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Strong earthquake kills at least 14 in Ecuador, 1 in Peru
A strong earthquake shook southern Ecuador and northern Peru on Saturday, killing at least 15 people, trapping others under rubble, and sending rescue teams out into streets littered with debris and fallen power lines.
The U.S. Geological Survey reported an earthquake with a magnitude of about 6.8 that was centered just off the Pacific Coast, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Guayaquil, Ecuador's second-largest city. One of the victims died in Peru, while 14 others died in Ecuador, where authorities also reported that at least 126 people were injured.
Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso told reporters the earthquake had "without a doubt ... generated alarm in the population." Lasso's office in a statement said 12 of the victims died in the coastal state of El Oro and two in the highlands state of Azuay.
In Peru, the earthquake was felt from its northern border with Ecuador to the central Pacific coast. Peruvian Prime Minister Alberto Otárola said a 4-year-old girl died from head trauma she suffered in the collapse of her home in the Tumbes region, on the border with Ecuador.
One of the victims in Azuay was a passenger in a vehicle crushed by rubble from a house in the Andean community of Cuenca, according to the Risk Management Secretariat, Ecuador's emergency response agency.
In El Oro, the agency also reported that several people were trapped under rubble. In the community of Machala, a two-story home collapsed before people could evacuate, a pier gave way and a building's walls cracked, trapping an unknown number of people.
The agency said firefighters worked to rescue people while the National Police assessed damage, their work made more difficult by downed lines that interrupted telephone and electricity service.
Machala resident Fabricio Cruz said he was in his third-floor apartment when he felt a strong tremor and saw his television hit the ground. He immediately headed out.
"I heard how my neighbors were shouting and there was a lot of noise," said Cruz, a 34-year-old photographer. He added that when he looked around, he noticed the collapsed roofs of nearby houses.
Ecuador's government also reported damages to health care centers and schools. Lasso said he would travel on Saturday to El Oro.
In Guayaquil, about 170 miles (270 kilometers) southwest of the capital, Quito, authorities reported cracks in buildings and homes, as well as some collapsed walls. Authorities ordered the closure of three vehicular tunnels in Guayaquil, which anchors a metro area of over 3 million people.
Videos shared on social media show people gathered on the streets of Guayaquil and nearby communities. People reported objects falling inside their homes.
One video posted online showed three anchors of a show dart from their studio desk as the set shook. They initially tried to shake it off as a minor quake but soon fled off camera. One anchor indicated the show would go on a commercial break, while another repeated, "My God, my God."
Luis Tomalá was fishing with others when the earthquake struck. He said their boat began moving "like a racehorse, we got scared, and when we turned on the radio, we heard about the earthquake." That's when his group, Tomalá said, decided to stay at sea fearing a tsunami could develop.
A report from Ecuador's Adverse Events Monitoring Directorate ruled out a tsunami threat.
Peruvian authorities said the old walls of an Army barracks collapsed in Tumbes.
Ecuador is particularly prone to earthquakes. In 2016, a quake centered farther north on the Pacific Coast in a more sparsely populated area of the country killed more than 600 people.
Machala student Katherine Cruz said her home shook so badly that she could not even get up to leave her room and flee to the street.
"It was horrible. I had never felt anything like this in my life," she said.
Argentines struggle to make ends meet amid 100% inflation
Jesica Fernández used to join seven family members every weekend for a large beef barbeque. Beef is no longer on the menu, and now they’re more likely to eat spaghetti or chicken wings.
In beef-loving Argentina, barbeques nowadays happen only on birthdays or special occasions, Fernández said.
Fernández, 31, is among millions of Argentines struggling to make ends meet as the country’s annual inflation rate clocked in at an annual rate of 102.5 percent in February, the first time it has reached triple digits since 1991.
She was shopping at a market sponsored by the Lomas de Zamora municipality, some 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the capital, where businesses offer basic goods at cheaper prices in exchange for the free retail space.
“We buy less beef and we buy fewer things. In reality, you can’t give yourself the luxuries that you could before,” Fernández said,
The country's Indec statistics agency said this week that consumer prices increased 6.6% in February from the previous month, a higher number than expected, on top of years of double-digit annual inflation over the past decade. Food was among items that increased the most in February, rising 9.8% from January, in part due to a punishing drought that has pushed prices of meat and other goods higher.
