Why Chile?

Its Christmas time here, but it’s a little difficult for me to get into the spirit especially after walking down to the center of the city today and seeing Santa and his Elves sweltering in the heat.  I’m happy though.  I made it through the commitment I originally had proposed to myself…that I was going to stay here and teach until the end of December.  Next week I will be headed to Buenos Aires, Argentina and then to Uruguay, and Iguazu Falls and then up to Sao Paolo, Brazil…that is on a very small budget which involves taking a lot of very long bus rides.  The summer months here are extremely slow as far as work and my friend invited me to stay with her and work in Brazil for a while.  I plan to return to Chile…most likely sometime in February.  During the winter months I was counting down the days to leave this place, because I missed my life in California, but now I feel so much more adjusted to life here.

Since I’ve been here, the Chileans have always asked me, “Why Chile?”, and I usually give them answers like being attracted to the mountains or the beach (which is actually where I spend the least amount of time).  I also tell people that it was because I wanted to learn Spanish and people laugh knowing this is the hardest place to learn.  And my other excuse is because of the Chilean economy, even though, as an English teacher I don’t make much money at all to compete with the high cost of living here.  But aside from all of this, maybe this place attracted me or vice versa because I really think it was just the right place to mirror back to me, “me,” in so many ways that I would never have considered.

So many of my students speak of Santiago in a negative way.  They speak of people that are unhappy with their jobs, people that are stressed, people that have a lot of fear…fear of knowing people outside their comfort zones and a fear of trusting each other.  This is so interesting to me because Santiago is supposed to be the “ideal” because of its financial prosperity and its reputation for being for the most part “safe” and “secure” unlike other areas of South America where you have to worry about kidnapping and corrupt police.  Parts of the city resemble the United States with huge shopping malls and Starbucks and wealthy people living in the hills.  But, I sometimes wonder if all of this push for materialism is the reason for my students’ thoughts on the unhappiness of the people here.  It makes me think of my experience living in South Orange County, California where people live in separation, no one knowing their neighbors and how rare it is to actually see someone outside other than their gardeners.  Parts of Santiago, particularly in Las Condes and Vitacura have that same secluded vibe.  My students also often speak of how this place lost a lot of its creative expression during the dictatorship and is still struggling to retrieve it in the midst of becoming a very materialist nation.  In fact, the dictatorship helped boost this materialism.  Maybe this is more true in Santiago alone, but it seems like a country that is trying to make sense of itself and its identity.  They say that out of all of the Latin American countries, and perhaps also because of its geography being that it is so isolated by the Andes Mountains, Chile sets itself apart as the most introverted.  Maybe this was the perfect place for me to learn about myself because that similar feeling of confusion, fear of money and success, and struggle to regain creative expression is exactly what I brought with me to Chile.  And this is actually changing now, but I really discovered how I had been living internally in the time I have spent here.  I felt this the many days I spent alone, most of the time sick, in my apartment during the cold winter months here.  Particularly in August.  That was the worst.

But, its summer now and I feel like I have woken up a little.

And I feel great.

Despite the distance I feel from the people as a whole, the people I have met individually are incredible.  I think recently the thing I’ve been thinking about most is how great solidarity is.  I feel this so much more in Latin culture than in the United States.  I actually feel like people care and want to take care of each other.  No matter how close I am to people here, I am always invited for lunch or dinner to someone’s house or taken care of when I’m sick.  I think I’ve actually finally realized what it is to feel true compassion.  I felt overwhelmed with this feeling for the first time the other night walking home from my friend’s apartment while I thought of my friendships here and how people have helped me and how people say I have helped them.  My friend here actually helped me believe it.  He actually made me feel real compassion for myself.  Maybe I was never opened to that kind of feeling before.  Maybe I never trusted it because in the US often we don’t believe in people in this way, we want to find the flaws in people, waiting for them to screw up, or we want to protect ourselves from something that could be false.  For the most part, my friends here are very expressive with their feelings and show their affection physically and verbally without all the sarcasm that we have in the US.  In fact, most of my students don’t even understand that word.

