Cirque de Soleil is returning to Buenos Aires in May with its show Quidam.

The show, which is an intricate mix of circus entertainment and street performance art, opens May 29th in Vicente Lopez, just outside the city limits.

Cirque de Soleil was started by a small group of performance artists in Canada in 1984. The Montreal-based group now has more than 4,000 employees from around 40 nations, about 1,000 of which are performing artists.

Quidam premiered in 1996 in Montreal and has traveled around the world since.

Last year Cirque de Soleil performed 20 different shows simultaneously around the world. Some of the group’s shows are near-permanent fixtures located in cities like Las Vegas while others were traveling shows.

You can get “Pre-sale tickets” here. For more information, click here.

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The legendary rock band Aerosmith will rock Buenos Aires on May 27, according to the band’s official site.

Aerosmith will play its “Cocked, Locked, Ready to Rock” tour at the Hipodromo in San Isidro, the same place where Beyoncé performed last month.

Ticket sales information isn’t available yet, but we’ll update this post when it is.

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The best pizza place in Argentina, Pizza Piola, is opening a new branch in Palermo Hollywood.

The new store will open on Gorriti 5751.

Not sure what the opening date is but we’ll update this post with the details once we have ‘em.

The colorful pizza heaven has locations in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Honduras, Italy, Mexico, the U.S. and Turkey.

Oh, how lucky those countries are!

In Buenos Aires, Piola is located on Libertad 1078, just a few feet from Santa Fe.

*Special thanks to pizza lover “E Squared” for this slice of information.

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El Secreto de Sus Ojos, Juan Jose Campanella’s film starring Ricardo Darín, won the Oscar Sunday for the Best Foreign Language Film of 2009.

Campanella said he was “stunned” by the award, saying it seems like “a lie” that’s too good to be true. Darín called the award “miraculous.” Darín also said he had seen the other films competing for the same award. How did see see them? He watched pirated copies of them, he said.

If you haven’t seen El Secreto yet, check it out. It’s well worth it.

Also be sure to check out a fun Newsweek interview that my buddy Brian Byrnes did with Darín here.

Juan Jose Campanella is an Argentine-born director of both local and international TV and films. He is perhaps most famous for directing El Hijo de la Novia, which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2001, though he has also directed episodes of U.S. TV shows such as House, 30 Rock and Law & Order.

Link: Official Movie Site
Link: YouTube Trailer (why it’s not available in HD is beyond me)

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The New York Times today published nice little overview of places to eat if you don’t dig on meat.

For those who are vegetarians or who have vegetarian friends or relatives, it might be a good idea to bookmark this list for future reference. If you know of other good options for vegetarians, please leave a note in the comments sections. We’ll compile a list of the best places and publish it later.

You can check out the Times story here.

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U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will make an unexpected visit to Buenos Aires Monday to meet with Argentine President Cristina Fernández.

The visit, announced just hours ago by Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela on his Twitter page, seems to be an attempt by both sides, though particularly by the U.S. to improve relations.

The exact Tweet was: “In San Juan, refueling. Never dull moment w SHRC-adding stop tmrw pm-Buenos Aires, to meet w Pres. of Argentina de Kirchner.”

Fernández, who spoke very highly of U.S. President Barack Obama a year ago, was critical of him a few days ago.

“The expectations we had haven’t been met,” Fernandez said. “There is a sensation in the region of lost opportunity. There was a lot of hope for Obama.”

Valenzuela responded by saying that everyone has a right to voice his or her opinion about U.S. foreign policy. He added that Obama is more popular in the region than are some presidents in their own countries. That was interpreted by some as a dig at Fernández, who declined to meet with Valenzuela on his last visit to Argentina.

Fernández is one of the least popular leaders in Latin American with an approval rating that, according to recent polls, hovers around 20%. She downplays such polls, however, saying they are carried out by anti-government conspirators.

Fernández says the government conducts its own polls, which it has never published, and that those surveys show her to be much more popular.

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The U.S. Embassy and the Centro Cultural Borgeswill open a photography exhibit Thursday highlighting the work of the great American photographer Steve McCurry.

McCurry is well-known, among other things, for taking the deservedly-famous photo of the green-eyed Afghan girl seen above. It was originally published on the cover of National Geographic magazine in 1985. Check out his blog here to see more of his stunningly good photos.

The exhibit will run February 25 through March 31.

Details follow:

What: Steve McCurry photography exhibit
Where: Centro Cultural Borges, San Martin & Viamonte, Room 21, downtown Buenos Aires
When: M-Saturday 10am-9pm, Sundays 12pm-9pm
Contact: 5555-5359

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Where on earth is Carlos Menem?

Argentina’s political establishment was asking itself that question Wednesday after the ex-president-turned-senator failed to show up for a key Senate meeting.

Opposition Senators had agreed to meet Wednesday to divvy up power on a wide range of Senate committees, leaving the ruling Frente Para la Victoria party in the minority for the first time since it came to power in 2003.

The opposition needed all 37 of its senators present to rest power from the Kirchners and the FPV party. Having the 37 votes would have given the opposition a slight edge over the FPV, which now has just 36 senators.

But Menem, who was supposed to appear and vote with the opposition, was nowhere to be found. I called Menem’s spokesman to ask about the senator’s whereabouts.

“I haven’t talked with him for two months,” said the spokesman, seeming somewhat embarrassed. “One person who saw him recently told me that he had gone to the airport in La Rioja this morning to travel to the capital for the vote. Another said Menem would only travel if his vote was crucial. Nobody knows anything about him. I spoke with Menem’s brother, too, and even he didn’t know where the senator was. Unfortunately, I don’t have any more information for you. Nobody in Menem’s office has had any contact with him. I’m sorry I can’t tell you anything else.”