Also Read: Half of Argentina faces blackout as fire knocks out power grid: BBC report
“The situation is very difficult, and every day it gets worse,” said Daisy Choque Guevara, 42.
Mabel Espinosa, 37, was walking around the market with her 10-day old baby, Gael, hoping to find deals to buy enough food for herself, her husband and six children.
“The money isn’t enough for anything,” Espinosa said. “Barbeques? Forget about it.”
President Alberto Fernández has been struggling to put the brakes on the country’s soaring inflation rate that will undoubtedly be a key issue in the presidential campaign ahead of October elections.
Argentines have long suffered large bouts of rising prices, worse than elsewhere, because of the government's penchant for printing money to finance spending. That trend accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic while a sharp depreciation of the local currency also pushed prices higher.
President Alberto Fernández’s center-left administration has tried to rein in the spiraling prices through price controls that have largely failed. Much of the opposition says Argentina needs a broader stabilization plan that includes a sharp decrease in spending.
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“We obviously think the inflation data is bad, very bad, plus it was unexpected,” presidential spokeswoman Gabriela Cerruti said Thursday. “The government remains firmly committed to controlling prices, controlling inflation, reducing inflation, and not allowing prices to continue increasing.”
Espinosa, however, is not convinced things will improve, at least in the short term.
“I call it resignation, nothing will change … Why get angry?” she said. “Today you get something at one price and tomorrow it will be another price, but it doesn’t matter, you have to pay for it because you need it.”
People have to make cuts where they can.
“For example, if I could buy two yogurts before, now I can only buy one,” said Roxana Cabrera, 38. “It’s very difficult to buy now, you have to search for prices.”
Anything that isn’t absolutely essential is left for a later date.
“I was able to buy clothes before, for example, but not anymore,” Cabrera said. “Now I can only buy food.”
For some, the choices are even more drastic.
“We don’t eat dinner,” said Yanet Nazario, who lives with three of her children and seven grandchildren in an impoverished neighborhood in Buenos Aires. She was buying flour and soap from an improvised stand set up by a cooperative in her neighborhood that sells a few basic goods at lower prices than the stores.
“There’s a lot of sacrifice now because the money you make isn’t enough, you have to work a lot more, we have to go to soup kitchens,” Nazario said.
The children in the household get dinner from soup kitchens that now limit their food to only young people because overall demand has become so high.
“We adults only drink a cup of tea” for dinner, Nazario said. “The next day we'll skip breakfast, and have lunch.”
Haunted by post-election riot, Brazil’s Lula reins in army
When rioters stormed Brazil’s top government buildings in January to dispute the outcome of the presidential election, many soldiers stood by as far-right protesters broke windows, defecated in offices and destroyed valuable art.
The images from Brasilia that day still haunt the left-leaning government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He has strived ever since to ensure that military leaders defend South America’s largest democracy and stay out of politics.
The threat isn't just hypothetical. Brazil has lived through four military coups – the most recent one in 1964, followed by two decades of brutal dictatorship.
Also Read: Bolsonaro says he may return to Brazil in the coming weeks
Lula’s task is fraught. The military is filled with supporters of ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, and its role in the new government is being diminished by the day.
Lula has already tapped more than 100 civilians to replace military officers Bolsonaro appointed to key positions, and he has moved oversight of the country's intelligence agency to his chief of staff's office, among other changes.
“Lula needed to manage his relationship with the military to be able to govern, and will continue to do so,” said Carlos Melo, a political science professor at Insper University in Sao Paulo.
Melo said Brazil's military has long believed that it has "some kind of guardianship of the country’s political process," and Bolsonaro only fueled that belief.
Also Read: Brazil deluge toll hits 44 as search continues for missing
Bolsonaro, a former army captain, appointed more than 6,000 military officers to jobs across his government and revived an annual commemoration of the 1964 coup to stoke nostalgia for the days of military rule.
