Christmas in July

The holiday season came to subequatorial South America on the crest of a blistering heat wave. In Santiago, Chileans sipping their traditional cola de mono (monkey's tail--milk, cinnamon, and coffee laced with aguardiente), fanned themselves as the thermometer climbed to 93DEG. At Vina del Mar and Uruguay's Punta del Este, beaches were jammed. So was the graceful white curve of Rio's Copacabana, where young cariocas, lampooning a recently revived city ordinance against walking to the beach in bathing suits, donned dinner coats or silver-fox jackets over their beachwear.

Christmas shoppers along Buenos Aires' swank Calle Florida found store windows featuring snow-sprinkled effigies of Santa Claus cheek by jowl with scanty bathing suits, tropical clothing and camping gear. In Argentina's interior cities of Tucuman, Cordoba and Santiago del Estero, the mercury climbed to 106DEG. That, announced the Argentine weather man, made it the hottest December on record.

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