# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Snow Addiction - News about Mountains, Ski, Snowboard, Weather & Meteorology

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Last year, I spent 8 months traveling around 12 countries in South and Central America, photographing people, cities and landscapes. The huge continents are home to giant glaciers and waterfalls, beautiful ruins, unreal geological features and the biggest mirror in the world, among some other surreal places that you thought would only exist in RPG games.

Here's my handpick of 17 places and photos among the 10,000+ pics I have taken.

#1 Perito Moreno Glacier, Argentina

#2 Torres Del Paine National Park, Chile

#3 Marble Cave, Puerto Tranquilo, Chile

#4 Bariloche, Argentina

#5 Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

#6 Easter Island, Chile

#7 Lares Trek to Machu Picchu, Peru

#8 Machu Picchu, Peru

#9 Canaima National Park, Venezuela

#10 Mount Roraima, Venezuela

#11 Iguazu Falls, Brazil/Argentina

#12 Lencois Maranhenses National Park, Brazil

#13 Huacachina, Peru

#14 Tree House, Banos, Ecuador

#15 Las Lajas Sanctuary, Ipiales, Colombia

#16 Underground Salt Cathedral, Zipaquirá, Colombia

#17 Cenote Samula, Valladolid, Mexico

Source: Bored Panda

Related Posts:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
17 Beautiful Places I Photographed During My 8-Month Trip To Latin America

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Last year, I spent 8 months traveling around 12 countries in South and Central America, photographing people, cities and landscapes. The huge continents are home to giant glaciers and waterfalls, beautiful ruins, unreal geological features and the biggest mirror in the world, among some other surreal places that you thought would only exist in RPG games.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
After claiming for more than 40 years that Nobel prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda died of natural causes, Chile has now acknowledged he may have been killed during the country's 1973-1990 military dictatorship led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Neruda is widely revered as one of the most important writers of the 20th-century. He gained international attention after the 1924 publication of Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, a collection of verses that has sold millions of copies. In 1994, noted critic Harold Bloom named Neruda one of the 26 individuals most responsible for shaping the Western Canon, a collection of works that have most defined western culture. In 1971, Neruda was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.

Neruda was also a leftist politician and close friend of Salvador Allende, who in 1970 became Chile's first democratically elected socialist president. Allende's presidency didn't last long; on September 11, 1973, with the support of the United States, Pinochet took control of Chile via a military coup d'etat. Allende committed suicide that day instead of resigning.

Armed guards watch out for attackers as Chilean president Salvador Allende leaves a building during the military coup in which he was overthrown and killed. (Photo by Luis Orlando Lagos Vázquez/Keystone/Getty Images)
Getty Images

Neruda died just a few days later, on September 23. The official cause of death was cardiac arrest stemming from prostate cancer. However, many have long rejected the explanation, alleging the dictatorship played a role in Neruda's death because of his close association with Allende. Before his death, Neruda planned to go into exile in Mexico.

In 2011, the Chilean government started investigating the possibility Neruda might not have died of cancer after his driver, Manuel Araya Osorio, told a Mexican magazine he was with the writer when Neruda called his wife to say he believed Pinochet ordered a doctor to poison him. In 2013, Neruda's body was exhumed for forensic analysis.

Which brings us to today. Last week, Spanish newspaper El Pais added a new wrinkle to the case when it published a document from the Chilean interior ministry from earlier this year that states "it is clearly possible and highly probable" that Neruda's death "was caused by a third-party intervention."

Chilean soldier and politician, Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. In 1973 he led a coup which ousted, and resulted in the death of, the Marxist President, Salvador Allende. Pinochet then took over the presidency. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)
Getty Images

A panel of experts is continuing to investigate and a judge probing Neruda's death has requested a new round of tests on his body.
Fidel Martinez is an editor at Fusion.net. He's also a Texas native and a lifelong El Tri fan.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
After more than 40 years of denials, Chile admits poet Pablo Neruda may have been murdered

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After claiming for more than 40 years that Nobel prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda died of natural causes, Chile has now acknowledged he may have been killed during the country's 1973-1990 military dictatorship led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Neruda is widely revered as one of the most important writers of the 20th-century.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
As they motored across the lagoon in the Marshall Islands, deep in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the policemen stared at the specimen laid out on the deck before them. There was no hiding the fact that this man had been at sea for a considerable time. His hair was matted upwards like a shrub. His beard curled out in wild disarray. His ankles were swollen, his wrists tiny; he could barely walk. He refused to make eye contact and often hid his face.

Salvador Alvarenga, a 36-year-old fisherman from El Salvador, had left the coast of Mexico in a small boat with a young crewmate 14 months earlier. Now he was being taken to Ebon Atoll, the southernmost tip of the Marshall Islands, and the closest town to where he had washed ashore. He was 6,700 miles from the place he had set out from. He had drifted for 438 days.

Floating across the Pacific Ocean, watching the moon's light ebb and flow for over a year, Alvarenga had battled loneliness, depression and bouts of suicidal thinking. But surviving in a vibrant world of wild animals, vivid hallucinations and extreme solitude did little to prepare him for the fact that he was about to become an international celebrity and an object of curiosity.

I was so hungry that I was eating my own fingernails, swallowing all the little pieces

Salvador Alvarenga

Days later, Alvarenga faced the world's press. Dressed in a baggy brown sweatshirt that disguised his reedy torso, he disembarked from a police boat slowly but unaided. Expecting a gaunt and bedridden victim, a ripple of disbelief went through the crowd. Alvarenga cracked a quick smile and waved to the cameras. Several observers noted a similarity to the Tom Hanks character in the movie Cast Away. The photo of the bearded fisherman shuffling ashore went viral. Briefly, Alvarenga became a household name.

Who survives 14 months at sea? Only a Hollywood screenwriter could write a tale in which such a journey ends happily. I was sceptical, but as a Guardian reporter in the region, I began to investigate. It turned out there were dozens of witnesses who had seen Alvarenga leave shore, who had heard his SOS. When he washed ashore (in the same boat that he had left Mexico on), thousands of miles away, he was steadfast in his rejection of interviews - even posting a note on his hospital door begging the press to disappear.

Later, I would sit with Alvarenga for many hours, back at his home in El Salvador, as he described in detail the brutal realities of living at sea for more than a year. Over the course of more than 40 interviews, he described his extraordinary survival at sea. This is his story.

***

On 18 November 2012, a day after being ambushed at sea by a massive storm, Alvarenga was trying to ignore the growing pond of seawater sloshing at his feet. An inexperienced navigator might have panicked, started baling and been distracted from his primary task: aligning the boat with the waves. He was a veteran captain and knew that he needed to regain the initiative. Together with his inexperienced crewmate, Ezequiel Córdoba, he was 50 miles out at sea, slowly negotiating a route back to shore.

The spray and crashing waves dumped hundreds of gallons of seawater into the boat, threatening to sink or flip them. While Alvarenga steered, Córdoba was frantically tossing water back into the ocean, pausing only momentarily to allow his shoulder muscles to recover.

Alvarenga's boat, at 25 feet, was as long as two pick-up trucks and as wide as one. With no raised structure, no glass and no running lights, it was virtually invisible at sea. On the deck, a fibreglass crate the size of a refrigerator was full of fresh fish: tuna, mahimahi and sharks, their catch after a two-day trip. If they could bring it ashore, they would have enough money to survive for a week.

The boat was loaded with equipment, including 70 gallons of gasoline, 16 gallons of water, 23kg (50lb) of sardines for bait, 700 hooks, miles of line, a harpoon, three knives, three buckets for baling, a mobile phone (in a plastic bag to keep it dry), a GPS tracking device (not waterproof), a two-way radio (battery half-charged), several wrenches for the motor and 91kg (200lb) of ice.

Alvarenga had prepared the boat with Ray Perez, his usual mate and a loyal companion. But at the last minute, Perez couldn't join him. Alvarenga, keen to get out to sea, arranged to go with Córdoba instead, a 22-year-old with the nickname Piñata who lived at the far end of the lagoon, where he was best known as a defensive star on the village soccer team. Alvarenga and Córdoba had never spoken before, much less worked together.

Alvarenga tensely negotiated their slow advance toward the coast, manoeuvring among the waves like a surfer trying to glide and slice his way through. As the weather worsened, Córdoba's resolve disintegrated. At times he refused to bale and instead held the rail with both hands, vomiting and crying. He had signed up to make $50. He was capable of working 12 hours straight without complaining and was athletic and strong. But this crashing, soaking journey back to shore? He was sure their tiny craft would shatter and sharks would devour them. He began to scream.

