Nelson exists to help people who work in and on Latin America quickly access reliable information on the region. 

Our Director of Operations, Cate, has two dogs. One is named Nelson. His story is one that fits well with Southern Pulse culture. Nelson is from the mountains of Ecuador as a puppy where he began following two backpackers who were hiking through his town. He followed them so far that it was easier to pick him up than to take him back home. The backpackers were making their way down through South America to their final destination of Buenos Aires, Argentina, where Cate adopted him while she was living there. As a name, Nelson is sage in nature, which is the Southern Pulse brand archetype. And, Nelson is a commonly used name in Spanish, Portuguese and English.

Nelson is a private and secure retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) model AI research tool that leverages Southern Pulse proprietary data and Southern Pulse curated information to answer your questions about Latin America.

Unlike general-purpose LLMs, our chatbot is purpose-built for the corporate threat intelligence analysts and their managers. It’s built for investigators and other research professionals. It operates in a controlled, secure environment tailored for research support, with full transparency about data handling. Nelson offers source transparency and does not hallucinate. Finally, Nelson is surrounded by a team of humans that keep an eye on him, help him learn, and help him respond to what you need to know about Latin America.

Nelson looks for answers in two separate databases: 20 years of proprietary Southern Pulse data, i.e. field notes, internal research papers, memos, reports, internal analysis work, reports and articles, AND curated information collected from trusted public sources, i.e. government websites, universities, NGOs, media organizations, and individual researchers and practitioners.

Beyond the 20 years of proprietary Southern Pulse data, Nelson’s data pool includes a growing list of live feeds accessed from trusted online sources throughout Latin America. These sources were vetted by the Southern Pulse curation team. Furthermore, we are working on data sharing agreements with a number of key partners who conduct incredible work in or on the region. Interested in being a content partner? Get in touch by emailing us: nelson@southernpulse.com.

On a daily basis, Nelson collects data from a growing list of curated online sources. If an event happened in Latin America in the past 8 to 24 hours, Nelson likely knows what happened, has several trusted sources to help him understand the event, and can draw on these sources to help you. On a weekly basis, Southern Pulse curators add to Nelson’s database media articles and reports that Southern Pulse analysts found particularly useful in their project work. On a monthly basis, the Nelson curation team uploads longer, more in-depth reports identified from a growing number of trusted sources. The longer-form reports tend to offer more in-depth analysis, statistics, and more granular detail than the daily or weekly uploads.

Nelson is designed to be a research assistant, not a news delivery bot. He takes in a daily diet of information, and is fed weekly and monthly. His body of sources is always expanding, while keeping current with events in Latin America. That said, he does not retrieve in real time or in near real time. 

English, Spanish and Portuguese. 

Chat history is accessible only to authorized personnel within our organization for operational and troubleshooting purposes. This information is never shared externally and remains private within our management. The chat history is also available to each user via the user interface.

Our chatbot operates entirely within a dedicated AWS virtual private cloud. Data never leaves this secure environment, and only authorized personnel within our organization can view chat history, which is managed under strict confidentiality policies.

Our solution complies with industry-standard data and privacy protection laws such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA), and our team follows strict internal policies to safeguard user data. Audit trails and robust access controls ensure accountability.

The chatbot is designed for broad research support. Background check-related use cases are not the main use case. When searching for individuals, it’s possible that a user would receive a response, either from proprietary Southern Pulse data or via curated data but more likely than not for politically exposed persons, their relationships, or other highly influential individuals or companies in Latin America. We are exploring other use cases. Ask more about this by emailing nelson@southernpulse.com.

Nelson is trained to tell you when there is no trusted data available. When there is similar data, he will note that he does not have the specific answer, but can approximate the answer. And he will share that information with relevant sources. Nelson has guardrails to prevent him from making up information.