Politics, Business & Culture in the Americas
Israel Laura

AQ Top 5 de Chefs Jóvenes: Israel Laura

Read in English A los 22 años Israel Laura estaba trabajando en una fábrica de cables eléctricos situada en las afueras de Barcelona, ciudad a la que había emigrado desde Perú siendo adolescente. Ante la poco inspiradora perspectiva de una vida de trabajo en una fábrica, y cansado de saltar de un empleo a otro, … Read more

Silvana Villegas

AQ Top 5 de Chefs Jóvenes: Silvana Villegas

Read in English Usted no encontrará gran cosa en el menú de Masa que no sea completa y apasionadamente tradicional. Precisamente esa es la intención de Silvana Villegas. La chef de 31 años y copropietaria de una de las panaderías y restaurantes más populares de Bogotá se propuso como misión llevar el miche levain, el … Read more

Rodrigo Oliveira

AQ Top 5 de Chefs Jóvenes: Rodrigo Oliveira

Read in English Por ridículo que pueda parecer, la élite acaudalada de São Paulo tradicionalmente rehuía a los restaurantes “brasileños”. Para esta, una comida de lujo tenía que ser francesa, portuguesa, japonesa o cualquier otra, mientras fuera extranjera –preferencia que era un reflejo de la historia de la ciudad como punto importante de llegada de migrantes, … Read more

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Book Review: El Mall

The structures that inhabit our daily lives — our homes, businesses, churches — are often markers of the invisible forces that shape and crystallize them. But it takes a lucid and thoughtful eye to see the tangible as something also drenched in the revealing, subtle nuances of social and cultural life. Arlene Dávila, the author of El Mall: The … Read more

Albina

Book Review: Albina and the Dog-Men

Like Alejandro Jodorowsky himself, Albina and the Dog-Men seems to be all imaginable things at once: a fable and a folktale, a Western, a tragedy, a lewd comedy. A love story. The short novel’s titular character is an albino giant with no memory of her past. By moonlight, Albina unwittingly transforms the men of a … Read more

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AQ Top 5 Young Chefs: Xavier Pacheco

Leer en español See the rest of the AQ Top 5 When Chef Xavier Pacheco returned to his native Puerto Rico from Barcelona, he knew opening a restaurant that served dishes with fresh, local ingredients, would be an uphill struggle. Puerto Rico, once home to a thriving agricultural sector, now imports 85 percent of its … Read more

Israel Laura

AQ Top 5 Young Chefs: Israel Laura

Leer en español See the rest of the AQ Top 5 At age 22, Israel Laura was working in an electric cable factory outside of Barcelona, where he had emigrated from Peru as a teenager. Faced with the uninspiring prospect of a life of factory work, and tired of bouncing from job to job, Laura … Read more

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AQ Top 5 Young Chefs: Silvana Villegas

Leer en español See the rest of the AQ Top 5 You won’t find much on the menu at Masa (“dough” in Spanish) that isn’t completely, passionately, traditional. That’s how Silvana Villegas intends it. The 31-year-old chef and co-owner of one of Bogotá’s most popular bakeries and lunch spots has made it her mission to … Read more

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AQ Top 5 Young Chefs: Rodrigo Oliveira

Leer en español See the rest of the AQ Top 5 As ridiculous as it may sound, São Paulo’s moneyed elite historically shunned “Brazilian” restaurants. Fine dining meant French, Portuguese, Japanese, or anything else foreign — reflecting both the city’s immigrant-heavy background and its prized self-image as distinct from the rest of Brazil. That finally began to … Read more

baseball

Top 10 Plays in U.S.-Cuba Baseball Diplomacy

Cuba and the U.S. have not always seen eye-to-eye. But the two countries have long shared a love for baseball, which each claims as its national pastime. Similar to how Ping-Pong diplomacy broke the ice between the U.S. and China in the 1970s, baseball helped thaw relations with Cuba ahead of President Barack Obama’s historic … Read more

Oscar winners

How a Film About a Bear Got Chile to Reckon With Its Past

When Chile won its first-ever Academy Award on February 28 for the animated short film “Bear Story” (Historia de un Oso), the nation got more than a gold-plated statuette. It was also jolted into confronting the still-taboo subject of forced exiles and political disappearances under the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. An estimated 200,000 Chileans fled … Read more

Embrace of the Serpent

‘Embrace of the Serpent’ Is a Haunting Tale of Colombia’s Amazon

In Colombia’s first Oscar-nominated feature film, director Ciro Guerra offers both an ode to humanity’s capacity to hope and a eulogy for the loss of Latin America’s indigenous culture and knowledge. “Embrace of the Serpent” takes place during Latin America’s rubber boom in the early 20th century. The film’s message is delivered through Karamakate, a … Read more

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