Alvarenga remained sitting, gripping the tiller tightly, determined to navigate a storm now so strong that harbourmasters along the coast had barred fishing boats from heading out to sea. Finally he noticed a change in the visibility, the cloud cover was lifting: he could see miles across the water. Around 9am, Alvarenga spotted the rise of a mountain on the horizon. They were approximately two hours from land when the motor started coughing and spluttering. He pulled out his radio and called his boss. "Willy! Willy! Willy! The motor is ruined!"

"Calm down, man, give me your coordinates," Willy responded, from the beachside docks in Costa Azul.

"We have no GPS, it's not functioning."

"Lay an anchor," Willy ordered.

"We have no anchor," Alvarenga said. He had noticed it was missing before setting off, but didn't think he needed it on a deep-sea mission.

"OK, we are coming to get you," Willy responded.

"Come now, I am really getting fucked out here," Alvarenga shouted. These were his final words to shore.

As the waves thumped the boat, Alvarenga and Córdoba began working as a team. With the morning sun, they could see the waves approaching, rising high above them and then splitting open. Each man would brace and lean against a side of the open-hulled boat to counteract the roll.

But the waves were unpredictable, slapping each other in midair, joining forces to create swells that raised the men to a brief peak where they could get a third-storey view, then, with the sensation of a falling elevator, instantly drop them. Their beach sandals provided no traction on the deck.

Alvarenga realised their catch - nearly 500kg (1,100lb) of fresh fish - was making the boat top heavy and unstable. With no time to consult his boss, Alvarenga went with his gut: they would dump all the fish. One by one they hauled them out of the cooler, swinging the carcasses into the ocean. Falling overboard was now more dangerous than ever: the bloody fish were sure to attract sharks.

Furious, he picked up a heavy club normally used to kill fish and began to bash the broken engine

Next they tossed the ice and extra gasoline. Alvarenga strung 50 buoys from the boat as a makeshift "sea anchor" that floated on the surface, providing drag and stability. But at around 10am the radio died. It was before noon on day one of a storm that Alvarenga knew was likely to last five days. Losing the GPS had been an inconvenience. The failed motor was a disaster. Now, without radio contact, they were on their own.

The storm roiled the men all afternoon as they fought to bale water out of the boat. The same muscles, the same repetitive motion, hour after hour, had allowed them to dump perhaps half the water. They were both ready to faint with exhaustion, but Alvarenga was also furious. He picked up a heavy club normally used to kill fish and began to bash the broken engine. Then he grabbed the radio and GPS unit and angrily threw the machines into the water.

The sun sank and the storm churned as Córdoba and Alvarenga succumbed to the cold. They turned the refrigerator-sized icebox upside down and huddled inside. Soaking wet and barely able to clench their cold hands into fists, they hugged and wrapped their legs around each other. But as the incoming water sank the boat ever lower, the men took turns leaving the icebox to bale for frantic 10- or 15-minute stints. Progress was slow but the pond at their feet gradually grew smaller.

Darkness shrank their world, as a gale-force wind ripped offshore and drove the men farther out to sea. Were they now back to where they had been fishing a day earlier? Were they heading north towards Acapulco, or south towards Panama? With only the stars as guides, they had lost their usual means of calculating distance.

Without bait or fish hooks, Alvarenga invented a daring strategy to catch fish. He kneeled alongside the edge of the boat, his eyes scanning for sharks, and shoved his arms into the water up to his shoulders. With his chest tightly pressed to the side of the boat, he kept his hands steady, a few inches apart. When a fish swam between his hands, he smashed them shut, digging his fingernails into the rough scales. Many escaped but soon Alvarenga mastered the tactic and he began to grab the fish and toss them into the boat while trying to avoid their teeth. With the fishing knife, Córdoba expertly cleaned and sliced the flesh into finger-sized strips that were left to dry in the sun. They ate fish after fish. Alvarenga stuffed raw meat and dried meat into his mouth, hardly noticing or caring about the difference. When they got lucky, they were able to catch turtles and the occasional flying fish that landed inside their boat.

Within days, Alvarenga began to drink his urine and encouraged Córdoba to follow suit. It was salty but not revolting as he drank, urinated, drank again, peed again, in a cycle that felt as if it was providing at least minimal hydration; in fact, it was exacerbating their dehydration. Alvarenga had long ago learned the dangers of drinking seawater. Despite their longing for liquid, they resisted swallowing even a cupful of the endless saltwater that surrounded them.

"I was so hungry that I was eating my own fingernails, swallowing all the little pieces," Alvarenga later told me. He began to grab jellyfish from the water, scooping them up in his hands and swallowing them whole. "It burned the top part of my throat, but wasn't so bad."

After roughly 14 days at sea, Alvarenga was resting inside the icebox when he heard a sound: splat, splat, splat. The rhythm of raindrops on the roof was unmistakable. "Piñata! Piñata! Piñata," Alvarenga screamed as he slipped out. His crewmate awoke and joined him. Rushing across the deck, the two men deployed a rainwater collection system that Alvarenga had been designing and imagining for a week. Córdoba scrubbed a grey five-gallon bucket clean and positioned its mouth skyward.

Dark clouds stalked overhead, and after days of drinking urine and turtle blood, and nearly dying of thirst, a storm finally bore down on the men. They opened their mouths to the falling rain, stripped off their clothes and showered in a glorious deluge of fresh water. Within an hour, the bucket had an inch, then two inches of water. The men laughed and drank every couple of minutes. After their initial attack on the water supplies, however, they vowed to maintain strict rations.

After weeks at sea, Alvarenga and Córdoba became astute scavengers and learned to distinguish the varieties of plastic that bob across the ocean. They grabbed and stored every empty water bottle they found. When a stuffed green rubbish bag drifted within reach, the men snared it, hauled it aboard and ripped open the plastic. Inside one bag, they found a wad of chewed gum and divided the almond-sized lump, each man feasting on the wealth of sensorial pleasures. Underneath a layer of sodden kitchen oil, they found riches: half a head of cabbage, some carrots and a quart of milk - half-rancid, but still they drank it. It was the first fresh food the two men had seen for a long time. They treated the soggy carrots with reverence.

When they had several days' worth of backup food, and especially after they had caught and eaten a turtle, Córdoba and Alvarenga briefly found solace in the magnificent seascape. "We would talk about our mothers," Alvarenga recalled. "And how badly we had behaved. We asked God to forgive us for being such bad sons. We imagined if we could hug them, give them a kiss. We promised to work harder so they would not have to work any more. But it was too late."

After two months at sea, Alvarenga had become accustomed to capturing and eating birds and turtles, while Córdoba had begun a physical and mental decline. They were on the same boat but headed on different paths. Córdoba had been sick after eating raw seabirds and made a drastic decision: he began to refuse all food. He gripped a plastic water bottle in both hands but was losing the energy, and motivation, to put it up to his mouth. Alvarenga offered tiny chunks of bird meat, occasionally a bite of turtle. Córdoba clenched his mouth. Depression was shutting his body down.

The two men made a pact. If Córdoba survived, he would travel to El Salvador and visit Alvarenga's mother and father. If Alvarenga made it out alive, he'd go back to Chiapas, Mexico, and find Córdoba's devout mother who had remarried an evangelical preacher. "He asked me to tell his mother that he was sad he could not say goodbye and that she shouldn't make any more tamales for him - they should let him go, that he had gone with God," Alvarenga told me.

"I am dying, I am dying, I am almost gone," Córdoba said one morning.

"Don't think about that. Let's take a nap," Alvarenga replied as he lay alongside Córdoba.

"I am tired, I want water," Córdoba moaned. His breath was rough. Alvarenga retrieved the water bottle and put it to Córdoba's mouth, but he did not swallow. Instead he stretched out. His body shook in short convulsions. He groaned and his body tensed up. Alvarenga suddenly panicked. He screamed into Córdoba's face, "Don't leave me alone! You have to fight for life! What am I going to do here alone?"

To deal with losing his companion, Alvarenga simply pretended he hadn't died. 'How do you feel?' he asked the corpse

Córdoba didn't reply. Moments later he died with his eyes open.

"I propped him up to keep him out of the water. I was afraid a wave might wash him out of the boat," Alvarenga told me. "I cried for hours."

The next morning he stared at Córdoba in the bow of the boat. He asked the corpse, "How do you feel? How was your sleep?"

"I slept good, and you? Have you had breakfast?" Alvarenga answered his own questions aloud, as if he were Córdoba speaking from the afterlife. The easiest way to deal with losing his only companion was simply to pretend he hadn't died.

