🪧 Pressure to radicalize

Last week, we asked which “football miracle” was credited to the 2013 election of Jorge Bergoglio as pope. All respondents picked Argentina’s 2015 Copa América title … but Argentina didn’t win the Copa América that year, losing to Chile in the final, on penalties.

The correct answer is more personal: Pope Francis’ beloved San Lorenzo won its first-ever Copa Libertadores in 2014 — a triumph that fans jokingly attributed to divine intervention.

IN THIS ISSUE

• Chile’s presidential frontrunner downplays horrors of Pinochet era

• Israel critics become a headache for Uruguay’s new president, Yamandú Orsi

Matthei tries, but fails, to lure the far right

Center-right presidential hopeful Evelyn Matthei shook Chile’s electoral race by downplaying the crimes of General Augusto Pinochet’s 1973-1990 military dictatorship. 

In her words. In an interview, Matthei said that Pinochet’s coup, which led to the death of democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende, was “necessary” because “otherwise, [Chile] would have gone the way of Cuba.”

• “At the start, in 1973 and 1974, it was inevitable to have deaths, because we were in a civil war. By 1978 or 1982, when these things kept happening, then no,” the candidate added.

🌎 LatAm Report