Although that era was marked by human rights abuses and the loss of civil liberties, Bolsonaro and many of his supporters remember it fondly as a time of strong nationalism, economic growth and conservative values. They view Lula's efforts to tame the military as heavy-handed and misguided.
“Stop looking through the rearview mirror and govern for all Brazilians,” Bolsonaro's former vice president, Gen. Hamilton Mourão, who is now a senator, said in an interview.
The most significant move Lula has made so far has been to elevate Gen. Tomás Paiva to be the army’s top commander.
Paiva, 62, has pledged to keep soldiers out of politics and to respect the results of October’s election, in which Lula beat Bolsonaro by a razor-thin margin.
Yet Paiva has also acknowledged that most the military’s leaders voted for Bolsonaro, and he lamented Lula’s victory to subordinates just three days before the new president called to offer him the promotion — comments he later said were misinterpreted.
Lula has taken various other steps aimed inoculating Brazil from the risk of another violent uprising with at least tacit support from some in the military:
— He blocked the appointment of a Bolsonaro loyalist to command the Goiania battalion, based an uncomfortably close 124 miles from the capital.
— He placed the country’s intelligence agency — formerly overseen by members of the military — under the office of his chief of staff, which is led by civilians.
— He took a symbolically important trip to the U.S., which before the election had warned Brazilian military leaders to steer clear of politics if they wanted access to arms purchases and cooperation from American armed forces.
For now, there is no evidence of another uprising being planned or of military leaders questioning Lula's orders, according to a high-ranking official in the army and a person who works closely with the defense minister, both of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly.
Lula enlisted the military’s cooperation twice in February: as part of a massive operation to expel some 20,000 illegal miners from the Yanomami Indigenous area in Brazil’s Amazon, and to help rescue people after mudslides near Sao Paulo.
These represented early tests of the relationship between Lula and the military, and the results were very positive, said political consultant Thomas Traumann. Still, there's no guarantee of long-term stability, he said.
It remains to be seen whether military retirees and active duty service members who either took part in the Jan. 8 riots or turned a blind eye to them will receive punishment. Some analysts believe that would be important to deter future action.
One video from Jan. 8 showed policemen at the presidential palace in the rare position of barking orders at soldiers: “Lead your troops!” one officer shouted at members of the presidential guard, which is part of the army.
Another video showed dozens of rioters surrounded by police in the palace, as a general attempts to free them. “Are you nuts?” a policeman asks. “They’re in custody!”
Hundreds of civilians who participated in the riots have been jailed and dozens indicted. But service members have so far been spared. The military prosecutors’ office and the top military court have opened 17 investigations, although neither has been transparent about the process.
The incoming Chief Justice of Brazil’s Superior Military Court, Joseli Camelo, said he was encouraged recently when the army canceled a plan to commemorate the upcoming anniversary of the 1964 military coup, a dictatorship-era tradition that Bolsonaro revived.
“This is just another demonstration that the commander is aligned with all the powers towards our common challenge, which is to pacify Brazil and definitively reinforce democracy in our country,” Camelo said.
Mourão, Bolsonaro's former vice president, says the military should not spare any of its members who are proven guilty of taking part in the riots. “The armed forces are shaped to be rigorous in the investigation of disciplinary errors and military crimes,” he said.
Even before taking office in January, Lula — who served as president from 2003-2010 — knew it was essential for him to bolster ties with the country’s right-leaning military.
Some highly regarded military leaders had openly derided him before the election, and some even campaigned to reelect Bolsonaro. For months, the army permitted anti-Lula protesters who were openly supportive of a military coup against him to camp outside their barracks.
In Lula’s first two presidential terms, his relationship with the military was marked by conciliation rather than confrontation, said Fabio Victor, a journalist who just published a best-selling book on Brazil’s armed forces and politics. But Jan. 8 appears to have altered his calculus.
In contrast with Bolsonaro's administration, few members of the armed forces work at the presidential palace, Victor said. With an eye toward the future, Lula's allies in Congress are pushing for constitutional changes that would more clearly define the military's powers and limits, and his ministers are looking at overhauling military education.
“Lula today is very suspicious of the military,” Victor said.