Six days after Córdoba's death, Alvarenga sat with the corpse on a moonless night, in full conversation, when, as if waking from a dream, he was suddenly shocked to find he was conversing with the dead. "First I washed his feet. His clothes were useful, so I stripped off a pair of shorts and a sweatshirt. I put that on - it was red, with little skull-and-crossbones - and then I dumped him in. And as I slid him into the water, I fainted."

***

When he awoke just minutes later, Alvarenga was terrified. "What could I do alone? Without anyone to speak with?" he told me. "Why had he died and not me? I had invited him to fish. I blamed myself for his death."

But his will to live and fear of suicide (his mother had assured him that those who kill themselves will never go to heaven) kept him searching for solutions and scouring the ocean's surface for ships. Sunrise and sunset were best, as blurry shapes on the horizon were transformed into neat silhouettes and the sun was bearable. With his eyesight fine-tuned, Alvarenga could now identify a tiny speck on the horizon as a ship. As it approached, he would identify the type of vessel - usually a transpacific container ship - as it growled by. These sea barges ploughed the sea effortlessly, and with no visible crew or activity on deck, they were like drones at sea. Every sighting pumped Alvarenga with an energy boost that jolted him to wave, jump and flail for hours. About 20 separate container boats paraded across the horizon, yet the maddening ship-tease still excited him. Storms battered his small boat, but as he got farther out to sea, the storms seemed to become shorter, more manageable.

Alvarenga let his imagination run wild in order to keep sane. He imagined an alternative reality so believable that he could later say with total honesty that alone at sea he tasted the greatest meals of his life and experienced the most delicious sex. He was mastering the art of turning his solitude into a Fantasia-like world. He started his mornings with a long walk. "I would stroll back and forth on the boat and imagine that I was wandering the world. By doing this I could make myself believe that I was actually doing something. Not just sitting there, thinking about dying." With this lively entourage of family, friends and lovers, Alvarenga insulated himself from bleak reality.

When he was a small boy, his grandfather had taught him how to keep track of time using the cycles of the moon. Now, alone in the open ocean, he was always clear as to how many months he had been adrift; he knew he had seen 15 lunar cycles while drifting through unknown territory. He was convinced his next destination was heaven.

He was whizzing along on a smooth current, when suddenly the sky filled with shore birds. Alvarenga stared. The muscles in his neck tightened. A tropical island emerged from the mist. A green Pacific atoll, a small hill surrounded by a kaleidoscope of turquoise waters.

Hallucinations didn't last this long. Had his prayers finally been answered? Alvarenga's racing mind imagined multiple disaster scenarios. He could blow off course. He could drift backward - it had happened before. He stared at the land as he tried to pick out details from the shore. It was a tiny island, no bigger than a football field, he calculated. It looked wild, without roads, cars or homes.

With his knife, he cut away the ragged line of buoys. It was a drastic move. In the open ocean, with no sea anchor, he could readily flip during even a moderate tropical storm. But Alvarenga could see the shoreline clearly and he gambled that speed was of greater importance than stability.

In an hour he had drifted near the island's beach. Ten yards from shore, Alvarenga dove into the water, then paddled "like a turtle" until a large wave picked him up and tossed him high on the beach, like driftwood. As the wave pulled away, Alvarenga was left face down in the sand. "I held a handful of sand like it was a treasure," he later told me.

Making radio contact after landing on Ebon Atoll. Photograph: Ola Fjeldstad

The famished fisherman crawled naked through a carpet of sodden palm fronds, sharp coconut shells and tasty flowers. He was unable to stand for more than a few seconds. "I was totally destroyed and as skinny as a board," he said. "The only thing left was my intestines and gut, plus skin and bones. My arms had no meat. My thighs were skinny and ugly."

Although he didn't know it, Alvarenga had washed ashore on Tile Islet, a small island that is part of the Ebon Atoll, on the southern tip of the 1,156 islands that make up the Republic of the Marshall Islands, one of the most remote spots on Earth. A boat leaving Ebon searching for land would either have to churn 4,000 miles north-east to hit Alaska or 2,500 miles south-west to Brisbane, Australia. Had Alvarenga missed Ebon, he would have drifted north of Australia, possibly running aground in Papua New Guinea, but more likely continuing another 3,000 miles towards the eastern coast of the Philippines.

As he stumbled through the undergrowth, he suddenly found himself standing across a small canal from the beach house of Emi Libokmeto and her husband Russel Laikidrik. "As I'm looking across, I see this white man there," said Emi, who works husking and drying coconuts on the island. "He is yelling. He looks weak and hungry. My first thought was, this person swam here, he must have fallen off a ship."

After tentatively approaching each other, Emi and Russel welcomed him into their home. Alvarenga drew a boat, a man and the shore. Then he gave up. How could he explain a 7,000-mile drift at sea with stick figures? His impatience simmered. He asked for medicine. He asked for a doctor. The native couple smiled and kindly shook their heads. "Even though we did not understand each other, I began to talk and talk," Alvarenga told me. "The more I talked, the more we all roared with laughter. I am not sure why they were laughing. I was laughing at being saved."

After a morning of caring for and feeding the castaway, Russel sailed across a lagoon to the main town and port on the island of Ebon to ask the mayor for help. Within hours a group, including police and a nurse, had come to rescue Alvarenga. They had to persuade him to get on a boat with them back to Ebon. While they nursed this wild-looking man back to health and tried to coax out details of his journey, a visiting anthropologist from Norway alerted the Marshall Islands Journal.

El Salvador's castaway José Salvador Alvarenga returns home last year - video

Written by Giff Johnson, the first story went out under the Agence France-Presse (AFP) banner on 31 January and outlined the remarkable contours of Alvarenga's story. Reporters in Hawaii, Los Angeles and Australia scrambled to reach the island to interview this alleged castaway. The single phone line on Ebon became a battleground, as reporters tried to discover tantalising details. Alvarenga's story had enough hard facts to make it plausible: the initial missing person report, the search-and-rescue operation, the correlation of his drift with known ocean currents, and the fact that he was extremely weak.

But a debate erupted online and in newsrooms around the world: was this the most remarkable survivor since Ernest Shackleton, or the biggest fraud since the Hitler diaries? Officials tracked down Alvarenga's supervisor, who confirmed that the registration number of the boat he had washed up in was the same as the one that had left port on 17 November 2012, and vanished. Guardian reporter Jo Tuckman interviewed Mexican search-and-rescue official Jaime Marroquín, who detailed the desperate hunt for Alvarenga and Córdoba that followed. "The winds were high," Marroquín said. "We had to stop the search flights after two days because of poor visibility."

I began to investigate, talking to people up and down the coast of Mexico. I looked at medical records, studied maps, and spoke to survival experts, ranging from the US Coast Guard to the Navy Seals, as well as Ivan MacFadyen and Jason Lewis, two adventurers who have crossed that stretch of the Pacific. I spoke with oceanographers and commercial fishermen familiar with the area. Everyone confirmed that Alvarenga's version of life at sea was in line with what they would expect. When he arrived at hospital in the Marshall Islands, he was debriefed by US embassy officials who described multiple scars on Alvarenga's very damaged body. "He was out there for a long time," the US ambassador said.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Lost at sea: the man who vanished for 14 months

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In November 2012, Salvador Alvarenga went fishing off the coast of Mexico. Two days later, a storm hit and he made a desperate SOS. It was the last anyone heard from him - for 438 days. This is his story

# data[].attributes.body
National flower of Nicaragua

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ancient Aliens: Inca Roads (S8, E1) | History

# data[].attributes.body
Berber Mřič (Mritch)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Melilla ( mə-LEE-yə, meh-; Spanish: ; Berber: Mrich, Mlilt; Arabic: مليلية‎ ) is a Spanish autonomous city located on the northwest coast of Africa, sharing a border with Morocco. It has an area of 12.3 km ² (4.7 sq mi). Melilla, an exclave, is one of two permanently inhabited Spanish cities in mainland Africa, the other being Ceuta. It was part of the Province of Málaga until 14 March 1995, when the Statute of Autonomy of Melilla was passed.

Melilla is one of the special territories of the European Union (EU). Movements to and from the rest of the EU and Melilla are subject to specific rules, provided for inter alia in the Accession Agreement of Spain to the Schengen Convention.

As of 2019, Melilla had a population of 86,487. The population is chiefly divided between people of Iberian and Riffian extraction. There is also a small number of Sephardic Jews and Sindhi Hindus. Regarding sociolinguistics, Melilla features a diglossia between the official Spanish (strong language) and Tamazight (weak language).

Melilla, like Ceuta and Spain's other territories in Africa, is subject to an irredentist claim by Morocco.

