La Marcha

Politcal activism is something we take for granted in the United States. We all know that we have the right to protest and that is just dandy. When we have a problem with legislation we write to our Representatives and Senators in Washington. Sometimes, a vocal minority actually goes down to D.C. and marches, as has occured in the past few years in protest to the war in Iraq. The Chileans, however, take protesting very seriously.

On Tuesday I went to class as normal and when I showed up there was a mass of people standing outside of the main building on campus, La Casa Central. I walked up to the doors and found a wall of desks and chairs blocking the entrance. I asked a student what was going on and he informed me that one of the majors at the school had started a "Toma." (The verb tomar means to take). Literally, they had taken the building in protest of recent government legislation to raise the student bus fair about 100% in an effort to assist the struggling public school systems. This was just the last straw for the students as the government has also been threatening to privatize UPLA. Also, there has been a strong student movement since I have been down here to have a public school at the same caliber as the expensive private schools in Chile. All this has lead to "paros" or strikes in a few of the majors, thus, I only had one class this week.

Today was a nation-wide day of protest for the students and naturally I couldn't resist a little jaunt with my camera right into the thick of it all. The National Congress is located here in Valparaiso and today there was a giant march, of all the college and high school students in the city down the main avenue, Pedro Montt. The students marched from one end of town to the Congressional building, blocking off the entire street. At the Congress the Caribinieros (Police) waited with riot gear and some crowd control equipment as seen below.

Those intimidating, green, military-esque vehicles blocked the road to the congress. The one to the left is known as a Guanaco. The truck is loaded with water that smells like sewage and has a high pressurized super soaker on top.

At first the March was peaceful, people where chanting, clapping, even sitting down in the street as they waited. They had submitted a letter to Congress earlier that day with all of their wishes and concerns and where waiting for a response. I was accompanied by a friend from my Philosophy class, Lizardo, and he was able to fill me in on everything going on. All of a sudden a group of people to our right began to throw rocks and bottles at the Carabinieros. Lizardo informed me that these were all the high school students. None of the college aged kids where looking for violence and they shouted and booed the agitators. The kids continued to throw rocks and Lizardo and I were surprised by the restraint the Carabinieros showed. When the kids broke down the barrior and threw a barrage of rocks, glass, and wood they got the reaction they were waiting for. The trucks revved their engines and moved quickly at the assailants. The Guanaco shot the shit water in the direction of the crowd and a mass stampede ensued as the Carabinieros chased after the aggressors, arresting a few and ultimately breaking up what was once a peaceful protest.

We hung around for a bit afterwards and watched as kids continued to mess with the police. I saw one of the my more worse behaved students from the Colegio pick up a piece of sidewalk and smash it on the road into smaller pieces for ammo.

This is the second day that I have seen a violent clash between citizens and police. Yesterday I witnessed a group of protestors throwing eggs and rocks at the Municipality building. They were protesting the construction of a proposed mall here in Valpo. It was broken up when a Guanaco rolled in and sprayed the protestors, followed by Carabinieros wrestling people into a paddywagon. This country faced serious repression under the dictatorship of Pinochet. Some people suffered tremendously, some benefitted, some disapeared, and some died. Political activism was a crime and taken very seriously. Today it is still taken very seriously and these students are going to fight until someone listens. Unfortunately, in every large protest there are going to be people who are only there to start trouble. To a sixteen year old, angry teenager there is nothing more beautiful than a rock in a cop's face. Some high school students will have a story to tell tomorrow, other's will be in prison. Unfortunately they did nothing to achieve the goals of the protest and ultimately tarnished the goals of the student majority.

Coast to Coast to Coast to Coast

As April draws to a close I am ashamed at my lack of posts. This is not due to a lack of activity, on the contrary, the month did not dissapoint. A few weeks ago I was under the impression that my schedule was pretty set in stone. Monday and Tuesday I would wake up early and head over to the school down the street to teach English. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I would trek across town to La UPLA and sit in class, trying to pay attention. I have a hard enough time paying attention to classes back at Midd but during a lecture in Spanish it is impossible not to let the mind wander to things that I can actually understand without an Espanol-Ingles dicionario.