Half of Argentina faces blackout as fire knocks out power grid: BBC report
More than half of Argentina was left without power on Wednesday (March 01, 2023) after a fire broke out at the national electricity grid.
Buenos Aires and other major cities of the South American country are wholly or partly affected, reports BBC.
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According to reports, the fire began in open fields and spread to coastal areas, where it damaged vital power lines and shut down a nuclear power plant.
Argentina is experiencing both a heat wave and a drought.
An estimated 150,000 people are still without power in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area, the BBC report said.
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Brazil deluge toll hits 44 as search continues for missing
The death toll from flooding and landslides in Brazil’s southern state of Sao Paulo reached 44 on Tuesday as searches continued for dozens still missing.
Most of the search was concentrated in the mountainous coastal municipality of Sao Sebastiao where 43 deaths have been recorded. Firefighters still hoped to find people alive in the rubble of houses slammed by landslides during a weekend deluge, said Sao Sebastiao city hall worker Pedro de Rosario.
“Hope is the last thing that dies, so we have a lot of hope," de Rosario said. “There are still people buried.”
Seven bodies have been identified and released for burial, while nearly 800 people are homeless and 1,730 people have been displaced, the Sao Paulo state government said in a statement.
Members of the armed forces joined the search and rescue efforts, and starting Thursday the Navy will build a hospital with up to 300 beds to help relief efforts, Gov. Tarcisio de Freitas said at a news conference in Sao Sebastiao on Tuesday.
Authorities are digging through the mud and clearing roads, but parts of the highway connecting Rio de Janeiro state with Sao Paulo’s port city of Santos are still blocked by landslides. Another road connecting the city of Bortiga to inland Sao Paulo remains completely blocked.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva visited the region on Monday. In remarks to reporters, he called for people living in the hillside areas to be relocated to safer regions.
Precipitation in Sao Sebastiao surpassed 600 millimeters (23.6 inches) during a 24-hour period over the weekend, among the largest such downpours ever in such a short period in Brazil.
Around 7.5 tons of aid items including food, water and hygiene kits have already been distributed to the victims, the state government of Sao Paulo said.
The affected area, on the northern coast of Sao Paulo state and famous for beach resorts flanked by mountains, is a frequent Carnival destination for wealthy tourists who prefer to stay away from massive street parties in big cities.
Heavy rains leave 36 dead in Brazil
Heavy rain caused flooding and landslides that have killed 36 people in Brazil’s north Sao Paulo state, officials said Sunday, and the fatalities could rise.
Sao Paulo state government said in a statement that 35 died in the city of Sao Sebastiao and a 7-year-old girl was killed in neighboring Ubatuba.
The cities of Sao Sebastiao, Ubatuba, Ilhabela and Bertioga, some of the hardest hit and now under state of calamity, canceled their Carnival festivities as rescue teams struggle to find missing, injured and feared dead in the rubble.
“Our rescue teams are not managing to get to several locations; it is a chaotic situation,” said Felipe Augusto, the mayor of Sao Sebastiao. Later, he added there are dozens of people missing and that 50 houses collapsed in the city due to the landslides.
Augusto posted on social media several videos of widespread destruction in his city, including one of baby being rescued by locals lined up on a flooded street.
Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said on Twitter he will visit the region Monday.
Sao Paulo state government said in a statement that precipitation in the region has surpassed 600 millimeters (23.6 inches) in one day, one of the highest amounts ever in Brazil in such a short period.
Also Read: Bolsonaro says he may return to Brazil in the coming weeks
Bertioga alone had 687 millimeters during that period, the state government said.
Gov. Tarcisio de Freitas said in a statement he requested support from the army, which sent two airplanes and rescue teams to the region.
TV footage showed houses flooded with only the roof visible. Residents are using small boats to carry items and people to higher positions. A road that connects Rio de Janeiro to the port city of Santos was blocked by landslides and floodwaters.
The northern coast of Sao Paulo state is a frequent Carnival destination for wealthy tourists who prefer to stay away from massive street parties in big cities.