The original name (currently rendered as ) was a Phoenician name, coming from the name given to the nearby Cape Three Forks. Addir meant "powerful". The name creation is similar to that of other names given in Antiquity to outlets along the north-African coast, including Rusguniae, Rusubbicari, Rusuccuru, Rusippisir, Rusigan (Rachgoun), Rusicade, Ruspina, Ruspe or Rsmlqr.

Meanwhile, the etymology of the current city name (dating back to the 9th century, rendered as Melilla in Spanish) is uncertain. An active apicultural location in the past, the name has been related to honey; this is tentatively backed up by two ancient coins featuring a bee as well as the inscriptions RSADR and RSA. Others relate the name to "discord" or "fever" or also to an ancient Arab personality.

The current Riffian name of Melilla is Mřič or Mlilt, which means the "white one".

It was a Phoenician and later Punic trade establishment under the name of Rusadir ( Rusaddir for the Romans and Russadeiron ( Ancient Greek: Ῥυσσάδειρον) for the Greeks). Later Rome absorbed it as part of the Roman province of Mauretania Tingitana. Rusaddir is mentioned by Ptolemy (IV, 1) and Pliny (V, 18) who called it "oppidum et portus" (a fortified town and port). It was also cited by Mela (I, 33) as Rusicada, and by the Itinerarium Antonini. Rusaddir was said to have once been the seat of a bishop, but there is no record of any bishop of the purported see, which is not included in the Catholic Church's list of titular sees.

As centuries passed, it was ruled by Vandal, Byzantine and Hispano-Visigothic bands. The political history is similar to that of towns in the region of the Moroccan Rif and southern Spain. Local rule passed through a succession of Phoenician, Punic, Roman, Umayyad, Cordobese, Idrisid, Almoravid, Almohad, Marinid, and then Wattasid rulers.

During the 15th century, the city subsumed into decadence, just like most of the rest of cities of the Kingdom of Fez located along the Mediterranean coast, eclipsed by those along the Atlantic facade. Following the completion of the conquest of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492, their Secretary Hernando de Zafra started to compile information about the sorry state of the north-African coast with the prospect of a potential territorial expansion in mind, sending field agents to investigate, and subsequently reporting the Catholic Monarchs that, by early 1494, locals had expelled the authority of the Sultan of Fez and had offered to pledge service. While the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas put Melilla and Cazaza (until then reserved to the Portuguese) under the sphere of Castile, the conquest of the city had to wait, delayed by the occupation of Naples by Charles VIII of France.

The Duke of Medina Sidonia, Juan Alfonso Pérez de Guzmán promoted the seizure of the place, to be headed by Pedro de Estopiñán, while the Catholic Monarchs, Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon endorsed the initiative, also providing the assistance of their artillery officer Francisco Ramírez de Madrid during the operation. Melilla was occupied on 17 September 1497 virtually without any violence as it, as located in the border between the Kingdom of Tlemcen and the Kingdom of Fez and fought over many times by those powers, it had been left abandoned and partially ruined. No big-scale expansion into the Kingdom of Fez ensued, and, barring the enterprises of the Cardinal Cisneros along the coast in Mers El Kébir and Oran (in the Algerian coast), and the rock of Badis (this one in the territorial scope of the Kingdom of Fez), the imperial impetus of the Hispanic Monarchy was eventually directed elsewhere, to the Italian Wars waged against France, and, particularly since 1519, to the newly discovered continent across the Atlantic.

Melilla was initially jointly administered by the House of Medina Sidonia and the Crown, and a 1498 settlement forced the former to station a 700-men garrison in Melilla and forced the latter to provide the city with a number of maravedíes and wheat . The Crown's interest in Melilla decreased during the reign of Charles V. During the 16th century, soldiers stationed in Melilla were badly remunerated, leading to many desertions. The Duke of Medina Sidonia relinquished responsibility over the garrison of the place on 7 June 1556.

During the late 17th century, Alaouite sultan Ismail Ibn Sharif attempted to conquer the , taking the outer fortifications in the 1680s and further unsuccessfully besieging Melilla in the 1690s.

One Spanish officer reflected, "an hour in Melilla, from the point of view of merit, was worth more than thirty years of service to Spain."

The current limits of the Spanish territory around the Melilla fortress were fixed by treaties with Morocco in 1859, 1860, 1861, and 1894. In the late 19th century, as Spanish influence expanded in this area, the Crown authorized Melilla as the only centre of trade on the Rif coast between Tetuan and the Algerian frontier. The value of trade increased, with goat skins, eggs and beeswax being the principal exports, and cotton goods, tea, sugar and candles being the chief imports.

Melilla's civil population in 1860 still amounted for only 375 estimated inhabitants. In a 1866 Hispano-Moroccan arrangement signed in Fes, both parts agreed to allow for the installment of a customs office near the border with Melilla, to be operated by Moroccan officials. The Treaty of Peace with Morocco that followed the 1859-60 War entailed the acquisition of a new perimetre for Melilla, bringing its area to the 12 km ² the autonomous city currently stands. Following the declaration of Melilla as free port in 1863, the population began to increase, chiefly by Sephardi Jews fleeing from Tetouan who fostered trade in and out the city. The first jews from Tetouan probably arrived in 1864, meanwhile the first rabbi arrived in 1867 and began to operate the first synagogue, located in the Calle de San Miguel. Many Jews arrived fleeing from persecution in Morocco, instigated by Roghi Bu Hamara. Following the 1868 lifting of the veto to emigrate to Melilla from Peninsular Spain, the population further increased with Spaniards. The Jewish population, who also progressively acquired Spanish citizenship, increased to 572 in 1893. The economic opportunities created in Melilla henceforth favoured the installment of a Berber population.

Views of Melilla taken from an elevated position in 1893

The first proper body of local government was the junta de arbitrios, created in 1879, and in which the military used to enjoy preponderance. The Polígono excepcional de Tiro, the first neighborhood outside the walled core ( Melilla la Vieja), began construction in 1888.

In 1893, Riffian tribesmen launched the First Melillan campaign to take back this area; the Spanish government sent 25,000 soldiers to defend against them. The conflict was also known as the Margallo War, after Spanish General Juan García y Margallo, who was killed in the battle, and was the Governor of Melilla. The new 1894 agreement with Morocco that followed the conflict increased trade with the hinterland, bringing the economic prosperity of the city to a new level. The total population of Melilla amounted for 10,004 inhabitants in 1896.

The turn of the new century saw however the attempts by France (based in French Algeria) to profit from their newly acquired sphere of influence in Morocco to counter the trading prowess of Melilla by fostering trade links with the Algerian cities of Ghazaouet and Oran. Melilla began to suffer from this, to which the instability brought by revolts against Muley Abdel Aziz in the hinterland also added, although after 1905 Sultan pretender El Rogui ( Bou Hmara) carried out a defusing policy in the area that favoured Spain. The French occupation of Oujda in 1907, compromised the Melillan trade with that city. and the enduring instability in the Rif still threatened Melilla. Between 1909 and 1945, the modernista ( Art Nouveau) style was very present in the local architecture, making the streets of Melilla a "true museum of modernista-style architecture", second only to Barcelona (in Spain), mainly stemming from the work of prolific architect Enrique Nieto.

Mining companies began to enter the hinterland of Melilla by 1908. A Spanish one, the Compañía Española de las Minas del Rif, was constituted in July 1908, shared by Clemente Fernández, Enrique Macpherson, the Count of Romanones, the Duke of Tovar and Juan Antonio Güell, who appointed Miguel Villanueva as chairman. Thus two mining companies under the protection of Bou Hmara, started mining lead and iron some 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) from Melilla. They started to construct a railway between the port and the mines. In October of that year the Bou Hmara's vassals revolted against him and raided the mines, which remained closed until June 1909. By July the workmen were again attacked and several were killed. Severe fighting between the Spaniards and the tribesmen followed, in the Second Melillan campaign that took place in the vicinity of Melilla.

In 1910, the Spaniards restarted the mines and undertook harbor works at Mar Chica, but hostilities broke out again in 1911. On 22 July 1921, the Berbers under the leadership of Abd el Krim inflicted a grave defeat on the Spanish at the Battle of Annual. The Spanish retreated to Melilla, leaving most of the protectorate under the control of the Republic of Rif.

A royal decree pursuing the creation of an ayuntamiento in Melilla was signed on 13 December 1918 but the regulation did not come into force, and thus the existing government body, the junta the arbitrios, remained in force.

