South America

Topic description and stories

Left: a photograph of Valparaíso Jail in 2000 by Mario Patricio Cordero; Right: a watercolour portrait of Manuel Flores by Francisco Aedo Carrasco (1974)

Pinochet’s prisoners were tormented with music but still found solace in it

19 Dec 2025

110 years after Augusto Pinochet’s birth, Chile has just elected a new far-right President, José Antonio Kast, who has praised the dictator's legacy...

Travelling to a peatland area with the Urarina.

The cultural significance of carbon-storing peatlands to rural communities

21 May 2019

A group of UK and Peruvian researchers have carried out the first detailed study of how rural communities interact with peatlands in the Peruvian...

‘The greatest director in the world right now’ begins residency at Centre for Film and Screen

04 May 2018

One of Argentina’s and Latin America’s pre-eminent filmmakers begins a 16-day residency at Cambridge’s Centre for Film and Screen from tomorrow (May...

Patrick working with the clasificadores in Montevideo

'Extreme sleepover #19' – Living beside Uruguay’s ‘Mother Dump’

30 Sep 2016

In a new podcast, Patrick O’Hare describes his time with the clasificadores – the families who scavenge Montevideo’s pungent ‘wastescape’ to recover...

Biggest library of bat sounds compiled to track biodiversity

14 Apr 2016

Researchers have compiled the largest known library of bat calls to identify and conserve rare species in Mexico – a country which is home to many of...