When the world gets closer.

We help you see farther.

Sign up to our expressly international daily newsletter.

TOPIC: chile

Society

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.

Watch VideoShow less

Ardern Resigns, Chopper Crash Probe, French Strikes

👋 नमस्कार*

Welcome to Thursday, where New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announces her surprise resignation, a probe is opened into the helicopter crash that killed Ukraine’s interior minister and French workers go on a nationwide strike. Meanwhile, feminist digital media outlet LatFem reports on a women-led agricultural program that offers valuable lessons on sustainable farming methods in southern Ecuador.

[*Namaskār - Marathi, India]

Keep reading...Show less

Jehovah's Witnesses Translate The Bible In Indigenous Language — Is This Colonialism?

The Jehovah's Witnesses in Chile have launched a Bible version translated into the native Mapudungun language, evidently indifferent to the concerns of a nation striving to save its identity from the Western cultural juggernaut.

NEUQUÉN — The Bible can now be read in Mapuzugun, the language of the Mapuche, an ancestral nation living across Chile and Argentina. It took the Chilean branch of the Jehovah's Witnesses, a latter-day Protestant church often associated with door-to-door proselytizing and cold calling, three years to translate it into "21st-century Mapuzugun".

The church's Mapuche members in Chile welcomed the book when it was launched in Santiago last June, but some of their brethren see it rather as a cultural imposition. The Mapuche were historically a fighting nation, and fiercely resisted both the Spanish conquerors and subsequent waves of European settlers. They are still fighting for land rights in Chile.

Keep reading...Show less

Chile's "Silent Majority" Reminds Us About The Overreach Of Identity Politics

An overwhelming majority of Chileans quietly but very clearly voted to reject a draft constitution, which it feared would lock the country into a radical socialist mould.

-Analysis-

In Chile, the Left has fallen victim to its love of identity politics. Dizzied by the country's social upheavals and calls for change since 2019, it forgot that at the end of the day, Chile is the home of moderation.

The rejection Sunday by most voters of a proposed, new constitutional text comes in spite of the fact that 80% of Chileans still want to overhaul the constitution bequeathed by the country's conservative, military regime of the 1970s.

The vast majority of Chileans have in recent years come to a shared conclusion, that Chile's socio-economic advances and undoubted prosperity must be democratized and fairly shared out among its territories and socio-economic classes.

For the Chilean Left, led by the young President Gabriel Boric, this was the biggest window of opportunity in its history. It had never had such a clear mandate for creating a transformative project based on a new constitution, and this in addition to the symbolic weight of putting an end to the constitution of the late dictator, Augusto Pinochet.


Keep reading...Show less
In The News
Lisa Berdet, Chloé Touchard, Lila Paulou and Bertrand Hauger

UK’s New Prime Minister, Saskatchewan Manhunt, Chile Says “No” To New Constitution

👋 Bonjour!*

Welcome to Monday, where Liz Truss is the new British prime minister, Chileans reject drastic changes to the country’s Constitution, and the new Lord of the Rings series becomes Amazon Prime's biggest premiere. Meanwhile, German daily Die Welt and Ukraine's Livy Bereg show how the Ukraine grain deal may actually play in Putin’s hands.

[*French]

Watch VideoShow less
Society
Hannah Steinkopf-Frank and Sophia Constantino

End Of Roe v. Wade, The World Is Watching

As the Supreme Court decides to overturn the 1973 decision that guaranteed abortion rights, many fear an imminent threat to abortion rights in the U.S. But in other countries, the global fight for sexual and reproductive rights is going in different directions.

PARIS — Nearly 50 years after it ensured the right to abortion to Americans, the United States Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade case, meaning that millions of women in the U.S. may lose their constitutional right to abortion.

The groundbreaking decision is likely to set off a range of restrictions on abortion access in multiple states in the U.S., half of which are expected to implement new bans on the procedure. Thirteen have already passed "trigger laws" that will automatically make abortion illegal.

U.S. President Joe Biden called the ruling "a tragic error" and urged individual states to enact laws to allow the procedure.

In a country divided on such a polarizing topic, the decision is likely to cause major shifts in American law and undoubtedly spark outrage among the country’s pro-choice groups. Yet the impact of such a momentous shift, like others in the United States, is also likely to reverberate around the world — and perhaps, eventually, back again in the 50 States.