A "junta municipal" with a rather civil composition was created in 1927; on 10 April 1930, an ayuntamiento featuring the same membership as the junta was created, equalling to the same municipal regime as the rest of Spain on 14 April 1931, with the arrival of the first democratically elected municipal corporation on the wake of the proclamation of the Second Republic.

The city was used as one of the staging grounds for the July 1936 military coup d'état that started the Spanish Civil War.

In the context of the passing of the Ley de Extranjería in 1986, and following social mobilization from the Berber community, conditions for citizenship acquisition were flexibilised and allowed for the naturalisation of a substantial number of inhabitants, until then born in Melilla but without Spanish citizenship.

In 1995, Melilla (which was until then just another municipality of the Province of Málaga) became an "autonomous city", as the Statute of Autonomy of Melilla was passed.

On 6 November 2007, King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia visited the city, which caused a demonstration of support. The visit also sparked protests from the Moroccan government. It was the first time a Spanish monarch had visited Melilla in 80 years.

Melilla (and Ceuta) have declared the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha or Feast of the Sacrifice, as an official public holiday from 2010 onward. This is the first time a non-Christian religious festival has been officially celebrated in Spain since the Reconquista.

In 2018, Morocco decided to close the customs office near Melilla, in operation since the mid 19th century, without consulting the counterparty.

Melilla is located in the northwest of the African continent, in the shores of the Alboran Sea, a marginal sea of the Mediterranean, the latter's westernmost portion. The city layout is arranged in a wide semicircle around the beach and the Port of Melilla, on the eastern side of the peninsula of Cape Tres Forcas, at the foot of Mount Gurugú and around the mouth of the Río de Oro intermittent water stream, 1 meter (3 ft 3 in) above sea level. The urban nucleus was originally a fortress, Melilla la Vieja, built on a peninsular mound about 30 meters (98 ft) in height.

The Moroccan settlement of Beni Ansar lies immediately south of Melilla. The nearest Moroccan city is Nador, and the ports of Melilla and Nador are both within the same bay; nearby is the Bou Areg Lagoon

Melilla has a warm Mediterranean climate influenced by its proximity to the sea, rendering much cooler summers and more precipitation than inland areas deeper into Africa. The climate, in general, is similar to the southern coast of peninsular Spain and the northern coast of Morocco, with relatively small temperature differences between seasons.

The government bodies stipulated in the Statute of Autonomy are the Assembly of Melilla, the President of Melilla and the Council of Government. The assembly is a 25-member body whose members are elected through universal suffrage every 4 years in closed party lists following the schedule of local elections at the national level. Its members are called "local deputies" but they rather enjoy the status of concejales (municipal councillors). Unlike regional legislatures (and akin to municipal councils), the assembly does not enjoy right of initiative for primary legislation.

The president of Melilla (who, often addressed as Mayor-President, also exerts the roles of Mayor, president of the Assembly, president of the Council of Government and representative of the city) is invested by the Assembly. After local elections, the president is invested through a qualified majority from among the leaders of the election lists, or, failing to achieve the former, the leader of the most voted list at the election is invested to the office. In case of a motion of no confidence the president can only be ousted with a qualified majority voting for an alternative assembly member.

The Council of Government is the traditional collegiate executive body for parliamentary systems. Unlike the municipal government boards in the standard ayuntamientos, the members of the Council of Government (including the Vice-Presidents) do not need to be members of the assembly.

Melilla is the city in Spain with the highest proportion of postal voting; vote buying (via mail-in ballots) is widely reported to be a common practice in the poor neighborhoods of Melilla. Court cases in this matter had involved the PP, the CPM and the PSOE.

On 15 June 2019, following the May 2019 Melilla Assembly election, the regionalist and left-leaning party of Muslim and Amazigh persuasion Coalition for Melilla (CPM, 8 seats), the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE, 4 seats) and Citizens-Party of the Citizenry (Cs, 1 seat) voted in favour of the Cs' candidate ( Eduardo de Castro) vis-à-vis the Presidency of the Autonomous City, ousting Juan José Imbroda, from the People's Party (PP, 10 seats), who had been in office since 2000.

Melilla is subdivided into eight districts ( distritos), which are further subdivided into neighbourhoods ():

1st

Barrio de Medina Sidonia.

Barrio del General Larrea.

Barrio de Ataque Seco.

2nd

Barrio Héroes de España.

Barrio del General Gómez Jordana.

Barrio Príncipe de Asturias.

4th

Barrio Polígono Residencial La Paz.

Barrio Hebreo-Tiro Nacional.

5th

Barrio de Cristóbal Colón.

Barrio de Cabrerizas.

Barrio de Batería Jota.

Barrio de Hernán Cortes y Las Palmeras.

Barrio de Reina Regente.

6th

Barrio de Concepción Arenal.

Barrio Isaac Peral (Tesorillo).

7th

Barrio del General Real.

Polígono Industrial SEPES.

Polígono Industrial Las Margaritas.

Parque Empresarial La Frontera.

8th

Barrio de la Libertad.

Barrio del Hipódromo.

Barrio de Alfonso XIII.

Barrio Industrial.

Barrio Virgen de la Victoria.

Barrio de la Constitución.

Barrio de los Pinares.

Barrio de la Cañada de Hidum

The Gross domestic product (GDP) of the autonomous community was 1.6 billion euros in 2018, accounting for 0.1% of Spanish economic output. GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power was 19,900 euros or 66% of the EU27 average in the same year. Melilla was the NUTS2 region with the lowest GDP per capita in Spain.

Melilla does not participate into the European Union Customs Union (EUCU). There is no VAT (IVA) tax, but a local reduced-rate tax called IPSI. Preserving the status of free port, imports are free of tariffs and the only tax concerning them is the IPSI. Exports to the Customs Union (including Peninsular Spain) are however subject to the correspondent customs tariff and are taxed with the correspondent VAT. There are some special manufacturing taxes regarding electricity and transport, as well as complementary charges on tobacco and oil and fuel products.

The principal industry is fishing. Cross-border commerce (legal or smuggled) and Spanish and European grants and wages are the other income sources.

Melilla is regularly connected to the Iberian peninsula by air and sea traffic and is also economically connected to Morocco: most of its fruit and vegetables are imported across the border. Moroccans in the city's hinterland are attracted to it: 36,000 Moroccans cross the border daily to work, shop or trade goods. The port of Melilla offers several daily connections to Almería and Málaga. Melilla Airport offers daily flights to Almería, Málaga and Madrid. Spanish operators Air Europa and Iberia operate in Melilla's airport.

Many people travelling between Europe and Morocco use the ferry links to Melilla, both for passengers and for freight. Because of this, the port and related companies form an important economic driver for the city.

Melilla's Capilla de Santiago, or James's Chapel, by the city walls, is the only authentic Gothic structure in Africa.

In the first quarter of the 20th century, Melilla became a thriving port benefitting from the recently established Protectorate of Spanish Morocco in the nearby Rif region. The new architectural style of modernismo was expressed by a new bourgeois class. This style, frequently referred to as the Spanish version of Art Nouveau, was extremely popular in the early part of the 20th century in Spain, notably in Catalonia.

The workshops inspired by the Catalan architect Enrique Nieto continued in the modernist style, even after Modernisme went out of fashion elsewhere. Accordingly, Melilla has the second most important concentration of Modernist works in Spain after Barcelona. Nieto was in charge of designing the main Synagogue, the Central Mosque and various Catholic Churches.

Melilla has been praised as an example of multiculturalism, being a small city in which one can find Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists represented. There is a small, autonomous, and commercially important Hindu community present in Melilla, which has fallen over the past decades as its members move to the Spanish mainland and numbers about 100 members today. Roman Catholicism is the largest religion in Melilla. In 2019, the proportion of Melillans that identify themselves as Roman Catholic was 65.0%, up from 46.3% in 2012. The next largest religion was Islam (20.0%), down from 37.5% in 2012.[failed verification ]

The Roman Catholic churches in Melilla belong to the Diocese of Málaga.

Regarding sociolinguistics, Melilla features a diglossia with Spanish being the strong and official language, whereas Tamazight remains the weak and unofficial language, with limited written codification, and usage restricted to family and domestic relations and oral speech.

Berber native speakers are usually bilingual in Spanish, whereas Spanish native speakers do not usually speak Berber. The Spanish spoken in Melilla is similar to the variety from Cádiz, Andalusia, whereas the Berber variant spoken in Melilla is the Riffian language common with the neighbouring Nador area. Rather than Berber (Spanish: bereber), Berber speakers in Melilla use either the glotonym Tamaziɣt , or, when speaking Spanish, speakers of " cherja" to call themselves.