From a secret safehouse, Peru's Indigenous revolt advances
In an industrial corridor of Peru's capital, a dingy stairwell leads to a second-floor safehouse. Dozens of Quechua and Aymara activists lie on mattresses strewn on the floor, resting up for more anti-government demonstrations as volunteers cook a breakfast of donated rice, pasta and vegetables.
Among the makeshift refuge's occupants is Marcelo Fonseca. The 46-year-old watched as a a friend was shot and killed in December as they battled security forces in the southern city of Juliaca. Within hours, Fonseca joined a caravan of demonstrators that descended on the capital, Lima, to demand the resignation of interim President Dina Boluarte.
“Our Andean blood burns when we become furious,” Fonseca, whose native language is Quechua, said in a halting Spanish. ”It runs faster. That’s what brings us here.”
Two months into Peru’s angry insurrection, emotions have hardened. While the unrest has barely disturbed the late-night revelry in Lima's beachside enclaves, roadblocks still rage across the countryside, scaring away foreign tourists and leading to shortages of gas and other staples.
The tumult, which has left at least 60 dead, was triggered by the impeachment in December of President Pedro Castillo. To Peruvians like Fonseca, the leftist rural teacher was a symbol of their own exclusion, while Boluarte's ascension to power from the vice presidency in cahoots with Castillo's conservative enemies in Congress is seen as an unforgivable class betrayal.
The impasse has given a jolt of self-confidence to Peru's Indigenous movement. Unlike neighboring Bolivia, where Indigenous groups were emboldened by Aymara coca-grower Evo Morales' election as president in 2006, or Ecuador, where ethnic groups have a long tradition of toppling unpopular governments, Peru's Indigenous groups had long struggled to gain political influence.
Although Peruvians of all backgrounds take pride in the history of the Inca Empire, the country's Indigenous population is often treated with neglect and even hostility. Little is done to promote Quechua, despite its being spoken by millions and being an official language since 1975. Not until the 2017 census were Peruvians even asked whether they identify with any one of 50-plus Indigenous groups.
Tarcila Rivera, a prominent Quechua activist and former adviser to the United Nations on Indigenous issues, attributes the disdain to systemic racism stretching back to the Spanish conquest.
“Despite the two hundred years since the founding of our republic, the reality is that those of us who come from pre-Hispanic civilizations haven't obtained our rights, nor are those rights taken into account,” said Rivera.
The current turmoil has also unleashed a torrent of racism. One lawmaker from the floor of Congress disparaged the rainbow-colored Wiphala flag, which represents the native people of the Andes, as little more than a “chifa tablecloth,” using the word for a cheap Chinese restaurant. Another urged security forces to send protesters to Bolivia with a big “kick.”
Rivera says the crackdown has radicalized younger protesters. Meanwhile, the spread of smartphones and the Internet during the past few decades of economic stability has made Indigenous Peruvians more aware of their rights, the country's gaping inequalities and the sacrifices of previously unheralded Indigenous heroes, whose achievements contrast with narratives of perennial victimhood.
“All our kids are ever been taught is that we're losers, miserable souls who were conquered without a fight," Rivera said.
The current protest movement is centered in the southern Andes, where Indigenous identity is strongest. The area is the source of much of Peru's mineral wealth and is home to archeological jewels that attracted more than 4 million tourists a year before COVID.
Its peasants are also among Peru's most neglected.
Those inequalities were on vivid display this month at a roadblock near Cusco, where a group of campesinos sat vigil for hours over a roadblock of tires, tree trunks and boulders. As the line of stranded vehicles grew, tensions flared as motorists complaining that they had family emergencies.
“Don't yell at me when I'm speaking to you with manners!” barked one motorist who faulted the protestors for voting for Castillo, who lived in an adobe home in one of Peru's poorest districts before winning the presidency. “Don't let shameless politicians, who are often from the same community, trick you," he said repeating a false narrative held by elites that Castillo's victory was the result of bribes, fraud and chicanery.
Eventually, the demonstrators yielded to the pressure and briefly opened the road, after a harangue against the “millionaires" and powerful interests blamed for driving their community to desperate actions.
Back in Lima, the safehouse is a hive of activity as another day of demonstrating awaits. Hand-written signs list daily chores to keep the cramped quarters safe and clean. Dozens more activists from Cusco are expected soon and need to be lodged in one of the few dozen homes, apartments and businesses across the capital that have opened their doors, like clandestine rebel bases.