There are those small things here that I like that make me feel respected.  Of course kissing is the main greeting and expected when meeting someone for the first time or seeing friends or friends of friends.  I am always amazed when I come to someone’s house and even the little kids stop everything to come greet me and they do the same when I leave.  It’s expected of everyone no matter what the age.  In the US, often times the people closest to you won’t even get up from the sofa to answer the door for you, let alone have their kids acknowledge you.  And I grew up this way, being allowed to dismiss my own company.  This only ever trained me to assume that people are not important.

And, maybe this is why I want to stay a little longer here, because my thinking is changing.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what is going on in the States with the Occupy protests and how maybe many of us are waiting and hoping to return to that same lifestyle we have always lived in the States with job security and the availability of mostly whatever we want.  I think we have to accept the reality that nothing is certain and that striving for constant stability in life is sort of futile.  What we need to do in the US is start focusing on helping each other and to stop living so solitary like we have in the past.  So many of us (including myself) would never do anything for anyone if we did not feel that we were getting our fair share.  This is something I see that no longer works in my life.

The common criticism I hear of the protests is that “there are no handouts in life.”  I get that.  But what about compassion and kindness?  Do those things have to be earned?  Perhaps we could stop criticizing the protesters and instead do and say things to help empower them.  Obviously, they are people who have suffered.  Does it matter how or why or who is to blame?  It would be a bit more productive to give up this constant criticism of right and wrong and do something more real and affective for the good of our nation.  How great it would be to actually help people see that they don’t have to live like victims and can change and build their own lives without the limitations of fear.  I swear, the greatest thing we can do as a country is to be of real service to others no matter if we are being paid to do it or not.  It’s kind of a responsibility we have as human beings for the good of humanity.  We can only really do this through showing compassion and empathy, and through little things like actually listening to one another, and not through the joy of hearing ourselves tell each other what we are doing wrong.  I have learned this through the relationships in my life and I can see where I have constantly treated myself the same way.  It hasn’t benefited me at all to remain in this state of being.

I can honestly say that the greatest thing in my life is my friendship with others in the United States and here in South America.  I think of this often and I am so grateful.  I couldn’t survive being alone.  We create each other and so I think we should honor each other often.  I believe in this.

After the rain…and snow…and teargas…

Near the end of July I went through a rough time of homesickness and frustration with the Spanish language.  I decided to just accept the awkward feeling and make a change.   The first thing I did was change apartments and I now live in a new place with only Spanish speaking roommates. At the same time, I made a commitment of taking Spanish classes with a friend of mine five times a week.  For this reason, I haven’t had much time left over to write my blog since studying and working have been the only things occupying my time.  But now I am happy to say I feel less homesick and I am actually able to have conversations in Spanish – however slow I am – I am speaking now.

And I can finally say for once that I am proud of myself.  Next week I will have been here for six months and I am well over half of my original commitment of staying here until December.  Things weren’t quite the way I had imagined when I came here.  I had too many immediate expectations.  For one, learning a language is a process and so I’m over beating myself up about not being better than I am at this point.  And in addition to leaving my life behind in the States and coming here alone, it’s taken me a while to work out the kinks…  Most of all, I just accept that I am imperfect.  I have compassion for what I am going through when I look at my life on the outside…just as I would for anyone else.  I want to give myself a hug and tell myself that I am doing a good job!

August was an interesting month and definitely the coldest yet.  This is what the city looks like before and after the rain.  Note the thick layer of smog where the Andes Mountains should be in the before pictures:

And after the rain…..

 

I am definitely not cut out for winter.  It’s not only that I am always cold, but it affects everything about me.  I sleep late, have less motivation, no energy and I can’t kick that urge to hibernate with my calientecama (electric blanket).  The thing is like my best friend.  I don’t know why I never got one in the States.  Every morning I wake up nice and warm and it’s a struggle to turn the thing off and get out of bed.  I do that thing where I have to talk myself out of bed…if we just make it through the morning, then we can come back and lay in bed later in the afternoon for an hour…I think some people can adapt well to the cold, but certainly not me.  I remember years ago how I imagined dressing up in stylish coats and scarves, drinking hot cocoa and living in New York City and how romantic of an idea that sounded to me.  No thanks!  A few weeks ago it actually snowed in the city which apparently is rare outside of the mountains.  I walked 40 minutes in the slush to one of my student’s offices, completely unprepared…no boots, no gloves, no hot cocoa waiting for me and no romantic scene…just me freezing my ass off.  And then the next week I was sick.