The first attempt to legislate a degree of recognition for Berber in Melilla was in 1994, in the context of the elaboration of the Statute of Autonomy, by mentioning the promotion of the linguistic and cultural pluralism (without explicitly mentioning the Berber language). The initiative went nowhere, voted down by PP and PSOE.

Melilla has been a popular destination for migrants in order to enter the European Union. The border is secured by the Melilla border fence, a six-metre-tall double fence with watch towers; yet migrants (in groups of tens or sometimes hundreds) storm the fence and manage to cross it from time to time. Detection wires, radar, and day/ night vision cameras are planned to increase security and prevent illegal immigration. In February 2014, over 200 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa scaled a security fence to get into the Melilla migrant reception centre. The reception centre, built for 480 migrants, was already overcrowded with 1,300 people.

In recent years, the Spanish government has urged Moroccan security forces to stem the flow of migrants traveling towards Melilla. In 2015, Moroccan police dispersed migrant camps in the forests surrounding Melilla by torching makeshift homes and arresting migrants. Since the 2014 incident, Spain has installed additional security measures, including increased fencing, camera surveillance systems, and a more salient troop presence. Attempted border crossings by migrants has decreased at both Melilla and Ceuta since its peak in 2015-2016; arrivals are down twenty-five percent since 2018. However, during this same period, an increase in media coverage and public awareness of the border security breaches has increased the sense of urgency over the situation in Mainland Spain. This concern about African migrants is seen as the main factor leading to the rise of Vox, a Spanish populist party. Vox officials have frequently cited the migration crises at Melilla and Ceuta as evidence that Spain needs to devote more resources to border security.

Melilla Airport is serviced by Air Nostrum, flying to the Spanish cities of Málaga, Madrid, Barcelona, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Palma de Mallorca, Granada, Badajoz, Sevilla and Almería. In April 2013, a local enterprise set up Melilla Airlines, flying from the city to Málaga. The city is linked to Málaga, Almería and Motril by ferry.

Three roads connect Melilla and Morocco but require clearance through border checkpoints.

Melilla is a surfing destination. The city's football club, UD Melilla, plays in the third tier of Spanish football, the Segunda División B. The club was founded in 1943 and since 1945 have played at the 12,000-seater Estadio Municipal Álvarez Claro. Until the other club was dissolved in 2012, UD Melilla played the Ceuta-Melilla derby against AD Ceuta. The clubs travelled to each other via the Spanish mainland to avoid entering Morocco. The second-highest ranked club in the city are Casino del Real CF of the fourth-tier Tercera División. The football's governing institution is the Melilla Football Federation.

The government of Morocco has repeatedly called for Spain to transfer the sovereignty of Ceuta and Melilla, along with uninhabited islets such as the islands of Alhucemas, the rock of Vélez and the Perejil island, drawing comparisons with Spain's territorial claim to Gibraltar. In both cases, the national governments and local populations of the disputed territories reject these claims by a large majority. The Spanish position states that both Ceuta and Melilla are integral parts of Spain, and have been since the 16th century, centuries prior to Morocco's independence from France in 1956, whereas Gibraltar, being a British Overseas Territory, is not and never has been part of the United Kingdom. Both cities also have the same semi-autonomous status as the mainland region in Spain. Melilla has been under Spanish rule for longer than cities in northern Spain such as Pamplona or Tudela, and was conquered roughly in the same period as the last Muslim cities of Southern Spain such as Granada, Málaga, Ronda or Almería: Spain claims that the enclaves were established before the creation of the Kingdom of Morocco. Morocco denies these claims and maintains that the Spanish presence on or near its coast is a remnant of the colonial past which should be ended. The United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories does not include these Spanish territories and the dispute remains bilaterally debated between Spain and Morocco.

On 21 December 2020, following the affirmations of the Moroccan Prime Minister, Saadeddine Othmani, stating that Ceuta and Melilla "are Moroccan as the [Western] Sahara [is]", Spain urgently summoned the Moroccan Ambassador to convey that Spain expects respect from all its partners to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its country and asked for explanations about the words of Othmani.

Twin towns - sister cities

Melilla is twinned with:

Bibliography

Bascón Jiménez, Milagrosa; Cazallo Antúnez, Ana; Lechuga Cardozo, Jorge; Meñaca Guerrero, Indira (2016). "Necesidad de implantar un servicio público de transporte entre las ciudades de Ceuta-Tetuán y Melilla-Nador". Desarrollo Gerencial. Barranquilla: Universidad Simón Bolívar. 8 (2): 37-57. doi:10.17081/dege.8.2.2553.

Bravo Nieto, Antonio (1990). "La ocupación de Melilla en 1497 y las relaciones entre los Reyes Católicos y el Duque de Medina Sidonia". Aldaba. Melilla: UNED (15): 15-37. doi:10.5944/aldaba.15.1990.20168. ISSN 0213-7925.

Fernández García, Alicia (2015). "Repensar las fronteras lingüísticas del territorio español: Melilla, entre mosaico sociológico y paradigma lingüístico" (PDF). ELUA. Estudios de Lingüística. San Vicente del Raspeig: Universidad de Alicante. 29: 105-126. doi:10.14198/ELUA2015.29.05.

López Guzmán, Tomás J.; González Fernández, Virgilio; Herrera Torres, Lucía; Lorenzo Quiles, Oswaldo (2007). "Melilla: ciudad fronteriza internacional e intercontinental. Análisis histórico, económico y educativo" (PDF). Frontera Norte. Tijuana: El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, A.C. 19 (37): 7-33.

López Pardo, Fernando (2015). "La fundación de Rusaddir y la época púnica". Gerión. Madrid: Ediciones Complutense. 33: 135-156. doi:10.5209/rev_GERI.2015.49055. ISSN 0213-0181.

Loureiro Soto, Jorge Luis (2015). Los conflictos por Ceuta y Melilla: 600 años de controversias (PDF). UNED.

Morala Martínez, Paulina (1985). "Reformas de la administración local durante la Dictadura: de la Junta de Arbitrios a la Junta Municipal (1923-1927)" (PDF). Aldaba (40): 107-120.

Perpén Rueda, Adoración (1987). "La masonería en Melilla en el s. XIX: las logias 'Amor' y 'Africa'" (PDF). In Ferrer Benimeli, José Antonio (ed.). La masonería en la España del siglo XIX. I. pp. 289-296. ISBN 84-505-5233-8.

Sánchez Suárez, Mª Ángeles (2003). "Reflexiones acerca de la enseñanza del español como lengua de segunda adquisición a personas adultas hablantes de tamazight". Aldaba (29): 189-235. doi:10.5944/aldaba.29.2003.20438.

Saro Gandarillas, Francisco (1985). "La expansión urbana de Melilla: aproximación a su estudio" (PDF). Aldaba. 3 (5): 23-34.

Saro Gandarillas, Francisco (1993). "Los orígenes de la Campaña del Rif de 1909". Aldaba. Melilla: UNED (22): 97. doi:10.5944/aldaba.22.1993.20298. ISSN 0213-7925.

Tilmatine, Mohand (2011). "El contacto español-bereber: la lengua de los informativos en Melilla". Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana. 9 (2): 15-45. JSTOR 41678469.

Trinidad, Jamie (2012). "An Evaluation of Morocco's Claims to Spain's Remaining Territories in Africa". International and Comparative Law Quarterly. Cambridge University Press. 61 (4): 961-975. doi:10.1017/S0020589312000371. ISSN 0020-5893. JSTOR 23279813.

(PDF) https://rua.ua.es/dspace/bitstream/10045/52911/1/ELUA_29_05.pdf.

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Melilla". Encyclopædia Britannica. 18 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 94.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Melilla ( mə-LEE-yə , meh- ; Spanish: ; Berber: Mrich, Mlilt; Arabic: مليلية‎ ) is a Spanish autonomous city located on the northwest coast of Africa, sharing a border with Morocco. It has an area of 12.3 km 2 (4.7 sq mi).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Having traveled to many countries around the world, I've noticed some of the most common mistakes travelers make whilst abroad. Some are so used to tipping in cafes that they do it everywhere,although in Japan such act would be treated as an offence. Others sincerely present their Ukrainian friends with even flowers without counting them while the even number of flowers can be brought only to the cemetery.

Having traveled to many countries around the world, I've noticed some of the most common mistakes travelers make whilst abroad. Some are so used to tipping in cafes that they do it everywhere,although in Japan such act would be treated as an offence. Others sincerely present their Ukrainian friends with even flowers without counting them while the even number of flowers can be brought only to the cemetery.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Each country has its own laws, traditions and customs. No matter how strange you may find them it's best to be aware of what is considered an ill manner, taboo, or a crime abroad. For example, did you know that it is obligatory to leave some tips in the USA while in Japan such act would be treated as an offense?