Discretion is a must. Like Fonseca, many of the demonstrators were already detained when security forces firing tear gas last month stormed a university campus at breakfast and arrested hundreds for trespassing. As a result, occupants are encouraged to leave the safehouse one or two at a time, turn off lights early and immediately report any police intrusion to two human-rights attorneys on permanent standby. The windows are covered with newspapers and dog-food bags to block out would-be snoops.
But more than fear, the mood is one of hope.
“No matter what happens, I dare say we've already won,” said Victor Quinones as he stuffs a wad of coca leaves into his cheek.
At 60, Quinones is one of the group's veterans. He says the past few weeks in the capital have strengthened his resolve to push forward and no longer accept the status quo — or futile standoffs with police back home as the best way to change it.
“We broke the barrier. We've started our long march — and look at all this support we've garnered along the way," he reflects. "We've won because, now, the world knows.”
Experts found Chilean poet Neruda was poisoned, nephew says
Forensic experts have determined that Chilean poet Pablo Neruda died of poisoning nearly 50 years ago, a family member of the Nobel Prize winner said Monday.
The revelation by Rodolfo Reyes, a Neruda nephew, is the latest turn in one of the great debates of post-coup Chile. The long-stated official position has been that Neruda died of complications from prostate cancer, but the poet's driver argued for decades that he was poisoned.
There was no confirmation of Reyes' comments from forensic experts from Canada, Denmark and Chile who are scheduled to publicly release a report Wednesday on the cause of Neruda's death.
The public release of the group's finding has been delayed twice this year, first due to internet connectivity issues of one of the experts and then again because a judge said the panel had yet to reach a consensus.
International forensics experts several years ago rejected the official cause of death as cachexia, or weakness and wasting of the body due to chronic illness — in this case cancer. But at that time they said they had not determined what did kill Neruda.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Reyes said forensic tests carried out in Danish and Canadian labs indicated a presence of “a great quantity of Cloristridium botulinum, which is incompatible with human life.” The powerful toxin can cause paralysis in the nervous system and death.
Reyes first revealed the information to the Spanish news agency EFE earlier Monday.
As a lawyer in the judicial case over his uncle’s death, Reyes said he has access to the forensic report, which was carried out after the same group of experts said in 2017 that there were indications of a toxin in the late poet’s bones and a molar.
The lab tests concluded that the toxin was administered when the poet was alive, Reyes said.
The report is set to be released almost 50 years after the death of the poet and Communist Party member and 12 years after the start of a judicial investigation into whether he was poisoned, as his driver Manuel Araya maintains.
Araya told AP earlier this month he was confident that the forensic findings would support his assertion the poet died after being given “an injection in the stomach” at the clinic where he was hospitalized. Araya said he first heard that version of events from a nurse.
Neruda, who was 69 and suffering from prostate cancer, died in the chaos that followed Chile’s Sept. 11, 1973, coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende and put Gen. Augusto Pinochet in power.
Neruda’s body was exhumed in 2013 to determine the cause of his death but those tests showed no toxic agents or poisons in his bone. His family and driver demanded further investigation.
In 2015, Chile’s government said it was “highly probable that a third party” was responsible for Neruda's death. Neruda was reburied in his favorite home overlooking the Pacific Coast last year.
In 2017, a team of international scientists determined that Neruda did not die of cancer or malnutrition, rejecting the official cause of death but not saying what he did die of.
“The fundamental conclusions are the invalidity of the death certificate when it comes to cachexia as a cause of death,” Aurelio Luna, one of the panel’s experts, said at that time. “We still can’t exclude nor affirm the natural or violent cause of Pablo Neruda’s death.”
Neruda, who was best known for his love poems, was a friend of Allende, who killed himself rather than surrender to troops during the coup led by Pinochet.
Neruda was traumatized by the military takeover and the persecution and killing of his friends. He planned to go into exile, where he would have been an influential voice against the dictatorship.