Watch VideoShow less
Geopolitics
Andrés Hoyos

Why Chile's Radicals Are Already Sinking Their Own Leftist President

After becoming Chile's youngest president in December's elections, former student activist and socialist Gabriel Boric has disappointed his most radical voters. Will they prolong the social unrest and creative chaos that have smashed the country's fame as a conservative backwater?

-OpEd-

BOGOTÁ — I've been following Chile closely. While the country has South America's best social and economic indicators, and was supposedly a model to follow, it has suffered a political event not unlike the earthquakes so common to that land. And all in just three years.

Let's start with something Chile considered as solved since the restoration of democracy in 1990: violence or irrational destruction. Admittedly there were still active guerrilla groups like the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front, close to the Communist Party, and the MIR (also Marxists), but Chileans generally reacted with measure to crises.

Watch VideoShow less
Economy
Laura Villahermosa

The Pandemic Changed How Latin Americans Work — And Where

Once dismissed as being for millennials and hard-up freelancers, coworking firms now occupy Latin America's prestigious corporate towers that have more and more spaces to fill.

LIMA — When workers left their offices in March 2020, with a global pandemic in full swing, nobody knew when they would be back. As firms and workers began warming to working from home weeks into lockdowns and confinement regimes, the real estate sector trembled at the prospect of a massive downturn in demand for office space.

In Latin America, use of corporate office space had already been changing before the pandemic, with the demand for shared offices taking off in 2015-2018. The U.S.-based firm WeWork was one of the beneficiaries. "We had 70% occupation levels before the pandemic," says Claudio Hidalgo, head of WeWork in Latin America.

Watch VideoShow less
In The News
Hannah Steinkopf-Frank, Anne-Sophie Goninet and Jane Herbelin

Djokovic Win, Kazakhstan Toll, Gates Of Hell

👋 Moni!*

Welcome to Monday, where unvaccinated Novak Djokovic wins court battle allowing him to stay in Australia to play in upcoming Australian Open, the death toll in Kazakhstan continues to rise and a natural attraction could get literally extinguished in Turkmenistan. We also look at how the surge in Omicron cases is threatening live events around the world. Again...

[*Chewa - Malawi and Zambia]

Watch VideoShow less
Geopolitics
América Economía

Chile's Elections Bring Youthful Promises — And Uncertainty

Will Chile's president-elect Gabriel Boric and his team lead the country toward a European-style social-democracy in partnership with business, or will the country turn sharply left if traditional economic powers resist their reforms?

SANTIAGO DE CHILE – What just ended, and what is beginning in Chile, with the overwhelming victory of the leftist presidential candidate, Gabriel Boric?

The 35-year-old of the Broad Front (Frente amplio) won the Dec. 19 general elections with 55.9% of all votes cast, against 44.1% for the very conservative José Antonio Kast. This removes all doubts on the desire for fundamental changes among the majority of Chileans, especially when the results come in the wake of violent protests in October 2019 against growing inequality, privatization, and increasing corruption. The outcome is also voters' clear endorsement of the October 2020 plebiscite on the adoption of a new constitution, which was in response to the 2019 demonstrations.

Watch VideoShow less
In The News
Anne-Sophie Goninet and Jane Herbelin

Chile’s New President, Peng Shuai Denies Assault Claims, Over-The-Top Christmas

👋 Mandi!*

Welcome to Monday, where Gabriel Boric becomes Chile’s youngest president ever, Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai retracts sexual assault claims and a Hungarian grandma goes all out for Christmas decorations. Persian-language magazine Kayhan reflects on how the trial in Sweden of a former Iranian justice official finally gives judicial weight to the decades of accusations of the violent crimes of the Iranian regime during and after the 1979 revolution.

[*Friulian - Italy]

Watch VideoShow less
In The News
Jane Herbelin, Anne-Sophie Goninet and Bertrand Hauger

Poland-Belarus Border, New Vaccine Mandates, Mexican Wedding Scandal

👋 Habari!*

Welcome to Tuesday, where tensions escalate as hundreds of migrants at the Poland-Belarus border, Austria reintroduces restrictions to curb a new COVID wave and an 83-year-old sets a new record on the Appalachian Trail. Meanwhile, Worldcrunch's Hannah Steinkopf-Frank (a human) takes a look at rad robots around the world.

Watch VideoShow less