This was all upset on a normal Tuesday when Sage, another student here from Midd, explained to us that the following week would be the week of Mechones, a week celebrating the first year students. She informed us that there would be no classes after 11 A.M. each day and that she planned on traveling. With this my mind began to wander. If I left Thursday after my last class I could have ten days before my next class. My own personal spring break was thus formulated and set into action. Two days later Molly and I sat on an overnight bus peircing the Andes at death-defying speeds; cheap wine and steak ahead of us, Valparaiso behind us.

We spent two days in Mendoza and sampled the fruits of the region. One day we rented bicycles and cruised through the vineyards, stopping to take tours and sample wines. At the last vineyard someone took Molly's bike and switched it for a bike with a flat tire. The ride back was long and unbearably uncomfortable as I felt every pothole and rock under the bare metal rim in my crotch. As I was peddling and sweating profusely I heard someone yell, "Go home Jacky" as a Moped cruised by. It took quite a while of confusion until I finally realized that he had not confused me for his thin female cousin but had recognized me for the patriotic, red-blooded, live free or die, American that I am. I wish I had been able to inform him that in reality I support the Mets.

We arrived in Buenos Aires on Sunday morning and spent the day walking through the San Telmo Antiques Market, a giant gathering of mimes, clowns, artisans, antiquers, tourists, Tango bands and dancers, and more people trying to sell mate gourds than there are monedas in Argentina. To explain this simile: there are no coins in Argentina and thus Molly and I spent the week hording as many as we could get our greedy American hands on. I've been told it is because the metal is worth more than the actual value of the coins so people take them to Paraguay and sell them. In reality, nobody knows. In spite of this, Argentina now lacks more pesos. Booya.

We spent the week taking advantage of the economically unstable country, fueled by copious amounts of dead animal, wine, and mate. We met up with other Midd students and went out in style. On Monday night we went to La Bomba, an excellent weekly concert of a large percussion band. They played for two hours as the crowd rejoiced over music and the two dollar-a-liter beer.

We went to the zoo on Wednesday with Forrest. I love animals, even if they are in cages and presumably miserable, so I had a great time. That night we also noticed a strange scent in the air as we left a bar around two in the morning with Pujan and Will. It smelled like smoke; how strange.

The next day we went to El Tigre in the delta region north along the coast of the Rio del Plata,

the largest river in the world. We took the public transportation, a sick old wooden boat, to one of the islands where I ate more steak and we walked into a field of spiders that were probably raised by Hagrid and grew up eating intruding wizards in the Forbidden Forest.

When we returned to the city we could barely see anything through the thick smoke that had blanketed Buenos Aires. It turns out that the farmers in the delta are protesting the price at which the government was planning to buy their crops. In Argentina products are exported through the government, the idea being that the farmers will receive a fair price and the government can take a nice little treat for itself. This year however, when the price the government set was lower than normal, massive protests ensued. At first the farmers blocked all the roads into Buenos Aires and then they began burning all their fields, literally suffocating the country's capital. By the end of our week it was miserable outside. I felt like I was in a seedy bar the entire time; I never saw the sun, my eyes were watering, and my throat felt like an ashtray. I was actually excited to get on the 24 hour bus on Sunday and get the hell out of Malas Aires for the cloudy, dreary skies that were waiting for me here on the other coast in Valparaiso.

Dead bodies smell funny

Last weekend I went to Santiago to stay with Sergio again. The weekend was full of great activities such as climbing, eating meat, seeing dead bodies dissected and placed in silly positions, watching Catholics drink at ten in the morning at a religious parade on Sunday, and more climbing.

To clarify some of that.