And it’s a sickness that keeps returning.  Last weekend I stayed home all weekend in bed.  I couldn’t go out because I was on lock down by the mom of my roommate, Felipe.  She kept a close eye on me the entire weekend, making sure I ate all of my soup, making sure I wore socks walking around the apartment, giving me medicine, preparing me teas…  This is quite a change from the times I would get sick in the States.  In the States, when someone is sick, the people panic.  They put you in quarantine where you are avoided and forced to fend for yourself while people spray Lysol on everything you touch or come into contact with.  Needless to say, I’m not used to this kind of care and nurturing.

Outside the Universidad de Chile

Perhaps another thing that sparked my sickness was breathing in all of the teargas from all of the student protests last month.  College students as well as high school students have been protesting for several months now for free education and better education.  The protests can be unavoidable, and on more than one occasion I’ve found myself in the middle of a mob of running students and police spraying teargas.  The teargas lingers in the air and so you can be walking through the city and suddenly be struck with watery, stinging eyes.  Some areas of the city will wreak of teargas long after the students have left.  I canceled three of my night classes last month due to the protests and watched from my window as students threw rocks at the police and listened to people bang pots and pans together from their apartment windows as another sign of protest.  I like to ask each of my students what their opinions are of the protests.  All of my students are different in age and profession, but the consensus is that while they sympathize with and understand the reasons for the protest, they are not happy with all of the recent violence.

Barricades of chairs built by high school and university students

I teach a small group of women at a financial firm and they seemed to think that solving the education problem is not the real problem for Chile, but that the social class system is the bigger issue.  They concluded that even if the students win, that nothing would really change in Chile for the better because there would still exist a division in the people.  There is a big difference between rich and poor here, although personally I have not seen the same kind of poverty I saw when I was in Brazil.  The favelas there were like nothing I have ever seen…whole families living in shacks and by shacks I mean some sort of construction with four walls thrown together with a tin roof.  Still, I do feel the class system here and I have even felt it among friends I have made here that are from different family backgrounds and observing how they relate to one another.  An Argentine student of mine drew a circle for me in which he placed the poorest people in Santiago.  Around it, he drew another circle of semi-poor people and then another circle of lower middle class people and so on.  He told me that each group of people does not associate with the other at all and that here it is very important which area of the city that you live.  People actually lie on their resume and use another address for fear of not being hired.

Signs of Protest from Chilean students: President Pinera with donkey ears

I find it interesting here that the young people have organized themselves so well and have caused so much of a stir politically, enough to potentially make an actual change.  Friends of mine and I recently had dinner and talked about how we couldn’t see this kind of thing happening in the United States and we wondered why.  I always return to the idea that protest seems to be so much apart of the culture in Latin America, its natural here for people to protest about anything they oppose of the government and that it makes sense for the young people to make themselves heard.  But then young people seem to be doing this everywhere around the world lately, in Egypt, in London, in Spain, in many other countries…but not the U.S.  I read an article recently in the Huffington Post that contemplated the same question.  The article implies that the young generation in the United States nowadays has become numb and complacent.   It goes on to suggest that perhaps the youth (I include myself in this) in the United States are emulating the passive traits of the characters in all of our great Hollywood movies such as “Hangover II.”   It could be.  The writer made an interesting point in saying that the only young people who protested in the U.S. this year have been a group of angry foreign students who came to the U.S. to study English as part of a State Department program, but were instead forced to work long hours for little pay at the Hershey’s Chocolate Factory.

