium carbonate, they are harming the water. I define the Colla people as a water-based community, and if we don't have water to live and provide for our animals or crops, how are we going to survive?"

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Geopolitics
Héctor Abad Faciolince

Kissinger v. Allende, A South American Lesson For What's At Stake In Ukraine

The cold arrogance of Henry Kissinger extends from Santiago de Chile half a century ago, where he helped orchestrate the violent overthrow of the leftist President Salvador Allende to his view today on Russia's would-be "sphere of influence."

-OpEd-

BOGOTÁ — More than 50 years ago, there was a tense meeting in Washington between Chile's then Foreign Minister, Gabriel Valdés, and President Richard Nixon's National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger. Valdés, of the Christian Democratic party, had been imprudent enough to tell President Nixon a couple of things to his face: that Latin American states found it very hard to do business with the United States given the enormous economic disparity; and secondly that for every dollar of American aid sent southwards, South America was sending $3.8 back to the United States.

Nixon was furious (as if a servant had been impertinent), and asked Kissinger to set the Chilean diplomat straight, which he did, the next day.

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Kissinger told Valdés that it was "strange" coming to Washington to speak of Latin America, when it had so little importance. "Nothing important can come from the South," he is reported to have said (in Seymour Hersh's The Price of Power). "History has never been produced in the South."

The axis of history, said Kissinger, began in Moscow, and moved through Bonn and Washington toward Tokyo, and Valdés was simply wasting his time.

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Economy
Mariana Guerrero

Latin America Gentrified: How A Rent Gap Can Change Everything

Gentrification is affecting many Latin American cities. As residents push back, there are worries that existing residents and cultures alike will be erased.

MEXICO CITY — In Latin American cities such as Medellín, Buenos Aires and Mexico City, real estate rental prices have increased considerably, with values even above inflation. The problem arises as a consequence of the construction, and remodeling of old buildings or houses, in neighborhoods located on the outskirts of large cities which have been left in the hands of real estate developers or businessmen. One of the main impacts of these decisions is an increase in social inequality.

Gentrification occurs when low-income or middle-class residents are displaced by a population with greater economic power. The wealthier people then settle in neighborhoods that are often considered "disreputable", according to Carla Escoffié, a lawyer specializing in human rights and housing issues.

“They arrive in these places and begin to impact the consumption dynamics, the price of rent, cost of living and other factors. They generate a revaluation, then prices start to rise until the original population begins to be displaced symbolically and economically,” says Escoffié.

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This Happened

This Happened — May 22: The Great Chilean Earthquake

The Great Chilean earthquake was a magnitude 9.5 earthquake that struck off the coast of Chile on this day in 1960.

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Green
Natalia Vera Ramírez

A Chilean Recipe To Become A Global Leader In Eco-Food Production

Chile's CeTA agency tests innovative food prototypes for startups and firms, helping to curb production costs and pushing for evolution in the context of climate change.

SANTIAGO — Drought in many parts of the world will likely become a recurring problem, and is already fueling not just fires but also debate on food security and sustainable food production.

Latin America is particularly vulnerable to climate change, as seen in Argentina's record-breaking summer heat and violent flooding in Peru, both of which threaten food production.

The future of food production has been of particular interest to neighboring Chile, which created in 2016 the CeTA (Centro Tecnológico para la Innovación Alimentaria), a research and testing center for new foods. This private-public partnership is working to make Chile a world leader in producing evolved, sustainable food products.

In 2014, a joint report by the government and Inter-American Development Bank found that Chile had doubled the value of its food exports in the previous decade, to $16 billion. Jean Paul Veas Flores, the CeTA managing-director, attributes this to expanded cultivation areas and switching to higher-value fruit and vegetables.

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Society
Yasna Mussa

50 Years After Pinochet's Coup, Chile Is Ready To Recover The Disappeared

The government of Chile's young new president, Gabriel Boric, has begun to develop the National Plan for the Search for Victims of the Dictatorship, half a century after the coup.

SANTIAGO — In what resembles an endless human chain, hundreds of people hold signs displaying black and white portraits with one question: where are they? Every September 11, the day of Chile's 1973 coup d'état, they follow the same route through streets that for one day become the setting of a pilgrimage to the General Cemetery of Santiago. They cry out for justice and demand answers.

They are, for the most part, women who know what it means to care for someone, even when the person they loved — they love — is no longer there. Wives, mothers, daughters, and granddaughters of the disappeared or other victims of the dictatorship who have not given in to oblivion.

This coming September 11, it will be 50 years since a group led by Augusto Pinochet shattered democracy and forever changed the history of a country whose wounds are still exposed : 17 years of a dictatorship would follow, in which thousands of people were sent to prison, tortured, murdered, or forcibly disappeared.

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Ideas
Farid Kahhat

The Latin American Left Is Back, But More Fractured Than Ever

The Left is constantly being hailed as the resurgent power in Latin America. But there is no unified Left in the region. The "movement" is diverse — and its divisions are growing.

-Analysis-

LIMA — Lula da Silva's reelection to the presidency in Brazil is the 25th consecutive democratic election in Latin America in which the ruling party has lost power. There appears to be general discontent with ruling parties, caused partly by external factors: the world's worst pandemic in a century, the worst recession since the 1990s, and sharpest inflation rate in 40 years.

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LGBTQ Plus
Laura Valentina Cortés Sierra, Sophia Constantino and Bertrand Hauger

LGBTQ+ International: Chile's Non-Binary ID, Slovakia In Mourning, Mr Gay World — And The Week’s Other Top News

Welcome to Worldcrunch’s LGBTQ+ International. We bring you up-to-speed each week on a topic you may follow closely at home, but can now see from different places and perspectives around the world. Discover the latest news on everything LGBTQ+ — from all corners of the planet. All in one smooth scroll!

This week featuring:

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