To briefly sum up these past two months:
Chile had its big bicentennial birthday, which several of us celebrated by visiting Viña del Mar. It was so beautiful! We spent a lot of our time at the beach, walking around, eating ice cream and visiting museums. Really looking forward to revisiting before I return to the U.S.
We also visited Pucón, a smaller town in the south of Chile. This city is super enchanting, with a beautiful lake backdropped by an icy volcano. Highlights: Visiting thermal waters/hot springs and waterfalls, bike-riding around town, artisanal chocolates and ice cream, zip-linning, bonfire under the stars.
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| German-owned chocolate & ice cream artisan shop |
We also visited La Serena last weekend. La Serena, as its name implies, is a serene beach town with almost all of the colonial architecture preserved and in tact. We did so much while there, like visiting Valle de Elqui, a Pisco factory, Gabriela Mistral's home/museum, and the only archeological museum in the world with a Moai, the mysterious Easter Island statues.
Aside from all of these fun and remarkable experiences, I've been besieged with crazy-making amounts of work. Since my last post, I've taken the GRE, had three exams, seven papers, and two quizzes. Somehow I've kept my sanity... I've also decided not to apply to grad school for fall 2010. Most of the reason I wanted to apply to grad school was to dodge the recession, but I'm not sure that's enough of a reason. Instead I'm going to focus on applying for fellowships and other domestic and international professional development programs, and ::gulp:: real life, real world jobs (!) and apply to grad school in 2012.
I wanted to mention some of the issues Chile is currently grappling with that, in my opinion, it needs to confront to really be a democratic, egalitarian state. Disclaimer: these are just my opinions, and are only based on my own impressions of Chilean society.
The Mapuche: Chile's untold story. They are the indigenous people of Chile and part of Argentina. Like many indigenous groups, they are victims of imperialist legacies that have labeled them backward and inconsolably benighted. Many consider the Mapuche lazy, dirty, drunks (actual words used by people I've shared space with). So, it's sort of unsurprising that not many people cared about the 38 that participated in a hunger strike for approximately three months in protest of anti-terrorism laws the state was persecuting them with. These laws, imposed under Pinochet, allow the government to keep prisoners incarcerated for up to two years with no due process. In response, domestic protests arose with international solidarity in support of the Mapuche (even 4 leftist congressmen joined the hunger strike). Still, Chile has largely been apathetic to their fight. In fact, around 15 days of complete government inaction passed before it finally responded to the strike. On more than one occasion, I heard people crassly say "hay que dajarlos morir de hambre" (have to let them starve to death). Fortunately, before it reached that point, the Mapuche came to an agreement with the government, effectively endeding their hunger strike. The government agreed to try them "under the rules of ordinary criminal law."
Why were they accused of acts of terrorism? In recent years, the Mapuche have taken to occupying land,torching vehicles, toll booths, lumber shipments, and other property as a way to call attention to their main causes: equality, autonomy, and land reclamations (the government seized ancestral Mapuche land and sold it to international forestry corporations). They have been thrown in jail for years at a time for crimes like "threat of fire" and "offenses against authority." However the Mapuche have never harmed Chilean people in their land reclamations. So why exactly did the government charge them as terrorists? Systematically making their protests appear like violent terrorist acts is unsubstantiated in any logic, and may be a tactic employed by the state to sustain anti-indigenous sentiments and neoliberal motivations.
It's true that Piñera entered office on a hot year, especially considering the earthquake and its aftermath. But even in terms of disaster relief, the Mapuche were neglected. Most of the Mapuche live under the poverty line and were deeply affected by the earthquake, but they weren't even in the government's periphery for disaster relief. It's difficult to imagine the struggles indigenous people encounter daily while fighting to survive and preserve their culture in a world hellbent on assimilation, but even more unfathomable is having those struggles exacerbated by a natural disaster (and then abandoned by your govt). The Mapuche (like all indigenous peoples) have been so exploited and oppressed that, in my opinion, it is going to take aggressive, concerted effort to undo damage. This challenge will only be compounded by Chile's careless attitude toward the Mapuche. In general, younger Chileans and Izquierdistas support the Mapuche and their evolving land reclamation fight. But because so much of Chile's populace is politically conservative, many express either apathy or contempt to their experience. Unless some serious conciliation sweeps over the country, I think this will prove to be a ongoing point of conflict for Chile.
I'll only talk about this particular issue in this post because I don't want to make it seem as if I am entirely bashing Chile! I think that it truly is an incredible country, but at the same time I think that it is polarized in ways that affect many in the country.
I obviously need to also mention the miners! What an amazing time. To see the country in such jubilation was deeply moving. I think the miners being rescued was, in some ways, a step toward unification. While it is a polarized country, it is so in an almost exclusively political way. The problem is that Chile has such a complicated political history that this chasm can transcend to the social realm, too. But everyone, regardless of social class or political stance, was rooting for the miners. This gave the country some common ground, and I think it demonstrated that we are all capable of collectively experiencing empathy and compassion - both principles that have the ability to unite.
