The relationship between oceanic Kelvin waves forced over the western equatorial Pacific and seasonal and nonseasonal sea surface temperature (SST) variability at the South American coast is investigated using harmonic dial analysis and lag correlation statistics. The seasonal cycle of coastal SST is adequately described by the first two harmonics and is very regular in both El Ni¿o and non El Ni¿o years. In contrast, the seasonal cycle of zonal wind over the western equatorial Pacific varies from year to year and is dominated by years of large negative swings of the Southern Oscillation index. Hence it seems unlikely that the winds over the western equatorial Pacific contribute strongly to the seasnal cycle of coastal SST. For nonseasonal variability the winds with periods shorter than 15 months precede fluctuations in coastal SST by 2 to 4 months, consistent with the remote forcing hypothesis, while for the lower frequencies the SST leads the winds by 2 to 3 months, similar to El Ni¿o composite zonal winds of Rasmusson and Carpenter (1982). ¿ American Geophysical Union 1987