# data[].attributes.body
says NO to killing animals for sport

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Costa Rica just became the first country in Latin America to ban hunting for sport. Costa Rica's Congress voted unanimously on Monday to approve the ban, which will protect the country's wildlife - including several species of native big cats. Any hunters caught breaking the new law will face jail time or hefty fines.

Hunters from around the world flock to Costa Rica to hunt the country's jaguars and pumas for sport - or to capture the cats and sell them on the black market as pets. Illegal hunting tours bring in a pretty penny for tour leaders, and their popularity helped spur the newly announced ban. Parrots are also a target, since they can be captured and smuggled out to be sold as pets around the world.

The Costa Rican people started the initiative to protect their animals - it began as a grass-roots campaign that brought over 177,000 signatures to the national Congress. Now that the bill has been approved, violators of the hunting ban will face up to four months in jail and fines up to $3,000.

Earlier this fall, an amendment was made to the country's Wildlife Conservation law. The new hunting ban strengthens this reform. Costa Rica is a very environmentally conscious country, and it has placed a major focus on conserving its rich biodiversity.

Via The Guardian
Images ©Marco Zanferrari and ©Harlequeen

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Costa Rica Becomes First Latin American Country to Ban Hunting for Sport

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Costa Rica just became the first country in Latin America to ban hunting for sport. Costa Rica's Congress voted unanimously on Monday to approve the ban, which will protect the country's wildlife - including several species of native big cats. Any hunters caught breaking the new law will face jail time or hefty fines.

# data[].attributes.body
in Guatemala

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The support of readers like you got this story published - and helps Truthout stay free from corporate advertising. Can you sustain our work with a tax-deductible donation today?
The indigenous Mayan communities of Guatemala have historically been given few judicial outlets, national or international, to seek justice for human rights violations at the hands of multinational companies operating in their territory. But Angelica Choc, a Mayan Q'eqchi' woman from the small hamlet of La Union in the department of Izabal on Guatemala's eastern coast, has looked to change that. In an unprecedented case, Choc has sued a parent company in its home country for human rights violations committed by its subsidiaries in Guatemala.

"Those who have the money here have the voice," Choc told Truthout. "But I too have rights, and I am struggling for respect and dignity.... This demand is not only mine; it is for all of Guatemala, for all of those who have suffered from the invasions of our territories by foreign companies to extract our natural resources. This demand is historic."

"I'm a rock in their way," she added.

Choc's husband of 30 years, Adolfo Ich Chamán, was a respected community leader, schoolteacher and outspoken critic of the violation of human rights by mining activities in Guatemala. But on September 27, 2009, Chamán was shot and hacked to death by private security forces of Guatemalan Nickel Company (CGN), the Guatemalan subsidiary of the Toronto-based Hudbay Minerals.

"My husband was a great person, a leader from his community, and an indigenous person," Choc told Truthout through tears. "It hurts to remember. I will never forget him. One day, we will understand; one day, we will accept what happened."

In 2010, Choc and her supporters filed a lawsuit in Canadian courts against Hudbay and two of the firm's subsidiaries, HMI Nickel and CGN, for the wrongful death of her husband at the site of their Fenix mining project near La Union, in the municipality of El Estor. The lawsuit claims that Hudbay acted with negligence in its operations in Guatemala, and failed to provide protocols for its security forces, which were already known for excessive use of force. Hudbay and other mining firms utilize private security guards to protect the properties of the mine, but all too often these forces in Guatemala have taken on a paramilitary like structure due to the presence of former soldiers employed as security guards. Choc's suit seeks $2 million in damages and $1 million in punitive damages.

"Part of our objective is to make [people outside the country] see how foreign companies act in our country," said Isabel Solís, a member of Communities in Resistance of El Estor, who has worked alongside Choc on her case. "It is important for the people of countries such as the United States and Canada to see that the products that they own and that they consume have depended on the death of many people and the violations of human rights. There are great costs within the concept of economic development."

The firm initially fought to dismiss the lawsuit, claiming that it was unaware of the actions of its subsidiary in Guatemala and maintaining that a parent company could not be held legally responsible for what happens at the site of a subsidiary. But in June 2013, a Canadian court ruled that Choc's case could proceed in the courts and that Hudbay could be sued for human rights violations at the site of its subsidiary CGN in Guatemala.

"That was a major precedent," Cory Wanless, Choc's Canadian lawyer from the Toronto-based law firm Klippensteins, Barristers and Solicitors, told Truthout. "That question had never [been] considered before. It has opened the door, both legally and practically, to other claims. This is one of the things that our clients wanted from the very start. They wanted their lawsuit to be an example, which hopefully prevents what happened to them to happening to other people."

Wanless added, "One thing that has happened now is that there is the creation of a new legal risk that mining companies didn't think was there. It opens up the door to other cases, and will hopefully prevent harms from happening in the first place, by making the companies be more aware of conditions in countries like Guatemala."

Choc's lawsuit in Canada comes at the same time as two other lawsuits against Hudbay by communities affected by the Fenix project. There is a lawsuit by 11 women from the community of Lote 8, who were violently raped by security forces during an extrajudicial eviction in 2007. A suit for the shooting of German Chub Choc, who was paralyzed in the shooting that killed Ich Chamán in 2009, has also been filed.
Challenging the Corporate Structure
Angelica Choc's case against Hudbay in Canada is truly historic. The trial in Canada has paved the way for other indigenous communities to seek restitution for human rights violations by subsidiaries of multinational companies.

"This case has sent shockwaves through the mining industry," said Grahame Russell of the humanitarian organization Rights Action. "This has set the legal precedent that the subsidiaries can be tried for human rights abuses in the home country of the parent company. Angelica's case acknowledges that this is not just a Guatemalan problem, but a Canadian problem taking place in Guatemala."

According to Wanless, Choc's case represents a new era that moves beyond "corporate social responsibility."

"It is no longer possible for Canadian companies to operate in foreign jurisdictions and to think that if something goes wrong that there will not be any consequences," Wanless told Truthout. "Canadian companies and business leaders need to understand that there are real legal risks by not acting responsibly. This is a trend that is continuing to grow, and this case is just the start."

Other lawsuits along these lines have already been filed in Canadian courts. In June 2014, seven men from the community of San Rafael de Las Flores in southern Guatemala filed a civil lawsuit in Vancouver, Canada, against Tahoe Resources for violence against community protesters at the site of the El Escobal mine. The suit charges that the firm was responsible for a shooting by private security at the mine in April 2013, which injured the seven men. The head of security for El Escobal, Alberto Rotondo, was arrested in Guatemala as he tried to flee the country.

A case across the Atlantic, in Eritrea, bears certain similarities to the cases in Guatemala and gains inspiration from Choc's lawsuit.

However, the case in Eritrea is also different in certain ways. According to the lawsuit - filed against the Vancouver, Canada-based mining firm Nevsun Resources on November 20, 2014 - the three plaintiffs claim that the firm utilized slave-like labor practices at the Bisha mine in Eritrea.

The lawsuit states that workers were forcibly kept within the confines of the Bisha property and faced threats if they left without authorization from the management, as well as claims that workers were paid poorly. The plaintiffs also charge that they lived in deplorable conditions and under constant threats and intimidations.

And most recently, a class-action lawsuit was filed against the retail giant Loblaws, based in Brampton, Ontario, over the collapse of a clothing factory in Bangladesh in 2013 that killed more than 1,100 people. The plaintiffs claim that Loblaws was aware that Bangladeshi factories had a history of extremely poor working conditions and industrial standards. Loblaws has defended itself by stating that the claim is "without merit."

"All of these cases have relied on the Hudbay case," Wanless said. "But the Hudbay case itself is a reflection that that times and societal expectations had already changed. The first step was that companies had to start talking about corporate social responsibility. But that is now not enough; if you are going to talk about it, you've got to do it. If you don't, there will be real legal liability."
A Long History of Conflict Over Land
The conflict over the Fenix project began decades prior to the signing of the peace accords that brought an end to Guatemala's 36-year-long civil war. This conflict contains all the themes of the more recent problems sparked by the expansion of mining and other extractive industries in Guatemala.

Hudbay had acquired the struggling Fenix project in 2004 after purchasing Skye Resources, which owned the site and the Guatemalan subsidiary, Guatemalan Nickel Company, at the time. The new owners had hoped to relaunch the mining operations at the site to exploit one of the largest reserves of nickel in the Western Hemisphere. But by acquiring the mine, Hudbay also acquired the bloody legacy of the project - and the surrounding conflict over land.

