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Pinochet’s firm government
Today is the fortieth anniversary of the coup that toppled Salvador Allende. There are still many unresolved crimes from his period in power. Twenty years ago, I spent a week working on a housing project in one of Santiago’s poorest barrios. It was only three years since Pinochet had left office; people guardedly expressed a…
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The Robber of Memories
The Robber of Memories by Michael Jacobs, Granta, 2012. Colombia’s Magdalena River could claim to be the second most important in South America after the Amazon. In some ways it’s more important, if a judgement hinges on the Spanish conquest and its aftermath, since the Magdalena allowed the invaders to reach the Andean regions where…
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Planning starts on new Masaya projects
Proyecto Sol (‘Project Sun’) has been installing solar panels in remote rural communities for nine years. It’s about to start a new phase in the community known simply as ‘Sector 80’, an isolated area to the north of Lake Nicaragua. This community, which had no electricity at all and still has no water supply, received…
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Enjoy your Nutella
Earlier this year the WWF announced that Nutella, the chocolate spread, would soon be produced only from sustainable palm oil. This sounds like good news. Millions of hectares of rainforest have been cleared to make way for palm plantations. In Borneo and Sumatra, this could soon mean the extinction of the orangutan. The smog that…
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What’s in it for Ecuador?
If Ecuador grants asylum to Edward Snowden, no doubt we’ll hear Rafael Correa being described once more as a ‘tinpot president’, ready to welcome dissidents to Ecuador’s ‘jungly bosom’. If instead Snowden ends up in Venezuela or Cuba, his would-be jailers will move even further onto their moral high ground.