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
Chile and Its "Crazies"
Yesterday was a big day for me, primarily because the new fourth edition of Moon Handbooks Chile finally went up on the publisher’s website, an unmistakable sign that the book is actually on sale, both online and in stores. That said, I’m a little bewildered by the website blurb that promotes an itinerary of “10 Days Skiing in the Andes,” which I never wrote and which does not appear in the book. more >>
The Oscars: A Post Mortem, So to Speak
In the aftermath of the Oscars, it’s probably fair to say that, for Chilean director Pablo Larraín, the fate of his best
foreign film nominee No could be described by the title of his previous film, Post Mortem (trailer above), which I watched on streaming video last week. Larraín himself had acknowledged that the Austrian feature Amour was the odds-on favorite, but that doesn’t diminish the prestige of being the first Chilean feature to be a nominee. more >>
Sacrificing the Atacama? A Chilean View of Dakar
When I first saw the Atacama desert, in the late 1970s, its vast aridity overwhelmed me, and inspired me to return to Chile to undertake my M.A. thesis on llama and alpaca herding in the Andean highlands of Parque Nacional Lauca, east of the city of Arica. To do so, I had a fellowship from the Inter-American Foundation, but I also needed an in-country sponsor to be able to carry out the research. One of my faculty advisors at Berkeley put me in touch with Horacio Larraín Barros, then a geography professor at Santiago’s Universidad Católica, who eased my way through official obstacles at a time when Chile was an international pariah because of the Pinochet dictatorship. more >>
Chilean Oscar Faceoff? "No" v. "Kon-Tiki"
Several months ago, I wrote about director Pablo Larraín’s film No, the first Oscar nomination ever for a Chilean feature and, as the awards event approaches this coming Sunday, Larraín and other Chileans will certainly be paying attention. I can’t yet pronounce my own judgment on No, which has not yet reached theatrical release here in the Bay Area, though I read Larry Rohter’s recent New York Times profile of Larraín with great interest – No has generated some controversy in Chile, though necessarily not for the reasons one might think. more >>
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