Once a year or so, The New York Times travel section
condescends to publish a Latin American issue, devoting its 12 pages to a
region that, south of Mexico and parts of the Caribbean, gets barely a mention
the rest of the year. Last Sunday’s edition features a photo
essay on Santiago’s newly fashionable Barrio Italia, an area that also
includes the Museo
Frei and Puerto Perú, one of my favorite
restaurants in the city (I’m planning a future post about Peruvian food).
It also includes a longer
article on Pichilemu, the Chilean
surfing capital that's just a short drive from the Colchagua
wine district. That’s good as far as it goes, but author Ondine Cohane stumbles
when she inexplicably refers to Chilean horsemen as “gauchos” when she attends
a local rodeo. “Gaucho” is properly River Plate Spanish (Argentina, Uruguay,
Paraguay and Brazil, where it’s gaúcho). It’s also used in southernmost Chilean
Patagonia but, in the Chilean heartland, her “gauchos wearing different striped
tunics” are in fact huasos
dressed in ponchos, and she fails to identify the traditional dance she views
as the cueca, the staple of
Chilean folklore (as depicted in the 19th-century painting below). It’s not surprising that Cohane, an editor with the
Euro-centric Condé Nast Traveler, might oversimplify regional details, but the
Times’s own fact-checkers clearly failed here.
Romney Nui
Recently, I wrote a post about Chilean
icons in the current US presidential elections that included a New
Yorker cartoon caption contest that caricatured the current opposition
nominee as the face of the stationary moai of Easter Island (known as Rapa Nui to
its Polynesian residents). The link in the previous sentence will take you to
three wryly clever reader-submitted captions, with a choice to
vote for one. I’ve made my choice and, when the winner is announced next week,
we’ll see if other readers agree with me.
Tango by the River - Postponed
As announced
earlier, I will give a digital slide lecture on Buenos Aires at Tango by the River in Sacramento, but illness (not mine) has postponed the event. It will now take place Friday, October 26th.
Limited to a maximum
of 50 people, the event will also include tango performances; admission costs
$10 at the door, or $8 in advance. I have spoken here several times before, and
we always sell out, so plan in advance. Signed copies of my Moon Handbooks on Argentina, Buenos Aires, Chile and Patagonia will be available at discount prices.
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