Latest posts by Silvia Viñas from March, 2014
15 Free (or Very Cheap) Things to Do in Bogotá, Colombia
Bogotá and its price points tend to get a bad rap. This is a very valid point when you consider that the average monthly salary in the city as of 2013 was just over 1 million pesos (about $500 at the current exchange rate), and that it has the biggest...
Unlocking Time: A Collective Virtual Album of Old Photos from Latin America
All links lead to Spanish-language pages #plenoverano en ABRIR EL TIEMPO: los animales inflables en el mar. Fotos playeras de Uruguay, 1940! pic.twitter.com/IM3Tg801 — Abrir el tiempo (@abrireltiempo) January 16, 2013 Summer in Unlocking Time: Inflatable animals in the sea. Beach photos from Uruguay, 1940! Abrir el tiempo (Unlocking Time)...
Zapatista Textbook Now Available in English
Put on your thinking caps because the first of four Zapatista textbooks from last year’s widely popular escuelita (little school) have been translated to English. For those who are not yet familiar, the Zapatista Escuelita (Zapatista little school), brought 1630 students from around the world to learn what it really...
El Salvador's Election Tribunal Announces Winner in Presidential Race
El Salvador's election tribunal announced that Salvador Sánchez Cerén of the left-wing FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front) beat conservative candidate Norman Quijano from the ARENA (Nationalist Republican Alliance) party on Sunday's run-off election. Sánchez Cerén won with 50.11% of the vote. Linda from Linda's El Salvador Blog served as an...
5 Important Points on Colombia's Parliamentary Elections
Bloggings by boz lists 5 points on Colombia's parliamentary elections, which took place on March 9, 2014. 1) Though his coalition lost seats, President Santos keeps a divided and fragile majority coalition in Congress. […] 2) Colombia's party system is divided and weak. No party received over 20% of the...
Mexicans are Pushing for the ‘Redemocratization’ of Democracy
The Mexican population is not with Peña Nieto or the political class. Even the polls, which are generally most sympathetic to the president, accept that no one supports Peña Nieto. The political class seems to think it’s just because the economy hasn’t grown, but it goes far beyond that. Mexicans...
El Salvador Second Round Election Too Close to Call
Salvadorans went to the polls on Sunday, March 9 to vote in a run-off presidential election, but results are so close that both candidates have declared themselves winners and the Supreme Electoral Tribunal has announced that they will do a complete recount in the coming days. In a report about...
16 Women Rocking Chile
A photo essay in the website Sentidos Comunes [es] highlights 16 outstanding Chilean women who “are the protagonists of the public agenda in the next five or ten years.” The list includes photographer Paloma Palomino, politician Karol Cariola, journalist Isabel Plant, filmmaker Dominga Sotomayor, and illustrator Fran Meneses.
Political Representation: A Key Struggle for Afro-descendants in Colombia
With 5 million people, or 10.6% of the total population, Colombia has the largest Afro-descendant population in Latin America, behind only Brazil, according to a 2005 census. There are, however, serious difficulties in quantifying blackness, given the mixed ethnic backgrounds of many Colombians. The stigma associated with African descent in much...
Can Scientists Help Preserve Latin America's Cultural Heritage?
“We would suggest you dress up a little bit more ‘formal’ when you have to interact with clients”. By “formal” he means, you have to renounce your cultural heritage because you belong to an indigenous group in Ecuador and your look is too ‘ethnic’ for business. This is a...
