News: Bolivia and Chile

At least twenty-five people are dead as the result of political violence. It is unclear if the nation will be able to steer clear of open civil war. The Bolivian and U.S. governments have taken turns kicking one another's ambassadors out of the country. The Presidents of virtually every nation in South America are convening in an emergency summit in Chile on Monday morning, with one of them calling this moment the biggest threat to a democracy on the continent since the bloody coup that installed Augusto Pinochet in power there in 1973.

For updates on the situation in Bolivia, check out Abiding in Bolivia, Machetera, Inca Kola news, and the Democracy Center (where the citation above comes from).

Aside from that, the New York Times has an article on Chile's sexual revolution. It's a slightly odd article that seems to be attempt to be morally disapproving and also faintly titillating. OK, that in itself is quite a common feature of the press, but considering that teens making out is not in itself really newsworthy... Anyway, there are a few interesting points made:

“We are not the children of the dictatorship; we are the children of democracy,” said Michele Bravo, 17, at a recent afternoon party. “There is much more of a rebellious spirit among young people today. There is much more freedom to explore everything.”

The parents and grandparents of today’s teenagers fought hard to give them such freedoms and to escape the book-burning times of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. But in a country that legalized divorce only in 2004 and still has a strict ban on abortion, the feverish sexual exploration of the younger generation is posing new challenges for parents and educators.

In tangle of young lips, a sex rebellion in Chile (seriously, what is that headline?! NY Times)