History from Latin America
6 verified stories set in Latin America.
A Drug Lord Smuggled 4 Hippos Into Colombia. Now There Are Hundreds.
In 1981, Medellín cartel kingpin Pablo Escobar illegally smuggled four African hippopotamuses into Colombia to populate his private zoo at Hacienda Nápoles. Following Escobar's death in a 1993 rooftop shootout, government authorities seized the estate and distributed the exotic wildlife—yet the massive, aggressive hippos were deemed impossible to capture and abandoned to roam free. Finding the lush Magdalena River basin an ecological paradise devoid of droughts or apex predators, the original four multiplied into over two hundred feral giants, creating the largest invasive megagenera crisis on Earth.
An Earthquake Trapped a Lake Above a City. They Drained It With Shovels.
On May 22, 1960, the magnitude 9.5 Great Chilean Earthquake—the strongest ever recorded—triggered colossal landslides that corked the San Pedro River, trapping three billion cubic meters of water inside Lake Riñihue. Threatened by a catastrophic tidal wall racing toward 100,000 citizens in Valdivia, civil engineer Raúl Sáez led hundreds of workers in a desperate, manual shovel-digging operation known as the 'Riñihuazo'.
Their Ship Sank in Antarctic Ice. Then a Miracle Gunboat Arrived.
In February 1903, the Swedish South Polar Expedition was struck by catastrophe when their ship, the Antarctic, was crushed by pack ice in the Weddell Sea. Stranded thousands of miles from civilization, twenty-five men were fractured into three isolated groups across Snow Hill Island, Hope Bay, and Paulet Island. With zero communication and presumed lost by the world, they survived brutal polar winters in crude stone huts on a diet of penguins and seals. Defying the deadly ice, Lieutenant Commander Julián Irízar and the Argentine Navy steamed into the frozen seas aboard the thirty-year-old corvette ARA Uruguay. In an astonishing feat of polar navigation, they located every scattered outpost and brought all twenty-five men home alive.
A Former President Paddled Into an Unmapped River. It Nearly Killed Him.
After losing the 1912 presidential election, Theodore Roosevelt joined legendary Brazilian explorer Colonel Cândido Rondon to map the Rio da Dúvida—the River of Doubt—an unknown, treacherous tributary deep in the Amazon basin. Heavy dugout canoes were repeatedly smashed in violent rapids, forcing the party to hack trails through virgin jungle while running on starvation rations. Struck by malaria and a horrific bacterial leg infection, Roosevelt begged his son to leave him behind to die. Of the nineteen men who entered the jungle, sixteen returned. The river was officially renamed Rio Roosevelt, but the brutal ordeal permanently shattered the former president's health.
How Do You Build a Whole New Capital City in 41 Months?
Brazil's capital had been Rio de Janeiro. President Juscelino Kubitschek's motto was "fifty years in five", and a brand-new capital was the cornerstone of his plan. Lúcio Costa won the contest for the master plan, Oscar Niemeyer designed most of the public buildings, and construction that began in February 1957 was finished 41 months later. Brasília became the capital in 1960.
A Pastry Chef's Complaint Helped Spark a Real War. Guess Where?
A French pastry chef said army officers looted his shop near Mexico City and demanded 60,000 pesos. France backed him, its navy blockaded Mexican ports in 1838, and the Pastry War cost General Santa Anna his leg - a leg that later got its own state funeral.