How Do Pandemics End?

Argentina’s 19th-Century Cholera Outbreaks Show the Myth of a Single, Definitive Conclusion

The study of epidemics has routinely centered around what medical historian Charles Rosenberg calls a “dramaturgic structure”: a story of infection that builds to a climax of widespread illness and woe, and then comes to a definitive end. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has defied this structure, failing to come to a complete stop. But this is not the first time in history that the social and cultural impacts of an epidemic have continued past the time that the state and much of society declare that it is over. Epidemics often …

How Latin America’s Left Could Lose Their Scapegoat

Will Obama’s Trip to Cuba and Argentina Be the Nail in the Coffin for the Region’s Tired Anti-American Script?

Barack Obama took a deserved victory lap in Latin America last week.

Critics of the president’s opening to Cuba accuse Obama of appeasing the Castro regime, but they missed the historic …

Argentina Inches Closer to Wall Street

Voters Reluctantly Say Farewell to Peronism

Economic crises besiege Argentina with the regularity of earthquakes over a tectonic plate. These crises can be devastating, wiping out family savings, employment, and life plans. It seems we’re always …

Stop Making Argentina Your Morality Tale

After Years of Every Default and Inflation Scenario Imaginable, Arcane Financial Developments Are Now Dinner Table Conversation

I woke up a couple of weeks ago to an Argentina that had, against its will, defaulted on its sovereign debt. For those unversed in international finance terminology, that basically …

Walking Home Alone at Night in Buenos Aires

In Argentina, Like Elsewhere in Latin America, Fear of Crime Is a Way of Life

A debate dominates the end of my dinners at my parents’ house: how to get home? I live a mere seven blocks away, a brief walk across a park. Though …

A POPE LIKE US!

Even Secular Argentinos Who’ve Clashed with the Church are Celebrating (Irrationally)

The intensity of the news might be measured as: “Velocity of Spread” multiplied by “Amount of Contacts Weighing In.” The “Habemus Papum Argentino” story’s intensity can only be described here …