Rest assured the dead bodies were in a controlled environment. The Bodies Exhibit is in Santiago for the next few months and I could not pass up the opportunity to see a complete circulatory system outside of a body and fetuses (what is the plural of fetus? Is it like cactus: feti?) in jars. At first I was wondering where someone could find so many bodies to play with but then I realized that they were all Asian and it probably isn't that hard to find a plethora of unclaimed bodies in China.

On Sunday we went to the Quazi Moto parade near Sergio's house to see some caballos (horses), Santi's favorite animal and word. The parade happens every year after Easter and traditionally it was the day that the Catholic priests brought all the money down from the local churches to the main casa del Dios. All the huascos, or cowboys, would come out and escort the Priests, protecting them from robbers, along their journey. Today the priests don't really need to worry about robbers, just drunk guys on their horses.

What do sixth graders, four letter English words, and Pablo Neruda have in common?

I have been thinking a lot about this newfangled "blogging" and I am in a bind. I am always torn between writing a ton of detail about my life down here or short and sweet reviews. Its just a bit hard because I don't like writing summaries of my weekends/weeks/days/etc.

With that in mind:

Last weekend I went with my family to Quizco, a small beach town about and hour and a half south of Valpo. We rented a Cabana about two blocks from the beach and spent the weekend eating delicious food and playing cards and dice. The weather was cold and overcast for most of the weekend but the sun did come out for a few hours on Saturday and I got to go to the beach for a few hours.

On Sunday we went to Pablo Neruda's house in Isla Negra for a tour. Pablo Neruda is Chile's most famous poet who traveled the world as a diplomat for the country. He filled his house with ecclectic collections of everything to pipes, rare insects and butterflies, masks, to a large collection of figureheads from the bows of ships. The house is build on a cliff overlooking the giant Pacific waves that crash in front of the house. This house is officially baller-steaz.

On Monday I started my internship at El Colegio de La Republica del Paraguay, a public school down the street from my house. I am assisting a teacher with English classes and I will work about fifteen hours a week there. The first two days were eventful and crazy. The classes completely vary in the behavior of the students. In sixth grade class the only English sentence they knew was "eh, fuck you meng," which they yelled constantly when they weren't drawing pictures of pot leaves, pretending to snort coke of their desks, or punching each other. Seriously, I have no idea how these kids know so much about drugs. One of the kids even walked up to me in class and tried to give me a rolling paper as a gift.

The other sixth grade class however was completely different. They sat at their desks and drew their family tree complete with pretty colors and translations of grandmother, father, brother, etc.

Needless to say the public schools are underfunded and thus, on a whole, the kids lack any sort of discipline which puts them at a serious disadvantage for their future education. My host mom told me that out of the forty or fifty kids who graduate from public school, three or four will go on to a university. Hopefully, at least some of them will learn some English.

Classes...well kind of

My first week of classes came to a close today. On Tuesday I went to a Latin American Literature class that I never really planned on taking. I didn't have anything to do during the day and I figured I would just go and see what classes were like. The class was interesting and after the class the Professor told all the Gringos that we would only have to read one book for every four that the other students would read. Although this definately made the class tempting, as of right now I am not going to take it.

Wednesday I went to a Philosophy of Latin America course that I am definately going to take. The professor is this old man who talks incredibly slowly. The class is small and it seems like there is going to be a lot of participation and discussion. After that I went to History of Chile and the Americas, which was sans professor and thus cancelled.

Afterwards Maria, Sasha, and I went downtown to hang around while I waited for my five o'clock Photography class back at UPLA. A few hours later when I returned I found a teacher's assistant sitting behind the Professor's desk and a sign in sheet again sans Professor. So to wrap up the first day: Professors 1 for 3.

Today the Professors made a better showing and attended both my classes! Again Philosophy and for the first time a bit of history. History will prove to be interesting because I probably understood 5 to 10 percent of what the Professor said. What I did understand was that there is a chance that the Wednesday class will change to Monday. This however, does not fair well with me because as of right now, I have classes Wednesday and Thursday, thus affording me a five day weekend. Stop, its hammertime.

