A new statue of cartoon favorite Isidoro Cañones by Dante Quinterno was unveiled Friday 20th July in San Telmo on the corner of Chile and Balcarce. This is the second such statue to be placed in San Telmo, the first being Mafalda in 2009 just up the block, at the corner of Chile and Defensa. Eventually, there will be ten statues through San Telmo, leading to Moreno and Paseo Colon where you can pick up a free city bike to ride across Puerto Madero to the Museo del Humor along Avenida de Los Italianos. Along with cartoonist Manuel Garcia Ferre, the Buenos Aires city government was out in full force, with city mayor Mauricio Macri, deputy mayor María Eugenia Vidal, minister of culture Hernana Lombardi, and Cabinet Chief Horacio Rodríguez Larreta all in attendance to unveil the statue. Manuel Garcia Ferre, a famous Argentine cartoonist, responsible for ‘SuperHijitus’, ‘Ico, the brave horse’ and ‘Anteojito’ and more was on hand to represent cartoonists and the Museo del Humor. A dixieland jazz style music band, dressed in red and white pin-striped suits, set the jovial tone for the afternoon’s event. Photographer Beatrice Murch snapped these up.

Rio de Janeiro’s towering Christ the Redeemer statue has been closed to the public for the first time in eighty year, after landslides that hit Brazil.

The access to the statue was cut off on Wednesday 14th April because of debris that blocked the road.

The landslides are due to the heavy rain and have killed some 250 people but this number may rise as 200 people are still missing, officials say.

More bodies have been uncovered and rescue workers are still working to find people in the wreckage of shanty towns buried after torrential rain caused the mudslides.

Officials also warn the population that more landslides could happen due to the saturate soil.

On Tuesday, search crews found more bodies buried in homes by a massive landslide that hit a shanty town outside Rio de Janeiro city. Most of the landslide victims were residents of shanty towns, where about a fifth of the city’s population live.

The city collapsed after the record rainfall of 288 millimeters that started late on Monday 12th April.

The famous Christ the Redeemer statue sits on the Tijuca National Park’s Corcovado mountain. The statue was named one of the new wonders of the world in 2007, and is visited by two million tourists a year.

Park director Bernard Issa said he hoped it would reopen “within one or two months”.

Work is under way to clear the debris and mend roads, and Rio de Janeiro state’s governor said as many as 150 bodies could still be underneath the mud in the Morro do Bumba shanty town.

Rio de Janeiro’s mayor, Eduardo Paes, estimated that 4,000 families had been made homeless after the landslides and 10,000 houses remained at risk. Families living in high-risk areas will be evacuated, he said.

Paes said that the repair work would cost at least US$ 113m.