Hi people, I'm sorry for being silent so far... I've been on Holidays (it's plain summer down here, kinda like August up there)... in fact, the first days of 2008 I've been in the Province of San Luis (but before the announcement of San Luis going back to UTC-3). I just arrived from the second part of my vacation (in the Province of Buenos Aires) a few hours ago, and I've been completely off-line (otherwise, it wouldn't actually be a vacation :-) ) I can confirm that the Province of San Luis (and so far only that province) decided to go back to UTC-3 effective midnight Jan 20th 2008 (that is, Monday 21st at 0:00 is the time the clocks were delayed back 1 hour), and they intend to keep UTC-3 as their timezone all year round (that is, unless they change their mind any minute now). I can't see the official San Luis website since their DNS servers are quite silent today (in fact they seem not be routeable today from 3 different places) :-( So we'll have to add yet another city to 'southamerica' (I think San Luis city is the mos populated city in the Province, so it'd be America/Argentina/San_Luis... of course I can't remember if San Luis's history of particular changes goes along with Mendoza or San Juan :-( (I only remember not being able to collect hard facts about San Luis back in 2004, when these provinces changed to UTC-4 for a few days, I mailed them personally and never got an answer). As for the origin of the problem, it has many faces: * *Political:* If the Governor of a Province is somehow /against/ the National Government, then, it's Province is more likely to diverge from the National Government timezone proposal. * *Geographical:* As you can see in http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/world_tzones.php Most of Argentina is geographically in UTC-4. NONE of it is in UTC-3. A small part of the SouthWest is actually in UTC-5 (like Chile). The current UTC-3 is originated in a DST mostly used between 1930 and 1969 (UTC-4 was the "official" timezone at that time) that "never went back" after being turned "on" in 1969-10-05... after that, it was kinda "renamed" to official (non-DST) time and at some point, UTC-2 was started to be used as DST (in 1974 and then between 1988 and 1993 and some other years after that). The West-most Provinces (Mendoza, San Juan, San Luis, Neuquen, Catamarca, etc.) started a crusade in 2004 to re-install UTC-4 as the standard (winter) time and UTC-3 as the DST, but they failed in disorder (and thus generated some chaos in tzdata) * *Cultural:* Part of the problem is originated in our culture... as of the end of the 20th Century and beginning of the 21st, most of Argentine people is *very* used to dinner at *night*... that is, you can't call it *dinner* if there's daylight... most of start having dinner somewhere between 9PM and 10PM or later... if Argentina uses UTC-2 in the summer (when the daylight lasts longer), the more to the West and to the South you go, the later daylight goes off... The first week of January 2008, using UTC-2, I've been in the NorthEast of San Luis and the daylight disappeared after 10PM, so everybody went to dinner at about 10:30PM or later, so, instead of saving electricity, most people used the same or more electricity than before the change. My parents just came back from El Calafate (in the SouthWest of the Province of Santa Cruz) and they told me daylight was going off at about 11:30 PM. Another cultural problem is that Argentina, although being a federal country (at least in the papers), which somehow gives some autonomy to the Provinces, is not used to have more than one timezone (as the USA is), and, like western Europe, works better within one timezone... the struggle is about which timezone it is... Regards. -- Mariano Absatz - "El Baby" baby@baby.com.ar -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- * TagZilla 0.066 * http://tagzilla.mozdev.org