In the spotlight: in Brazil, the toll of floods and landslides in Petropolis revised upwards
Brazilian soldiers search for survivors following the mudslide in the city of Petropolis, Brazil, February 17, 2022. © AP/Silvia Izquierdo
Text by: Christophe Paget Follow
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“
Worst storm in 90 years claimed 104 lives
,” headlines
O Globo
.
"
Devastador
", "
Devastator
", the word crosses the front page of the
Extra
newspaper .
O Globo
,
Extra
,
Folha de Sao Paulo
, the photos are different, but each time, we find, against a background of mud and debris, men carrying the bodies of the victims, swaddled in black plastic bags.
“
Pain and destruction
”, summed up in Une
O Dia
.
Folha de Sao Paulo
recalls that "
the city has already been affected in a similar way at least twice, in 1998 and in 2011
", while "
a fifth of its territory is subject to a high risk, because Petropolis is located in the mountains of Rio de Janeiro, which suffer summer storms and landslides every year.
“
Already at the end of last year
,” recalls
O Globo
, “
a series of storms had begun to hit the northeastern and southeastern regions
”.
A glaring unpreparedness
"
The unpreparedness of cities in the face of predictable climatic phenomena is flagrant
", thunders
O Globo
.
According to the newspaper, last year many governments cut funding for flood prevention.
Worse, according
to Folha de Sao Paulo
, which relies on the Rio de Janeiro government's own figures, Governor Claudio Castro's administration has not even spent half of what was planned for the prevention and response program. to disasters.
And
O Globo
points out that, at the national level, the budget of the National Center for Monitoring and Warning of Natural Disasters was the lowest last year since its creation in 2011. However, the newspaper insists, "
more than 8 million Brazilians live in areas at risk, such as river banks or slopes
.
The newspaper calls for an updated map of risk points, and a long-term plan, which survives changes in government, to remove families from the most vulnerable points.
In Nicaragua, a journalist sentenced to nine years in prison
The trials of political opponents continue in Nicaragua: this Wednesday, February 16, Miguel Mendoza, a sports journalist who last week was found guilty of "
undermining national integrity
", was sentenced to nine years in prison, explains
La Prensa
.
The newspaper recalls that during his trial the journalist “
declared himself proud to be an independent journalist and to be on the side of the defense of the Nicaraguan people
”.
He was arrested on June 21 with dozens of other opponents of President Ortega.
Confidencial
announces for its part that this Friday, February 18,
the Organization of American States will debate the political trials and convictions of prisoners of conscience by the Orteguist regime
”.
Confidencial
also publishes an interview with the rapporteur of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights: “
Nicaragua will have to render accounts after the death of Hugo Torres
”, affirms Esmeralda Arosemena de Troitino.
Hugo Torres is this figure of the Sandinista revolution whose death was announced last weekend, when he had been detained for months.
He was 73 years old.
The Pan-American lawyer also calls on the regime of Daniel Ortega “
to immediately examine all the political prisoners of the third age imprisoned, so that their rights to health are guaranteed and that the degrading conditions to which they are subjected cease
”.
The death in Chile of the last person to speak the Yagan language
Cristina Calderon was 93 years old and, reports
Emol
, everyone saluted her memory.
Among others, President Gabriel Boric and Culture Minister Consuelo Valdés, who stressed that the old lady had been "
a living human treasure
".
Cristina Calderon was born in 1928 on Navarino Island, Tierra del Fuego, where she lived maintaining the customs and beliefs of her yagan ancestors, who inhabited the continent 6,000 years ago,
La Tercera
recalls .
Last living representative of the Yagan people, she was the last to speak the language, which has no less than 32,400 words.
However, she did not teach it to any of her children and grandchildren.
In fact, they didn't really want to know about it, the newspaper reports, because of the discrimination practiced by non-Yagans.
But in the last years of her life, with one of her granddaughters, Cristina Calderon wrote a Spanish-yagan dictionary, and you can hear her on a record repeating certain words in yagan: "
dog
", "
wind
" or "
still soul
"...
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