Stories from Quick Reads and Chile
10 Documentaries on South American Music to Watch Online
Nick MacWilliam from the blog Sounds and Colours has compiled a list of 10 documentaries, “looking at all manner of musical styles and movements from the region, with films focused on Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru and Venezuela.” This list makes no attempt to rank the films, nor does it...
Latin America's Black Metal Fans, Punks and Otakus
Santiago, Lima, Mexico City and Oaxaca have been some of the cities in which photographer Carla Mc-Kay has photographed punks, thrashers, transvestites, black metal fans, new waves and otakus, recording their everyday lives in their habitat. Sentidos Comunes has published Carla Mc-Kay's photographs in a photo essay titled “Street Youth”...
Spanish Television Show Does Not Represent Reality of Expats in Santiago
Madrid native David Sigüenza [es] watched a recent episode [es] of Spanish program “Madrileños por el Mundo,” focusing on Chilean capital Santiago, “hoping to see a representation of the reality of this city, where many young Spanish people have found themselves living due to the crisis faced by our country.”...
Book Highlights Women's Plight to Find the Disappeared in Chile's Desert
We dug in the desert and sometimes came across strange bones. We were so frightened during those years that we would bury them again. With this quote Ramona Wadi starts her review of the book titled “Flowers in the desert – the search for Chile’s disappeared”, by author Paula Allen....
16 Books on Latin American Street Art
In Latin America, street art is of major cultural relevance. The region’s traditions of social movements and revolution have allowed the form to give voice to otherwise unheard sectors of the population. Of course, not all street art is politically or socially-oriented in content, but it does often provide insight...
Vote Like a Chilean Legislator with Populus
On the new online platform Populus.cl [es] citizens can learn about laws, vote on them and compare their choice with decisions made by members of Congress. Citizens can answer questions on issues like health, internet and copyright, labor, culture, the environment, and more. The site provides background information to help...
Chilean Singer Ana Tijoux Raps Against TPP
“A puertas cerradas se decide nuestro porvenir y en cuatro paredes van dictando lo que llaman devenir”. “Behind closed doors they decide our destiny and inside four walls they dictate what they call future” TPP Abierto [es] shares ‘No al TPP’, the new single by Chilean musician Ana Tijoux, “specially...
Chile Coup Recounted Through Interactive Storytelling
The online version of Chilean newspaper La Tercera released an interactive, multimedia special [es, en] on the 40th anniversary of the coup against Salvador Allende. Mariana Santos worked with the team behind this project as an ICFJ Knight International Journalism Fellow. Mariana says that “the goal was to tell this...
Chilean Education: ‘No More Market Mechanisms, No More SIMCE’
Stop SIMCE [es] or (“Alto al SIMCE” in Spanish) is a campaign organized by a group of academics, teachers and students who want to put an end to the Education Quality Measurement System (SIMCE for its initials in Spanish), a standardized testing system used to evaluate Chilean students. The group explains...
TNW Announces Latin American Startup Awards Winners
In the lead up to this year’s The Next Web Conference Latin America, we’ve been running Startup Awards competitions in Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Brazil in search of the hottest startups and investors. […] The result has been absolutely amazing – in just under a week 18,448 people have cast a...
VIDEO: Eviction of a Chilean School
“The Eviction” is a documentary film about our fight against the chilean educational system. We want the whole world to see how the Chilean government is treating our students.
“Who Wants to be Prestigious?”
On the blog section [es] of Chilean newspaper El Mercurio [es], columnist Leila Guerriero analyzes the meaning of prestige [es] and notes: Rock musicians have been smart: ‘rock star’ is one of the few jobs (we'd had to add non-Saxon public servants) where a loss of prestige means an increase...
Chilean Michelle Bachelet's Bid for Presidency
Center-left coalition leader and former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet looks for a second Presidential term, focusing on themes of inequality, universal education, and tax reform. But have lessons been learned from the previous coalition terms? This is how Upside Down World's Matthew Owens starts an extensive analysis on Michelle Bachelet's...
#FLISOL 2013: Hundreds of Latin Americans Installing Free Software
From the Patagonia to Havana, hundreds of computer users across Latin America are choosing freedom over control by installing free software on their computers. On April 27th, groups of free software enthusiasts will be installing free software in dozens of cities across Latin America as part of FLISOL [es], the...
Developing Latin America: A Summary
Desarrollando América Latina (Developing Latin America) has published a video summary of the regional hackathon DAL 2012, where 400 participants and 70 social experts developed 80 applications. Here [es] you can see Global Voices’ coverage of the event.
Book Reveals Documents from Pinochet Era
In the website Chileno, a place for discussion, debate and opinion, Ramona Wadi reviews a book by Chilean authors Carlos Dorat Guerra and Mauricio Weibel Barahona: Asociación Ilícita: los archivos secretos de la dictadura (Ceibo Ediciones, 2012) examines documents which for some reason, failed to be destroyed by the CNI in 1988...
E-book on Digital Activism in Chile
Chilean website El Quinto Poder has published an e-book on digital activism in Chile [es, PDF], as part of the project “Social Media and Citizen Advocacy: Towards a new political legitimacy?” [es]. The book analyzes different activism initiatives and it considers “the symbolic dimensions of the forms of discourse which are...
Challenges in Learning a Foreign Language
Eileen from the blog Bearshapedsphere writes about language learning and how native speakers can sometimes be insulting or “diminish the value of good performance by minimizing the effort that’s put into [learning their language].” I’ve been [in Chile] for almost nine years. And yes, I speak [Spanish] well (though I...
The State of Torture in the World in 2013
On January 23, 2013, an excerpt from the annual report of l'ACAT-France, A World of Torture 2013, makes a fresh assessment of the state of torture in the world [fr]: “A report called A World of Torture in 2013, assesses torture practices that continue to be alarming, from Pakistan to...
The Mapuche in Modern Chile
After the launching of the book “The Mapuche in Modern Chile” by doctor Joanna Crow, website Chileno presents an interview with the author and notes: In the work, Dr Crow uses a range of sources including Mapuche testimony, academic texts, government documents, music and art, newspapers and parliamentary debate to...
Chilean President Piñera Has Not Had the Presidency He Expected
On an article originally published on the Chileno website, political analyst Patricio Zamorano reflects on the turbulent term of Chilean President Sebastián Piñera and summarizes crucial moments of his admnistration, such as the student reform movement, by saying: The student reform movement and the activism of hundreds of thousands of...
