The Torture Colony. In a remote part of Chile, an evil German evangelist built a utopia whose members helped the Pinochet regime perform its foulest deeds... [i]nvestigations by Amnesty International and the governments of Chile, Germany, and France, as well as the testimony of former colonos who, over the years, managed to escape the colony, have revealed evidence of terrible crimes: child molestation, forced labor, weapons trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping, torture, and murder. It may sound like the farfetched plot of Saw VII (or something out of Kafka) but it's horrifyingly true. [Previously]
posted by dersins on Apr 17, 2009 - 38 comments

A native of Barcelona, Spain, Adriana Lopez Sanfeliu moved to New York in 2002 to pursue a career in photography. Adriana has been capturing the lives of young Puerto Rican women and their families in Spanish Harlem, NYC. There is a hardness that characterizes Life on the Block. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Apr 11, 2009 - 6 comments

Weavings of War: Fabrics of Memory , an online exhibit of comtemporary textiles created (mostly) by women living in war zones.
posted by Miko on Jan 9, 2009 - 4 comments

7 short stories by Roberto Bolaño Gómez Palacio, The Insufferable Gaucho, Álvaro Rousselot’s Journey, Phone Calls, Dance Card. From Nazi Literature in the Americas: Edelmira Thompson de Mendiluce, Luz Mendiluce Thompson & Ernesto Pérez Masón and The Fabulous Schiaffino Boys. If you know the fiction of Roberto Bolaño you know what you're in for. If you don't, any of these stories is a good place to start, though the first three are perhaps the most natural starting points. [more inside]
posted by Kattullus on Jan 30, 2008 - 10 comments

Chile Pepper's Lonely Endorphins Club Cinema: I, II, III

Can all this be explained by Dr. Paul Rozin's Benign Masochism / Constrained Risk theory? I, for one, am not buying it, but any way you slice it, hot cock sauce is here to stay.
posted by NaturalScinema on Feb 23, 2007 - 35 comments

The Pan-American Highway: A Photo Voyage Photographer Melissa Fowler documented her journey along a stretch of the Pan-American Highway that flows through Mexico, Peru and Chile, providing detailed captions on ancient sites, local economies, rural life, and much more. Click here (wikipedia link) for more information on the Pan-American Highway and its history.
posted by amyms on Jan 11, 2007 - 12 comments

India's Outsourcing Problems One of the most controversial aspects of the global economy has been the newfound freedom of companies from physical location and the subsequent spread of outsourcing jobs. No country had embraced tech outsourcing with the passion of India. Of late, problems there are beginning to rise: engineers start a project, get a few months' experience, and then bolt for greener pastures, bringing a level of attrition that replaces entire staffs within the course of a year. Combine that with salaries in Bangalore that are rising at 12% to 14% per year and it is no surprise that companies are leaving India for a slew of emerging hot spots for IT outsourcing such as the old Soviet Bloc, China, and Vietnam. This comes as companies such as Microsoft continue to laud outsourcing and proudly proclaim that it is here to stay, and it looks as if Ho Chi Minh City will be the next Bangalore.
posted by PreacherTom on Dec 11, 2006 - 19 comments

Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is in serious condition but stable after heart attack. Just last week he celebrated his 91th birthday and said that he accepted 'political responsibility' for what happened during his dictatorship. Also, before the heart attack he was under house arrest for the disappearance of two persons and being investigated because of tax evasion. -- The popular reaction in Chile has been similar to other occasions: some celebrate; some are sad, but most just want an undivided Chile.
posted by Memo on Dec 3, 2006 - 35 comments

Boris Weisfeiler disappeared in Chile. The authorities claim that the experienced outdoorsman had drowned trying to ford a four-foot river. Uncovered documents tell a different story - that Pinochet's military had mistaken the vacationing mathematics professor for a "Jewish spy" and sent him as a political prisoner to the 37,000 acre German expatriate Nazi apocalyptic cult enclave of Colonia Dignidad. There, he was kept alive for at least two years before Paul Schaefer, the founder of the enclave, a Luftwaffe nurse and a serial child molester, most likely had him killed.
posted by Sticherbeast on Nov 22, 2006 - 20 comments

Not only should we spare a thought to the thousands of ordinary New Yorkers who died needlessly in a day of madness, we should also spare a thought to the thousands of Chileans that perished in Chile under the Pinochet regime...33 years ago, Salvador Allende Gossens, the very first democratically elected socialist head of state in the western hemisphere, was overthrown by the Chilean armed forces, led by Augusto Ugarte Pinochet with CIA support.
posted by tomcosgrave on Sep 11, 2006 - 23 comments

Latin America Turning Left? From the top: Lula da Silva*, Lopez Obrador, Nestor Kirchner, Hugo Chavez*, Alvaro Uribe, Michelle Bachelet*, Ollanta Humala, Alfredo Palacio, Oscar Berger, Leonel Fernandez, Oscar Arias, Tony Saca, Tabare Vazquez, Martín Torrijos, Evo Morales* Manuel Zelaya, Nicanor Duarte, Daniel Ortega, Rene Preval*.
posted by airguitar on Apr 13, 2006 - 30 comments

Michelle Bachelet wins the Chilean presidential election, the first woman to do so. She's also a socialist, a single mom and an agnostic. Santiago is starting to fill up with car horns, and her opponent, rightist millionaire Sebastián Piñera, is supposed to concede any minute now.
posted by signal on Jan 15, 2006 - 87 comments

