South America Blog
About this blog
Wayne Bernhardson is the author of Moon Handbooks to Buenos Aires, Chile, Argentina, and Patagonia. Here he shares his vast knowledge of South America and its people.
Recent Posts
- The Papal Cumbia
- The Uruguayan Sacraments: Tango & Mate
- Taxing the Tourist: Argentina's AFIP Aims Low
- Fortress Falklands: A Book Review
- Pope Argentinus I, The Musical: Ragtime Meets Tango
- Credit Where Credit Is Undue?
- ¿Adios Hugo?
- When "No" Is A Positive
- Chile and Its "Crazies"
- The Oscars: A Post Mortem, So to Speak
- Sacrificing the Atacama? A Chilean View of Dakar
- Chilean Oscar Faceoff? "No" v. "Kon-Tiki"
- Friday Digest: Southern Cone Nuggets
- Dancing in the Mud? The Andean Aftermath
- Floods & Mud: Summer Storms Hit the Andes
Pope Argentinus I, The Musical: Ragtime Meets Tango
Since 1998, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio has presided over Buenos Aires’s Catedral Metropolitana (pictured above), but now he’s moving onto a bigger stage. Though he's the first Latin American cleric to become Pope, it’s worth mentioning that, having been born of an Italian immigrant father in the Argentine capital, he would be at least eligible for Italian citizenship so, in that sense at least, he’s something of a compromise choice for traditionalists. more >>
Credit Where Credit Is Undue?
Over the past couple decades, for all their shortcomings, credit cards have made foreign travel easier, eliminating or at least reducing the need to carry quantities of cash and helping avoid the need to convince immigration officials of “sufficient funds.” If Argentine domestic trade secretary Guillermo Moreno has his way, though, MasterCard and Visa may lose much of their utility for Argentines and perhaps even foreigners. more >>
¿Adios Hugo?
Normally, in this blog, I don’t venture outside the Southern Cone countries, but the week’s biggest event has taken place in the only South American country I have never visited – Venezuela, where the charismatic president Hugo Chávez died on Tuesday. Some Venezuelans might disagree that I have never set foot in the country, because I have visited parts of neighboring Guyana over which Venezuela has a more or less dormant irredentist claim, but I can assert that I’ve never had a Venezuelan stamp in my passport. more >>
When "No" Is A Positive
In 1988, when Chilean general Augusto Pinochet Ugarte decided to try to legitimize his dictatorship with the title of president through a yes-or-no plebiscite, I was not the only one to think he might actually win. Though I was not in Chile at the time, I had first visited the country in 1979, six years after the violent coup that ousted constitutional president Salvador Allende Gossens; having gotten to know a pretty broad cross-section of Chileans, I wondered whether an apparently weak opposition could convince the electorate to dump the dictator. more >>
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