The Washington Post reports:

The peso is falling — and so, it seems, is the sky. Inflation and poverty rates are soaring. National reserves are shrinking fast. In short, Argentina — in a terrible deja vu of crises past — is hurtling once again toward the economic abyss.

But on the bar stools and wooden chairs of Santa Evita, a grill house dedicated to Eva “Evita” Perón, the political heroine who died a Broadway-worthy death in 1952, the customers are retranqui, Argentine slang for cool and calm. Because the presidential election is coming. And the Peronistas — the heirs to the complex populist political machine launched in the 1940s by Juan and Eva Perón — are poised for a massive comeback.

The ticket heavily favored to win this month has the corruption-tainted former president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, returning to the political stage as the vice-presidential candidate. A larger-than-life Peronista who ruled Argentina from 2007 to 2015, she towers over presidential candidate Alberto Fernández, a former palace adviser and now her lesser-known running mate.

“You could say that Cristina is the continuation of Evita,” said Gonzalo Alderete Pagés, the proprietor of Santa Evita. “Cristina is in our hearts, and we are sure of her return. Where non-Peronistas fail, she succeeds in opening her arms to the working class.” [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports:

The UN high commission on human rights is sending a team to Chile to investigate allegations of human rights abuses against demonstrators, amid a swell of furious street protests over inequality, falling wages and the rising cost of education and healthcare.

“Having monitored the crisis from the beginning I have decided to send a verification mission to examine reports of human rights violations in Chile,” the high commissioner and former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet announced on Twitter.

Having monitored the crisis in #Chile since it began, I have decided to send a verification mission to examine the allegations of #HumanRights violations. Parliamentarians and the Government have both expressed a desire for a @UNHumanRights mission.

— Michelle Bachelet (@mbachelet) October 24, 2019

This week, Bachelet said she was “deeply disturbed and saddened to see violence, destruction, deaths and injuries in Chile”.

Since the unrest erupted on 19 October, the military and Carabineros police forces have made 2,410 arrests throughout the country – 200 of which involved minors – and 535 people have been injured, according to Chile’s human rights commission, INDH. [Continue reading…]