Immediately after classes I booked it across town back to Cerro Las Placeres for a meeting at the public school that I will be working at. I met with the Director of the school and the English teacher and I start on Monday. When I walked into the school all I saw in front of me was a mass of children craving recess. It looks like I will be teaching English in the morning with the teacher and if I need more hours I will help with other activities in the afternoon like sports or tuturing. This makes me a bit nervious because I suck at soccer and I feel like these kids are going wreck me. I fear that I will have to relive my short stint playing soccer as a child. My only real memory of this is of some kid named Jason kicking the ball straight into my stomach, sending me to the ground in tears. That was the first time I ever got the wind knocked out of me and I will never forget it. To me, soccer signifies running confused and desperate behind everyone else for ninety minutes. Now I just have to do that in another language. Sweet.

The other day I walked around town with my camera for a bit. The following are some selected images.

Perfect example of a normal street in Cerro Alegre

Graffiti in a the ruins of a charred house

One of my favorite murals

View of the city from Cerro Concepcion

Cajon de Maipo

Early Friday morning Maria and I met at the bus terminal to catch a bus over to Santiago. Maria, formally known as Molly, is a friend from Middlebury who is also studying at UPLA in the same program. We had planned to get away for the weekend on a simple camping and backpacking trip to Cajon de Maipo. My friend Sergio recommended to me this area as it is only about an hour and a half outside of Santiago with plenty of places to camp and a beautiful National Park, El Parque El Morado. It all seemed very simple. All we needed to do was get a bus to Santiago, buy a stove, get a bus to San Jose de Maipo, and finally take one more bus to Baños Morales. We planned on getting to the park in the early afternoon, hiking for about two hours to a glacial lagoon and setting up camp.

Needless to say, we are naive gringos in a land where flexible plans are a necessity.

When we arrived in Santiago we rode the subway and then a bus to a mall on the other side of town where Sergio recommended that we buy a stove. In addition to buying the stove and a thermos I was tempted by a glorious foodcourt full of all my favorites: Burger King, Taco Bell, Subway, and yes, the glorious McDonald's. Immediately I got in line with my giant purple backpack and ordered a Cuarto de Libre con Queso (Quarter Pounder with Cheese Whatup!). After feasting, we returned to the Metro and when we got to our intended stop we where informed that the buses for Cajon de Maipo were now at a different station on the other side of town. Finally we arrived at the station that we were told was correct.

We walked around, confused and all geared out in our backpacking clothes for a while until we finally asked a guard where the buses left for Cajon de Maipo. He told us they were in front of the building but when we went to find it there were about thirty buses honking their horns in a two lane highway. So, Maria asked another guard where we could find our bus and after consulting his amigos on his radio he replied that we needed to go to the back of the building . So we returned to the other guard where he insisted very sternly that he had been working at the station for many years and that he was sure that all the buses for Cajon de Maipo where out front. Assuredly (kind of), Maria and I entered into the maze of buses and consulted some chicos which bus we needed to take. They were very helpful and pointed out one bus that said "Buin-Maipo." Ah, Maipo, this must be our bus. After missing one or two of these buses due to our confusion we finally hopped on the bus and I asked the driver, "This goes to Cajon de Maipo, right?" He nodded his head and asked for 700 pesos which we were glad to give for our reassurance that all we had to do was relax as our destination approached.

About an hour later I looked out the window and saw signs for Buin. I consulted the small map that Maria was smart enough to tear out of her Lonely Planet guide and saw that Buin was not at all in the direction of Cajon de Maipo. Ah no matter, I thought, the bus must go there next. The driver did after all say that we were on the right bus.

Slowly all the people on the bus began to trickle off and eventually it was only Maria, me, and another hombre. I asked the man, "Are we close to San Jose de Maipo? We are trying to get to Baños Morales, can we take a collectivo from here?" He assured me that we only needed to walk a few blocks more and we would be there. Great, I thought. However, as I looked out the window and only saw fields of green I couldn't help but wonder what this man meant by "walk a few blocks."

