South American music and culture magazine

The problem in celebrating revolution is that its fruits are often elusive, often worse than the system they’ve replaced and frequently little but a painful and largely imperceptible staging post on the route to something better. In Viva La Revolution! Derry Nairn examines 30 revolutions – from the slave rebellion of Spartacus (the Third Servile War 73-71BC) to the events of the Arab Spring – and shows how historical examples of “people power” have influenced and continue to influence social and political change. Continue Reading

“There are no statistics of the soul. There is no way to measure the depth of the cultural wound… we cannot know to what point we have been mutilated in our consciousness, our identity and our memory.”

— Eduardo Galeano

Like many of her contemporaries, Silvia Malagrino left Argentina in 1978 to escape the repressive military dictatorship. Three decades later, she filmed her return, reflecting her desire to know and remember her abandoned country, to find a way to be present and absent from the histories that haunt her. Continue Reading

As the world continues to grow and expand at what seems like an unimaginable rate, so do our relationships. And it is these relationships, which we rely on heavily, that spawn our need to feel accepted and loved. Yet with the rapid expansion of our societies, it seems almost impossible to discover that kind of sublime euphoria of brotherhood — our responsibility to care for others, as well as be cared for, has inflated in the globalised world, and can seem like an overwhelming burden. Continue Reading

It’s election season in Argentina, which means bread and circus for porteños in spades, since the lion’s share of voters live in the city and province of Buenos Aires. Entertaining the masses and convincing them to vote for you is a bit trickier, however, when the mayor of the capital, Mauricio Macri, and the president of the nation, Cristina Kirchner, do not have the habit of making lunch dates. Continue Reading

Santiago has some of the most vibrant street art in Latin America. The city, as well as Valparaiso on the coast, have made Chile synonymous with top quality grafitti and street art. This article is a short visual trip through a few of Santiago’s street artists, as well as those visiting the city. Continue Reading

Some characters present a special difficulty when it comes to portray them: their legacy, their power in the field they master, the respect they command in their colleagues and audience, force the writer to raise the game in order to avoid disastrous comparisons when you are talking about them. Continue Reading

Three Brazilian artists are to feature amongst the BRIC 2011 auctions, the second-ever auctions to celebrate the work of artists from Brazil, Russia, India and China. In total 203 lots will go up for auction with an estimate sale value of between £5,917,000 and £8,933,000. Safe to say, these really are some FINE pieces of art! Continue Reading

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of the most famous Latin American authors of all time. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 and is best known for the novels One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. He has also become synonymous with magical realism a style that became popular as part of the Latin American boom in the middle of the last century. But what is magical realism and why did ‘Gobo’, as he’s affectionately known in the Americas, use it in his writing? Continue Reading

Born in Paraguay in 1917 he fought in South America’s bloodiest 20th century conflict. He lived in exile in Argentina and France before, in 1989 he received the Primero Cervantes, Spanish language’s highest literary award. Sounds and Colours takes a look at the life and legacy of Augusto Roa Bastos. Continue Reading

The comic in Venezuela is one of the genres that is generally underrated and ironically, treasured within the country’s culture. The artists who associate themselves with the expression of the comic and its way of illustrating ideas quickly and amusingly work more on the net than among publishers. In fact, much of the author’s struggle from the new fans of the comic in Venezuela is based on claiming a definite and visible place where they express numerous ideas of the world, particularly the urban world. Continue Reading

I clearly remember the news last year when Mario Benedetti passed away. For my British colleagues this may not have meant much more than any other death; however, for the Spanish-speaking world, this meant the death of some of our finest words and verses. Continue Reading

Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa has been awarded the Nobel prize for literature. The author, who we profiled in a recent article, was given the award – using Nobel’s words – “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat”. Not to mention the fact that he is an author who has seemingly mastered the world of writing, as gifted at writing novels as short stories, poems and adaptations. Continue Reading