-
Telenovelas in Translation
Edith Sangueza
The Colombian telenovela ‘Hasta que la plata nos separe’ (‘Until money does us part’), which aired from 2006-2007, will soon take another plot twist: Rafael, Alejandra, and the rest will find themselves in China. A Mandarin version of the melodramatic story, which involves car crashes, halted weddings, and riches-to-rags, will soon begin filming in the coastal ...
-
Hacking Away: the windy path to becoming a foreign correspondent
Duncan Tucker
With newspapers in a seemingly terminal decline it is essential for aspiring reporters to learn as much as possible about online journalism. So aside from focusing on my writing and interviewing skills, since starting work at the Guadalajara Reporter I’ve also been uploading articles, running the newspaper’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, producing the odd video ...
-
World View: Free trade lurches closer, but is it really the reward Colombia expects?
Guy Hursthouse
‘The wait is over’. Such did one Colombian newspaper greet the news from Washington on 3 October that Barack Obama had, after a five and a half year delay, sent the US‑Colombia free trade agreement (FTA) to Congress for its approval. Submitting the agreement, along with similar deals with Panama and South Korea, Obama urged Congress ...
-
Mario Vargas Llosa on Tranströmer: ‘I haven’t read him yet’
Edith Sangueza
This week saw the awarding of Nobel Prizes in Sweden, with the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, who has published 15 collections and been translated into over 60 languages. According to the Nobel Prize press release, his work ‘gives us fresh access to reality’. The Nobel committee’s accolades didn’t stop Mario ...
-
The long road to Brazil 2014…
Charlie Nairn
The 2014 World Cup might seem some way off at the moment, indeed many of the stadiums that will be used for the tournament are still at the planning stage, but the qualifying campaign for the South American countries commenced last week. The teams will certainly be there even if the stadiums won’t! Brazil will ...
-
Spanglish
Ellen Jones
Friends mock me for choosing Spanish as my second language. Spanish, they maintain, barely requires teaching, as you simply add an ‘o’ onto the end of an English word and you can make yourself understood anywhere on the peninsula or Latin American continent. I overheard someone shout at a Spanish-speaking barman the infamous words: ‘un ...
-
World View: Belo Monte and the divergent goals of energy security and environmentalism
Guy Hursthouse
A judge this week ordered that construction work on the Belo Monte dam in the Brazilian Amazon be suspended. Federal Judge Carlos Castro Martins based his ruling against the development, which would see the installation of a 11,000 megawatt hydroelectric power station on the Xingu river, on the chances that the river’s fish stocks would ...
-
Radio Deseo Records Gay Voices in La Paz
Edith Sangueza
In La Paz, radio station Radio Deseo is beginning its fourth round of programming for the radio show ‘Soy marica y qué’ (roughly equivalent to ‘I’m gay, so what?’). The program, presented by Ricardo Cordón, Roberto Condori, and three others, features the voices of Bolivians from all sectors of society who out themselves on air ...
-
Re-Election in Central America: A Troubling Pattern?
Andres Arguello
A vicious trend has been unfolding in Central America for the past few years. Executives throughout the region have attempted to carry out, with varying degrees of success, constitutional reform to alter re-election laws. Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who in 2009 sought to modify the Honduran Constitution via referendum to allow for consecutive re-election, spearheaded ...