What Hol(y)day Is It?

Historically, South America is a Catholic continent, where Spain’s colonial legacy, in countries such as Argentina, helped make it the official religion. Pre-Columbian South America, of course, had its own belief systems - which haven’t all disappeared - but after independence the continent’s religious diversity increased dramatically. In Argentina, this meant an influx of Russian Orthodox Catholics, Protestants of various denominations, Jews, Muslims and others.

In fact, the Argentine state still provides economic support for the Church, even paying the salaries of bishops - though a 1994 constitutional reform eliminated the requirement that the president be a Roman Catholic. It also deleted a particularly anachronistic clause that required the state to “maintain a peaceful relationship with the Indians and promote their conversion to Catholicism,” but even these reforms overlook the fact that Argentina is a more secular country than in the past. more >>

Sipping through Uruguay

About every two years, in the course of updating Moon Buenos Aires, I spend a couple weeks in coastal Uruguay, which figures among the book’s excursions. This year, events in Chile also demanded my attention while I was in Colonia, Montevideo, and Punta del Este, so that I haven’t written much about my most recent forays across the River Plate. more >>