But a day before his planned departure, he was taken by ambulance to a clinic in Chile's capital of Santiago where he had been treated for cancer and other ailments. Neruda officially died there Sept. 23, 1973, from natural causes.
But suspicions that the dictatorship had a hand in the death remained long after Chile returned to democracy in 1990.
The former Mexican ambassador to Chile at the time of the bloody military coup, Gonzalo Martínez Corbalá, told AP on two occasions that he saw Neruda the day before his death and that his body weight was close to 100 kilos (220 pounds). Martínez spoke to AP by phone in 2017, a few days before his death.
Araya told AP last month he still thinks that if Neruda “hadn’t been left alone in the clinic, they wouldn’t have killed him.”
He recalled that on Neruda’s instructions, on Sunday, Sept. 23, the poet’s wife, Matilde Urrutia, and he were at the mansion to pick up the suitcases that would be taken to Mexico the following day. In the middle of the afternoon Neruda asked them to come back quickly. He died that same night.
During his life, Neruda accumulated dozens of prizes, including the 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature, but in recent years criticism has appeared from feminist groups over a rape he committed in the 1930s and which he recounted in his book “I Confess That I Have Lived.” He also is criticized for abandoning his only daughter, Malva Marina, because she was born with hydrocephalus
Nicaraguan bishop who refused exile gets 26 years in prison
Roman Catholic Bishop Rolando Álvarez, an outspoken critic of Nicaragua’s government, was sentenced to 26 years in prison and stripped of his Nicaraguan citizenship Friday, the latest move by President Daniel Ortega against the Catholic church and his opponents.
A day after he refused to get on a flight to the United States with 222 other prisoners, all opponents of Ortega, a judge sentenced Álvarez for undermining the government, spreading false information, obstruction of functions and disobedience, according to a government statement published in official outlets.
The sentence handed down by Octavio Ernesto Rothschuh, chief magistrate of the Managua appeals court, is the longest given to any of Ortega's opponents over the last couple years.
Álvarez was arrested in August along with several other priests and lay people. When Ortega ordered the mass release of political leaders, priests, students and activists widely considered political prisoners and had some of them put on a flight to Washington Thursday, Alvarez refused to board without being able to consult with other bishops, Ortega said.
Nicaragua's president called Álvarez's refusal “an absurd thing." Álvarez, who had been held under house arrest, was then taken to the nearby Modelo prison.
Álvarez had been one of the most outspoken religious figures still in Nicaragua as Ortega intensified his repression of the opposition.
Nicaragua’s Episcopal Conference did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the sentence. Reached by the AP, Managua vicar Mons. Carlos Avilés said he hadn't heard anything official. “Maybe tomorrow.”
The church is essentially the last independent institution trusted by a large portion of Nicaraguans and that makes it a threat to Ortega's increasingly authoritarian rule.
Andrew Chesnut, a professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, said Álvarez's sentence “constitutes the most severe repression against the Catholic Church in Latin America since the assassination of Guatemalan Bishop Juan José Gerardi in 1998.”
“Since first becoming the ruling party in 1979 the Sandinistas have repressed the Catholic Church like few other regimes in Latin America,” Chesnut said. “Pope Francis has refrained from criticizing President Ortega for fear of inflaming the situation, but many believe that now is the time for him to speak out prophetically in defense of the most persecuted Church in Latin America.”
Monsignor Silvio Báez, the former outspoken Managua auxiliary bishop who was recalled to the Vatican in 2019, said on Twitter “the Nicaraguan dictatorship’s hatred toward Mons. Rolando Álvarez is irrational and out of control.”
Álvarez, the bishop of Matagalpa about 80 miles (130 kilometers) north of Managua, has been a key religious voice in discussions of Nicaragua’s future since 2018, when a wave of protests against Ortega’s government led to a sweeping crackdown on opponents.
When the protests first erupted, Ortega asked the church to serve as mediator in peace talks.
On April 20, 2018, hundreds of student protesters sought refuge at Managua’s cathedral. When police and Sandinista Youth descended, the students retreated inside, leaving only after clergy negotiated their safe passage.
“We hope there would be a series of electoral reforms, structural changes to the electoral authority — free, just and transparent elections, international observation without conditions,” Álvarez said a month after the protests broke out. “Effectively the democratization of the country.”