This weekend is September 11^thand this day has quite a different meaning in Chile because it is the anniversary of the day that the dictator Pinochet and a coup backed by our CIA took control of Chile in 1973.  For people not familiar with the history, before Pinochet, Salvador Allende was President of Chile.  He was a Socialist leader voted for by the Chilean people.  The government of Allende was not welcomed by the United States who feared the possibility of another successful Communist country, and during Nixon’s presidency the U.S. invested $8 million dollars over a three year period to boost Anti-Allende opposition.  Supposedly, during the day of the coup, Allende killed himself in the Presidential Palace in La Moneda, however people seem to have doubts that he ended his own life.

The Presidential Palace of La Moneda

The poet Pablo Neruda also died two weeks after the coup and some people suspect that his death was not coincidental, but that he was possibly poisoned for being too critical of the military.  Pinochet’s dictatorship lasted into the late 1990’s and during his time in power scores of people were killed, tortured or went missing.  A report published in 2004 showed that at least 27,000 people were tortured under the Pinochet dictatorship, in more than 1,100 detention centers.  One of my students who now manages a mining company, was a human rights activist in the early 1980’s and was arrested by the police.  While in captivity, he was tortured by electric shock (in which he lost one testicle) and he watched the police murder his friends.  And to attempt to end his life, the police drove him up to a desolate area of the Andes, stabbed him and kicked him off the side of the mountain to die.  He woke up hours later and managed to walk to a small town and seek refuge in a church where the priests and nuns there helped him heal and kept him hidden.

It was suggested to me to stay indoors on the 11th because the people love to riot on this day and that this year will be worse due to all of the student protests.  We will see…

Protests and Mellowness

The other day I sat on a bench reading a book and a man came up and sat down right next to me when clearly there were other benches available.  He read his paper and didn’t even concern himself with me.  My first instinctual feeling was this is my bench.  My other instinctual feeling was to get up and move, but I stopped myself because that kind of thing is normal here and so it probably should be.  It’s not like I was threatened or harmed.  But, for a second I felt that “invasion of space” feeling that people don’t seem to feel here.

And it makes me feel that I have a lot of negativity inside me and I’m just wondering where it all came from and how I learned to feel this way in the US?  Any why?

I observe people standing in long lines in stores waiting for the checkout counter and no one seems to complain, no one appears angry.  This would be a totally different scene in the US.  Any amount of waiting I ever experienced in line at the grocery store in the US usually amounted in a great deal of negative energy directed at the cashier.  I don’t feel it here from anyone.  Actually, I usually feel like the only person with a crumpled face trying to see what is going on up ahead in line.  I feel anxious, but no one around me seems to be.

But then the other side of the mellowness I feel from people here is that I seem to be ever attracting myself to places where sudden protests break out.

A few days ago I sat in the park at La Moneda, outside of the Presidential Palace when suddenly police politely asked everyone to leave.  Heading towards the metro, I saw two tanks ride by.  When I turned the corner for the metro, a wall of police appeared along with hundreds of screaming people.  Thankfully, I made it down in the metro just as the police where closing it off.  Two days after that, I was walking though the park on my way to work and had another encounter with angry young people throwing rocks at tanks and people getting sprayed with water cannons by the police.  There have been so many protests lately because the government is supporting a hydrogen electric project that would literally tear up Patagonia and run power lines through 2,000 miles of farmland to give more energy to Santiago.  No one wants the project to happen, but it has already been approved.  Because of the protests, the police have been using tear gas to clear the crowd.

Upon telling my friend Roxana, about almost getting tear gassed in the park, her casual response was “girl, you ain’t lived in Chile until you do,” and she speaks from experience of having been tear gassed at last year’s Independence Day celebration in El Centro in September.  Apparently, the night was ending and the police needed everyone to leave.  I guess that is the best way to make a crowd disperse.

Lastly, I am now down an Ipod.  My solution for a much calmer ride on the metro has been taken away from me and coincidentally while I was riding the metro.  Over a week ago, on yet another suffocating metro ride someone unzipped my bag when I was not looking and swiped my Ipod.   I swear, I hate that metro.   I had so many fantasies of finding the person and punching their head.  So, now I can no longer listen to “All you need is Love,” while riding the thing, but like my friend in the States said, maybe all I need is a gas mask instead.