When I first started working on this ReVista issue on Colombia, I thought of dedicating it to the memory of someone who had died. Murdered newspaper editor Guillermo Cano had been my entrée into Colombia when I won an Inter American Press Association fellowship in 1977. Others—journalist Penny Lernoux and photographer Richard Cross—had also committed much of their lives to Colombia, although their untimely deaths were …
Author of a marvelous book that excavates the palimpsests of memories encrypted in the image-filled voids of Berlin, Andreas Huyssen extends his investigation of the urban imaginary in…
t may be argued that Dirty Secrets, Dirty War: The Exile of Editor Robert J. Cox should have been written three decades ago, most likely in 1981, when Cox was enjoying, as I do now, a Nieman fellowship…
n September 2004, Hurricanes Jeanne and Ivan struck the Caribbean and southern United States in rapid succession. Damage to Haiti in the West Indies was particularly severe. High…
Chalco is one of Mexico City’s poorest neighborhoods, far enough away from the center along the traffic-clogged highway to Puebla to feel isolated as well as arid. There, migrants from…
Where can you find an Italian professor teaching an American student in Spanish using lecture slides written in English? In the astronomy course I took at Chile’s Pontifícia Universidad Católica (PUC)…
I look at the sky. The stunning Chilean nighttime sky. Walking outside from the cozy control room of the telescope, from where I control the instrument and make my observations, I let my…
Lasers, silicon-based light detectors, supercomputers, and giant glass disks all contribute to new techniques for astronomers to discover the properties of our universe. But one of the most…
You could call it a treasure map, a time machine or a 16th century painted labyrinth. For me it became a magical board game filled with pictures of characters whose personalities and…
Why astronomy? And why in Mexico? Science is an international effort. Newton’s law of gravitation does not have nationality, says the philosopher. In actuality, however, nationality does…
In 2009 we celebrate the international year of astronomy and commemorate the work of Galileo Galilei, theorizing that the earth and the planets orbited around our sun. And now…
I think that astronomy is important for Latin America. By means of astronomy, people can come closer to science. The International Year of Astronomy 2009 will be beneficial by stimulating…
The southern reaches of South America, the uttermost part of the earth, have held special fascination and navigational importance for explorers since Magellan’s time. The names—Port…
English + Español
The Year of Darwin is barely under way, and among the avalanche of events and publications commemorating this great scientist’s life and works, a recent book has established…
In early 1968, while traveling as a Peace Corps Volunteer to the Galapagos Islands aboard the Ecuadoran navy supply boat B.A.E Calicuchima, I first read Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle…
On September 17, 1835, the HMS Beagle swung on her anchor and came to rest off Chatham Island in the Galápagos Islands. Charles Darwin later rowed ashore and, as he walked across the…
In early 2003, tourism in the Galápagos Islands was booming, one of the few bright spots in Ecuador’s sputtering economy. Yet small tour boat operators like Rocio Martínez de Malo and…
Whenever I tell people that I was born in the Galápagos Islands of Ecuador, they always say, “I didn’t know there were any people on the Galápagos. I thought only strange animals lived there…
English + Español
During the 19th century, philosophers, doctors, botanists, and zoologists in Mexico engaged in lively debate over Darwin’s ideas about evolution of the species. The Catholic Church hierarchy …
Charles Darwin wrote these words one hundred and fifty years ago. On the Origin of Species exploded upon the scientific and academic world in 1859, and its unorthodox…
