What we’re doing

Jan 24, ’12 6:52 PM

As an English-language reader in South America, I am constantly frustrated. Stories are everywhere, and too many go untold. Whether it’s an investigative piece about how mercury gets to illegal mines, a character sketch of an El Alto bus driver, the natural history of Venezuelan vanilla — you name it. There are too many stories, and not enough getting written, especially in English.

Sure, if a story is connected to New York or London (or Toronto or Dublin), great — it has a chance of getting written and published. If not, well, hit or miss. And miss, and miss, and miss.

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Fracking, coming soon to an unprepared South America

Feb 3, ’12 4:08 PM
Argentina shale deposits map

Map of Argentina's possible gas and oil-bearing shales, copied from a presentation by Tecpetrol*.

Last week, I did some reporting from a conference called Argentina Shale Oil and Tight Gas. No, they didn’t officially let me in (American Business Conferences apparently has good taste) but I managed to listen in on a few sessions and corner several oil executives too polite to tell me to go away. I’ll have a lot more details coming out in an article or two in the next month (elsewhere — guy’s gotta eat), but for now, let me tell you the basic conclusion for South America: few people here know what’s about to hit them.

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Déjà vu indeed

Jan 31, ’12 11:05 PM

Piñera's government is very unpopular and has been dogged by protests. But has it really been that bad? (Photo by Nicolás, via Wikimedia Commons.)

By all accounts, 2011 was a chaotic year for Chilean politics. Rallies against a hydroelectric dam project and demonstrations for comprehensive education reform rocked the country for most of the year. Literally millions of people marched in the largest protests since the Pinochet years. There was even a cacerolazo!

Smaller incidents have inflamed the left against the coalition of center-right President Piñera as well, like a move to re-brand the Pinochet dictatorship in the school curriculum as a “military regime.” The feelings of a large number of left-leaning Chileans are pretty well represented by this clever video adaptation of Zambayonny’s trova-ish tune Deja Vu:

But are things really all that bad?

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Chile takes Sundance

Jan 30, ’12 11:57 PM

Latin America may have gotten swept at the Oscars this year, but it – or at least Chile – did OK at Sundance. Two Chilean films won awards: Violeta se fue a los cielos, which has been making the rounds rather loudly for awhile now, and one I’d never heard of, Joven & Alocada.

The latter is the first film by Marialy Rivas, both co-written and directed. It won the World Cinema Screenwriting Award, and I have to say from just the trailer that it looks like a pretty fair choice:

Interesting how the experience of growing up in an anti-erotic religious home is so pan-cultural. Although her anti-erotic upbringing looks like it was way, way more fun than mine, so maybe never mind. Looking forward to seeing this one.

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Thank you for your patience

Jan 30, ’12 3:36 AM

Thanks for your patience with our Sunday-long outage. We have the site hosted at Dreamhost, which had a big problem. We’re back, we still have big plans, and we’ll try and not let that happen again. Onward.

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“We took advantage of a certain moment”

Jan 28, ’12 12:42 PM


Intrigued by the trailer for Juan de los Muertos, the first-ever Cuban zombie movie, I dropped a line to one of the co-producers, Gervasio Iglesias with La Zanfoña Producciones in Spain. Here’s what we talked about:

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Guest post: Popular!

Jan 27, ’12 3:00 PM
Let's see this guy get 75% approval.

Let's see Bieber get 75% approval.

Otto writes: Every few months, reliable Mexican polling company Mitofsky puts together its Poll of Polls on the popularity of Heads of State in The Americas, then publishes its findings. That’s what they did scant hours ago and here’s how things look for the continental bigwigs at the moment, colour-coded chart and all. We even do a table if that big graphic is too messy and big for you.

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Good news, for a change

Jan 27, ’12 12:42 AM

Earlier, Semana (and then Tuerto) raised the alarm that Ecuador’s Correa and Venezuela’s Chávez contributed to recommendations to be brought before the OAS to reform its Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in a way that might neuter that body’s freedom of expression rapporteur. I am happy to say that the danger appears to have passed.

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El Universo appeals to a higher court (the gringos, obviously)

Jan 26, ’12 2:19 PM

We love a free press, but does the Latin American version always have to be so darn elitist? (Image from George Baxter, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

El Universo, the Ecuadorian newspaper that local courts have hit with a $40 million fine for slandering President Rafael Correa, took a curious tack this week as it sought to defend itself in the court of public opinion while the courts of law prepared to weigh a final appeal (cassation actually, if any lawyers are keeping score).

I got this note Monday, sent to the e-mail I use for my energy blog.

xxx@podesta.com via gmail.com to settysoutham…

Dear Steven,

I hope you are aware of the egregious attack on independent media currently underway in Ecuador and more generally across the region. If you have considered covering this topic, or already have something in the works, the next couple days are a great time to write. A high court hearing, followed immediately by a decision on the El Universo case, has been scheduled for Tuesday, January 24 at 9:00 am….

Wait: @Podesta.com?

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Lima real estate: Stats underestimate bubble

Jan 25, ’12 4:17 PM

In which your correspondent is informed that he was more right that he knew. (Image by Christian Haugen, CC-BY-2.0, www.creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

(Another guest post from our friend Otto.)

After yesterday’s post on the rapid rise in real estate prices in residential ‘hoods of Lima, Peru, your author had an interesting exchange with a friend who lives there and is immersed in the issue (his ID will be reserved, however). Here’s what he said:

…those are average, not real prices, so don’t try to go shopping for apartments relying on them. As my stats teacher said: ‘beware of statistical data because if I eat a chicken and you eat none, statistics will say we ate half each, which is not true.”

So number-nerd is as number-nerd does, I poked him with a stick by shooting this back:

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LatAm shut out of Oscar nominations

Jan 25, ’12 12:19 AM

After some pretty strong showings in recent years, with films like El Secreto de sus Ojos, La Teta Asustada, and Biutiful, Latin American films have been completely shut out of this year’s Academy Award nominations.

Mexico’s Miss Bala was supposed to be competitive, but no dice. Anyway, these are the people who voted Driving Miss Daisy, Titanic, and Crash best picture, so should anyone give a damn?

The blog Cine Latino has a nice list of Latin American films that were contenders, so at least the Oscar competition gives us a lineup of films to reluctantly pirate over the next few months as we are frustrated in our efforts to view them legally.

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