Finally we pulled into a gravel parking lot. I tried to talk to the driver but I'm still not sure if he spoke Spanish. I can understand some Chileans but others don't move their mouths when they speak. Even when you ask them to repeat something slower, nothing changes except your level of frustration. Finally we figured out that we took a bus in the completely wrong direction. The drivers at the rural terminal got a good laugh at us and I couldn't help but wonder why this driver didn't tell me that we were on the wrong bus when I asked him about our destination two hours ago.

In retrospect, Maria and I did get to see a part of Chile that we weren't planning on seeing: more rural nothingness. Not to mention now we know the public transit buses from Buin to San Jose, about a two hour journey, so if anyone ever needs some advice in this sector, I am your source.

Finally, as we were riding our bus to San Jose we were informed that there is only one bus to Baños Morales and it leaves in the morning. In San Jose we ended up finding a hostel with a gracious little old Chilean lady host. Just as we arrived to the hostel the skies opened up with pooring rain, thunder, and lightning. We smiled as we saw huge bolts striking the mountains where we had planned to sleep that night.

Later we decided to explore the town for a restaurant. San Jose is extremely small and situated along the Maipo river which carved a giant canyon through the Andes. As Maria tried to pump out a quick email to our program directors about our trip a large flash of lightning was followed by complete darkness. A few teenage girls screamed in the street and all the computor screens in the internet cafe went black. After about three seconds of silence we both burst out in laughter. Abandoning the internet cafe we walked down the pitch black streets, lit sporatically by lightning and a few car headlights. Finally we arrived to the center square and found a restaurant with some candles inside. We went in, having no idea what the name of the restautant was nor what it looked like, sat down, order two beers, and laughed over the ridiculous day. The dinner however was delicious complete with a perfect atmosphere of candles, lightning, and steak.

When we finally found our hostel in the darkened streets we learned that the son of the owner had gone out looking for us in the dark. It seemed that the family was worried about us and wanted to make sure we returned to the hostel safely. Not bad for a ten dollar a night place.

We woke up ealier and got a ride up to Baños Morales. When we arrived we walked straight to the entrance of the El Parque El Morado and learned from the CONAF agent that camping was not permitted inside the park anymore and that we would have to camp in the small town outside the park.

Finally we were outside of the city and out of the snares of public transportation and misguided advice. The hike was beautiful and was a perfect day trek although it would have been awesome to camp in the park. The hike runs along a glacial moraine forming a canyon between two steep mountain ranges.


Eventually we got to the glacial lagoon and saw all the would-be-perfect camping sites. The clouds began to clear and Cerro El Morado came into view at a staggering 5060 meters.

After about another hour or so we crossed over a ridge and we stood at the base of the San Francisco glacier that fell from the base of El Morado. To our left we could hear a thundering waterfall which looked to be extremely muddy. As we looked closer we realized that the bulk of this fall was not water but was actually rock. At the base of the cliff, a large bulk of rocks was slowly moving down the slope like a mass of lava, slowly bubbling and crawling down into the valley. We stood in awe as the landslide carved its way through the rocky ground and eventually met up with the river of snowmelt in the base of the valley.



The return hike was easy and dinner was burnt lentils at our campsite. The next day we hung around and explored the small turist village of Baños Morales. The town is known to Santiguinos for its natural thermal baths, high in sulfur and other unknown but probably important minerals. We found the muddy holes in the ground and decided to give them a try. The water was a bit chilly and we stood uncomfortably in the water while Chileans swam around us in glee. I am not going to say that we enjoyed the thermal pools, but we didn’t hate it. It was mostly entertaining to watch all the weird people wading in the dirty water.

The rest of the day we hung around the campsite and drank mate as we waited for the afternoon bus back to Santiago. Which, thank Dios, was not as eventful as our ride from the country’s capital.

Necessities

Today I bought toenail clippers from a man with one tooth in a restaurant. That is all.