By that summer, the Church was under attack by Ortega's supporters.
A pro-government mob shoved, punched and scratched at Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes and other Catholic leaders as they tried to enter the Basilica San Sebastian in Diriamba on July 9, 2018.
For nearly 15 hours overnight on July 13-14, 2018, armed government backers fired on a church in Managua while 155 student protesters who had been dislodged from a nearby university lay under the pews. A student who was shot in the head at a barricade outside died on the rectory floor.
More recently, Ortega has accused the Church of being in on an alleged foreign-backed plot to depose him.
Last summer, the government seized several radio stations owned by the diocese. At the time, it appeared Ortega’s administration wanted to silence critical voices ahead of municipal elections.
The Holy See has been largely silent on the situation in Nicaragua, believing that any public denunciation will only inflame tensions further between the government and the local church.
The Vatican’s last comment came in August when Pope Francis expressed concern about the raid of Álvarez's residence and called for dialogue.
Earlier this week, judges sentenced five other Catholic priests to prison. They were all aboard Thursday's flight.
Before the sentence was announced Friday, Emily Mendrala, a deputy assistant secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, said “we see yesterday’s event as a positive step that could put the (bilateral) relationship on a more constructive trajectory.” But she added that “we still have concerns with the human rights situation and the situation with democracy in Nicaragua.”
The State Department said Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke by phone Friday with Nicaragua Foreign Minister Denis Moncada about the prisoners’ release and “the importance of constructive dialogue between the United States to build a better future for the Nicaraguan people.” Presumably the conversation occurred before Álvarez’s sentence was announced.
Vilma Núñez, director of the Nicaragua Center for Human Rights, which had been supporting prisoners in their cases, called the sentence “arbitrary and last minute,” noting that it included crimes that were not part of his original conviction.
“The personal well-being and life of the Monsignor is in danger,” Núñez said.
After expelling nearly all of his most vocal critics, Ortega found himself stuck with the bishop in a still heavily Catholic country.
“The Catholic Church, I think, is one of the main institutions that the Ortega regime really, really fears,” Antonio Garrastazu, regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the International Republican Institute in Washington, said before the the sentencing. “The Catholic Church are really the ones that can actually change the hearts and minds of the people.”
Prior to the release of prisoners, sanctions and public criticism of Ortega had been building for months, but both United States and Nicaraguan officials say the decision to put 222 dissidents on a plane to Washington came suddenly.
The majority had been sentenced in the past couple years to lengthy prison terms. The release came together in a couple of days and the prisoners had no idea what was happening until their buses turned into Managua’s international airport.
“I think the pressure, the political pressure of the prisoners, the political prisoners became important to the Ortega regime, even for the people, the Sandinista people who were tired of abuses,” opposition leader Juan Sebastian Chamorro, who was among those released, said during a press conference Friday. “I think (Ortega) wanted to basically send the opposition outside of the country into exile.”
In Ortega’s mind, they are terrorists. Funded by foreign governments, they worked to destabilize his government after huge street protests broke out in April 2018, he maintains.
Ortega said Vice President Rosario Murillo, his wife, first came to him with the idea of expelling the prisoners.
“Rosario says to me, ‘Why don’t we tell the ambassador to take all of these terrorists,’” Ortega recounted in a rambling speech Thursday night. In a matter of days, it was done.
Steady rains set off mudslides that kill at least 36 in Peru
Landslides triggered by steady rains swept mud, water and rocks into several villages in southern Peru, killing at least 36 people, authorities said Monday.
Wilson Gutierrez, a civil defense official in the Mariano Nicolás Valcárcel municipality in Camana province, told local radio RPP that 36 bodies had been recovered in a remote sector called Miski.
Among the dead were five people who were riding in a van that was pushed into a river by a surge of mud.
Local officials appealed for heavy machinery to be sent in to clear debris blocking three kilometers (nearly two miles) of an important road.
Civil defense officials said an estimated 630 homes were unusable after the landslides, which also hit bridges, irrigation canals and roads.
Constant rains are frequent in February in Peru and often cause deadly landslides.