On the Chilean island of Robinson Crusoe, a small GPR-enabled robot named Arturito (google translated page) has apparently just found "The biggest treasure in history..." (estimated at $10 Billion).
posted by numlok on Sep 26, 2005 - 25 comments

Finally: Compensation for Chilean victims and possible new trial for Pinochet. No small thanks to Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon.
posted by adamvasco on Feb 26, 2005 - 6 comments

George "Don't mess with my homies" Bush. So, evidently, our president got in a scuffle. Yes, a scuffle.
posted by _sirmissalot_ on Nov 21, 2004 - 105 comments

Victor Jara in English. Tribute page to the Chilean folk singer.
posted by plep on Sep 13, 2004 - 4 comments

A viilage to reinvent the world : Gaviotas "In 1965 Paulo Lugari was flying over the impoverished Llanos Orientales, the “eastern plains” that border Venezuela. The soil of the Llanos is tough and acidic, some of the worst in Colombia. Lugari mused that if people could live here they could live anywhere.....The following year Lugari and a group of scientists, artists, agronomists and engineers took the 15-hour journey along a tortuous route from Bogota to the Llanos Orientales to settle."

"...they would need to be very resourceful. So they invented wind turbines that convert mild breezes into energy, super-efficient pumps that tap previously inaccessible sources of water [powered by a child's playground seesaw!], and solar kettles that sterilize drinking water using the furious heat of the tropical sun....They even invented a rain forest!" (from "Gaviotas - A village to reinvent the World", by Tim Weisman) Amidst the strife of war torn Columbia, Gaviotas persists and even flourishes. " "When we import solutions from the US or Europe," said Lugari, founder of Gaviotas, "we also import their problems."....Over the years Gaviotas technicians have installed thousands of the windmills across Colombia....Since Gaviotas refuses to patent inventions, preferring to share them freely, the design has been copied from Central America to Chile."

Gaviotas is real, yes, but it is also a state of mind - as if Ben Franklin, Frank Lloyd Wright, Leonardo Da Vinci - all of the great those giants who reinvisioned the possible - were reincarnated : as a small Columbian village on a once-desolate plain. "Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez has called Paolo Lugari the "inventor of the world." "
posted by troutfishing on Apr 16, 2004 - 12 comments

First-hand accounts of the 1973 coup in Chile. Thirty years ago yesterday.
posted by plep on Sep 12, 2003 - 6 comments

It's a Giant Sperm! Whale! The Chilean sea blob is revealed to be the carcass of a Moby Dick.
posted by jengod on Jul 11, 2003 - 6 comments

The sky is a color of television, tuned to a dead channel, and there's a hole in the sky above Chile. The widening gash in the ozone layer is now over Punta Arenas, Chile, the southern most city in the world.
posted by four panels on Dec 29, 2002 - 23 comments

Hotter and Hotter: The search for an ever more potent chile burn just got serious with The Source from Original Juan (fun flash here) at over 7 million Scoville Units. Not far to go now before pure capsaicin, at 16 million, becomes the condiment of choice. So is food becoming so unpalatable we need to set our tongues on fire first? Are our taste buds doing a Jonestown or what? (First link via Instapundit)
posted by Carlos Quevedo on Nov 3, 2002 - 20 comments

A look into peacekeeping training being conducting in Chile with the U.S. and most South American countries participating. A rare view of the interaction between national militaries to improve good relationships. The pics are great, too.
posted by mcchesnj on Oct 19, 2002 - 1 comment

30 years ago, a group of Uruguayan rugby players traveled to Chile to play a game against a local team. Their plane crashed in the Andes Mountains. The 27 who survived the crash were forced to eat their teammates in order to survive. After 72 days in the mountains, 16 were rescued. Their story was told in the book Alive and later a movie by the same name. Today those survivors reunited in Chile and finally played the rugby game. The Uruguayans won.
posted by einarorn on Oct 13, 2002 - 10 comments

Was the Venezuela coup another Chile 1973? Two months ago, Narco News called attention to the striking similarities between the situation in Venezuela and CIA plots against leftist Chilean president Salvador Allende in the early 1970s. The CIA's own version of what happened in Chile discusses its "sustained propaganda efforts, including financial support for major news media, against Allende and other Marxists." Hmm. Chavez shut down five private TV stations after they repeatedly aired what he called misleading footage of the protest deaths last week, after months of relentless attacks against his government. Sure makes you wonder.

On another note, did eyewitness accounts widely disseminated over the Web help doom the White House spin that "government supporters, on orders from the Chavez government, fired on unarmed, peaceful protestors"? If the Web didn't exist, would the final word have come from articles like this now out-of-date, pro-business analysis in yesterday's Washington Post?
posted by mediareport on Apr 14, 2002 - 47 comments

Some Kissinger victims are taking him to court in the US. Good.
posted by Mocata on Sep 11, 2001 - 3 comments

"Dog Child" Rescued An 11-year-old Chilean boy who has been living in the wild with a pack of dogs was rescued and taken to a hospital. He survived by drinking the milk of a female dog and eating scraps of food. (Even more amazing is the tale of the boy who was raised by monkeys and rescued in 1991...)
posted by jennak on Jun 18, 2001 - 9 comments

Rewriting of history. Now, I don't really approve of what Pinochet did, but in the same process, those in charge are raising up Allende as some sort of great humanistic leader. All in all, I consider what happened to be part of war. IT has to be looked at in context. If Pinochet didn't do something about Allende, what would have happened to the people of Chile? It's not so black and white.
posted by rich on Aug 8, 2000 - 16 comments