What?

Did I really just have that conversation? Very odd. How is this possible? How could Menem’s office and spokesman not have a clue about his whereabouts?

Local media have reported that the government has been trying to woo the former president into ditching the opposition, even if just momentarily, so that the FPV can conserve its power in the Senate.

Whatever the case, Argentina’s controversial ex president was nowhere to be found Wednesday, one more indication that the once omnipresent, virtually omnipotent politician has fallen far from the pinnacle of power he occupied less a decade ago.

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Argentina, like Winston Churchill once said of Russia, is “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”

The country is hard to understand, harder to explain and impossible to predict. Its bursts of economic growth and progress are consistently interrupted by fits of frustration every decade or so.

Over the past 50 years Argentina has seen 17 years of recession and another 17 of hyperinflation, according to a recent Deutsche Bank report.

In 1913 Argentina was the world’s 10th richest nation. In the U.S. in the 1930s people used to describe an exceptionally wealthy person as “rich like an Argentine.” But since then Argentina has stumbled in and out of trouble, failing to capitalize on its vast natural resources and educated population.

Between 1950 and 2003, Argentina’s per capita gross domestic product actually shrank 19% to US $3,760 from US $4,656. In the same period, Chile’s per capita GDP rose 173%, Mexico’s jumped 201% and Brazil’s soared 269%. Though these three nations’ growth started from a much lower base, they all made consistent progress while Argentina declined. Clearly, something went wrong.

What? (more…)

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The appearance of impropriety in public life can be as damaging to a person’s reputation – and to a public’s trust – as impropriety itself.

That’s why newly-elected public officials in many countries are required by law – or tradition – to cede control of their investments to a blind trust, which oversees the investments during the officials’ time in office. This is what Canadian and U.S. leaders do when taking office.

Earlier this month Sebastian Pinera, Chile’s new president-elect, moved to sell a stake he owns in the Chilean airline LAN. The stake has been estimated to be worth $1.5 billion. Pinera had pledged during his campaign to sell it before taking office next month.

The pledge aimed to allay concern about a possible conflict of interest if Pinera were elected and had to make a decision affecting LAN or his investment in it.

Pinera’s move aims not only to avoid a conflict of interest, but also to avoid the mere appearance of one. Critics have charged that Pinera hasn’t moved fast enough, or ceded control of enough of his assets, to avoid all potential conflicts of interest.

But his move regarding LAN indicates that both he and the Chilean people recognize the value of avoiding conflicts of interest, even the mere appearance of them. (more…)

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Inflation in Argentina will almost certainly get worse this year, a prominent U.S. economic official said Tuesday.

In a speech about the “stunning” fiscal problems facing the U.S. government, Thomas M. Hoenig, president of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, said Argentina’s inflation problems are about to get worse.

Hoenig cited Argentina as a warning to the U.S., whose own fiscal problems are so serious that it could face “hyperinflation” in the years ahead if it doesn’t get its finances in order. Hoenig said the U.S. government needs to reign in its fiscal problems voluntarily so that harsh measures aren’t imposed on the country by an even worse economic reality a few years from now.

“An example of both the political pressure that can be exerted on the central bank, as well as the inflationary consequences of debt monetization, is currently playing out in Argentina. The president of Argentina recently forced out the Governor of the Central Bank because he would not transfer reserves held at the central bank to repay Argentinean debt. Inflation in Argentina is currently running near 8 percent and will almost certainly increase.”

In reality, Argentine inflation is running much higher than 8%, according to virtually all economists here and abroad who study the problem. The 8% figure is the official inflation rate reported by the government statistics institute, Indec. (more…)

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To the potential dismay of countless Latin Americans, regional etymologists and local language lovers, Argentine President Cristina Fernández referred Monday to U.S. citizens as “americanos” and not “estadounidenses,” or, more commonly, but less accurately, “norteamericanos.”

“When few or no Argentine tourists came here, this place filled up and continues to fill up with Spaniards, French, Germans, Americans, Englishmen who came to to visit…,” Fernández said in a speech at the Calafate glacier in Santa Cruz Province.

Here’s the text in Spanish:

“Cuando poquísimos o casi ningún turista argentino venía acá, esto se llenaba y se sigue llenando de españoles, franceses, alemanes, americanos, ingleses que vienen a conocer … aquí vienen de todo el mundo.”

As many native English speakers know from personal experience, some Argentines – and, of course, some Latin Americans – take offense at such use of the term “americano,” believing (correctly) that when formally used in Spanish it refers to all residents of the Americas, not just citizens of the United States.

Like it or not, however, many – perhaps most – Latin Americans, particularly those living closer to the U.S. in countries like Costa Rica, Colombia or Mexico, commonly refer to U.S. citizens as “americanos.” The vast bulk of Argentines I know use the term this way. I know very few Argentines who regularly use the term to refer to all residents of Latin America.

Regardless, usage of the term has generated fierce debate on the streets and in the online world, including on the pages of this blog.

I first learned about the distinction while sitting in the Plaza de Mayo in the summer of 1995. A young man approached me and asked where I was from. “I’m American,” I said, thinking very little of my use of the term. “You’re not the only American here,” the man responded, angrily. “You Americans think you rule the world. We’re all Americans. But you wouldn’t know that, would you, because you think you’re the center of the world.” (more…)

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