The nickel mine on the shores of scenic Lake Izabal has been a point of conflict since the 1960s. This was during the early years of Guatemala's internal armed conflict, and guerrilla forces had set up camp in the Sierras de las Minas, mountains that ran into the waters of Lake Izabal.

According to Luis Solano, an investigative journalist and expert on the extractive industries of Guatemala, the conflict in the municipality El Estor began a new era of collaboration between the Guatemalan state and business.

"The state showed it had no interest in defending the interests of the people," Solano told Truthout. "Rather the state was going to defend the interests of the business. For the community, it meant oppression for the people who resisted the nickel company in El Estor."

During this time, the US Geological Service sanctioned a study to analyze what natural resources were in the region. They found that one of the largest nickel deposits in the hemisphere ran from the northern shore to the southern shore of Lake Izabal.

A public commission was established to decide whether mining rights would be granted, but after two members of the commission were assassinated for speaking out against the project in the late 1960s, the military-backed regime decided that the mine could advance. In 1966, after assisting in the rewriting of Guatemala's mining law, the mining firm International Nickel Company (INCO) purchased 150 square miles of land to be transformed into an open pit mine that was to be named the Fenix project. It won a 40-year lease at $30,000 per year, which provided that the government would militarily "secure" the region for the mining company.

INCO and its Guatemalan subsidiary were granted rights to exploit the reserve, but in order to begin extraction, the region was to be "pacified." In 1967, the military was deployed to the region ostensibly to combat the guerrillas, but actually to repress the indigenous Q'eqchi' Mayan communities.

A reign of terror fell upon the region, with the first evictions leading to the deaths of 2,500 to 3,000 indigenous campesinos.

During the 1980s, both the military and the company once again targeted community leaders who spoke out against the mining operation. However, INCO was ultimately forced to abandon the project in the early 1980s, after the Guatemalan government imposed a 5 percent royalty on the company.

With the end of Guatemala's internal armed conflict in 1996, many indigenous communities began the process of recuperating their lands. According to Solís, the Q'eqchi' communities around the Fenix project began reclaiming their land at that time. Yet once Hudbay purchased the mining project in 2004, it was once again expanded, bringing the company into conflict with the communities again.

"The mining firm was given new permits for the exploitation of the large nickel reserves by the Guatemalan government," Solís told Truthout. "But the problem was that the nickel was where the communities were."

The government, communities and mining firm then began a dialogue to find a solution to the land conflict. According to Solís, the communities were given the chance to purchase portions of the land that didn't have nickel deposits beneath them.

"The community made two payments," Solís told Truthout. "But when they further read over the final paperwork, they realized that the mining firm had retained the right to evict the communities from their land when they desired any nickel reserves beneath the soil, despite the fact that the community owned the land."

In 2011, Hudbay was forced to sell the mine due to the bad press. The rights to the mine were sold to the Solway Group, a Russia-based mining firm.
Continuation of the War by Other Means
Tensions were high on September 27, 2009, in the Mayan Q'eqchi' communities near the Fenix project nickel mine, after many small communities had been evicted extrajudicially from their land by the mine's private security forces. Adolfo Ich Chamán, Angelica Choc's husband and a well-respected community leader, had heard about the conflict between the private security forces and community members, and went to calm the nerves of the community. But when he arrived at the site of the mine buildings, the security forces led by an ex-colonel attacked and killed him.

Mynor Padilla, the head of CGN's private security forces, had remained free for three years after the shooting, despite orders for his arrest. During this time he was seen driving in a vehicle from Hudbay/CGN, and continued to intimidate the communities near the mine. The Guatemalan National Police finally arrested him in 2012 in El Estor.

According to witnesses, at time of the evictions, the private security forces at the Fenix project had begun to resemble a paramilitary force, with former Army Col. Padilla in command.

"This is a continuation of the war," Solís told Truthout.

Choc's case in Canada hinges on this sad reality of Guatemala: A low-intensity conflict still plays out in rural communities, despite the signing of the peace accords.

The extrajudicial evictions appear much like a military campaign, waged against people that have already suffered terribly.

During one of the evictions in the community of Lote Ocho, 11 women were gang-raped by security forces. Human rights organizations learned fairly quickly about the rapes, but decided to proceed delicately for the sake of the women and their families. Two women from the community, Maria and Marta, worked tirelessly to support the women. And in 2010, the story of the evictions and the rapes became public with the women's lawsuit against Hudbay.

Since the eviction, the community of Lote Ocho has returned to the land that they were evicted from, and are slowly rebuilding their homes. But the community is still vulnerable to future evictions, due to a nickel deposit that lies below their land.

Intimidation and the Struggle Against a Culture of Impunity

Choc faces an uphill battle when it comes to her case in Canada. Meanwhile, in Guatemala, she must struggle against a corrupt legal system and an ingrained culture of impunity.

Guatemala has historically had a high level of impunity, with those who commit violent crimes rarely facing criminal charges, but because of international pressure, impunity has fallen from 93 percent to 70 percent, according to the United Nations sponsored International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). Even beyond high levels of impunity, Choc's case has been plagued by irregularities and intimidation.

All plaintiffs involved in these cases have been the victims of intimidation and pressure by supporters of Padilla and the offices of CGN to drop the case. During the court proceedings on April 16, this reporter observed men surveying the courthouse in Puerto Barrios. The three men were seen taking photographs of Angelica Choc and her supporters as we left the courthouse.

These intimidation tactics have been accompanied by CGN attempts to coerce the plaintiffs into dropping their case. According to Grahame Russell, this coercion includes offering jobs to the husbands of those who were raped in 2007.

"If this was a straight-up legal battle, then the law would be on our side," Russell told Truthout. "But the mining firm has offered jobs to the families to get them to drop the lawsuit, [though] the jobs never last."

The victims and witnesses have also faced death threats, which supporters of the communities believe come from the Guatemalan subsidiary of Hudbay.

Furthermore, the Guatemalan subsidiary has spared no expense in the defense of Mynor Padilla. The former colonel's defense team includes lawyers Frank Manuel Trujillo Aldana, Carlos Rafael Pellecer López and Francisco José Palomo Tejeda, who had represented former Gen. Efrain Rios Montt during the famous "genocide trial" in 2012. (In 2013, former Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, who came to power in 1982, was found guilty by a Guatemalan court for overseeing the genocide against the Ixil Maya in the early 1980s. But less than a week after the finding, the Guatemalan Congress overturned the judgment stating "there was never a genocide.")

But despite the threats and intimidation, Angelica Choc and her supporters have vowed to continue with their suits.

"Here in Guatemala, they have violated many of our human rights," Choc told Truthout. "But I will continue to cheer for justice."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
In Guatemala, Indigenous Woman Sues Multinational Company for Husband's Murder

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The support of readers like you got this story published - and helps Truthout stay free from corporate advertising. Can you sustain our work with a tax-deductible donation today? The indigenous Mayan communities of Guatemala have historically been given few judicial outlets, national or international, to seek justice for human rights violations at the hands of multinational companies operating in their territory.

# data[].attributes.body
En la Biblia dice que llovió por 40 días y 40 noches. Lo llamaron un desastre.
En Noruega se llama 'verano'!!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Moscú, mayo 23 - Este sábado se celebran simultáneamente en cientos de ciudades de 48 países marchas de protesta contra el gigante de la biotecnología estadounidense Monsanto.

Activistas de todo el mundo participarán este sábado 23 de mayo por tercera vez en la marcha mundial contra Monsanto. El objetivo de las manifestaciones es crear conciencia sobre los peligros de los alimentos genéticamente modificados de la compañía estadounidense.

Las protestas ahora están transcurriendo en países como Mauricio, Uruguay, Malta, Australia, Francia (Dijon y Lyon), Sudáfrica (Ciudad del Cabo y Durban), Holanda (Groninga).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Marcha sin precedentes: 421 ciudades en 48 países protestan contra el gigante Monsanto

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Moscú, mayo 23 - Este sábado se celebran simultáneamente en cientos de ciudades de 48 países marchas de protesta contra el gigante de la biotecnología estadounidense Monsanto. Activistas de todo el mundo participarán este sábado 23 de mayo por tercera vez en la marcha mundial contra Monsanto.

# data[].attributes.body
Largest Swimming Pool in the World

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Spanish dialects and varieties - Wikipedia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
While all Spanish dialects adhere to approximately the same written standard, all spoken varieties differ from the written variety, to different degrees. There are differences between European Spanish (also called Peninsular Spanish) and the Spanish of the Americas, as well as many different dialect areas both within Spain and within Hispanic America.