#9: March 1-4, 2024: Mendoza and the Night Bus Through the Andes

 Apologies for missing a week...at least this post will be somewhat eventful.

On Friday, March 1, we had our last day of classes before "Spring" Break. That night, three of us made our way to Santiago's bustling Estación Central to board a night bus from Santiago to Mendoza, Argentina. The route was totally wild; a couple of hours driving on progressively emptier roads away from the city, until suddenly we found ourselves amongst the mountains. Sometimes we were driving between them, sometimes we were driving through them in tunnels, and occasionally we were weaving up and down them in neat, terrifying curves, the road often lacking a shoulder, instead simply dropping off into dark nothingness (I don't know if it was better or worse that the darkness obscured much of the view of the drop). And because we had booked seats at the very front of the bus, we could see clearly the terrain ahead of us, in all of its terrifying narrowness.

After white-knuckling through the precarious periods, we arrived at the Chile-Argentina border. Luckily, on both the departure and return trip, Everything with customs was totally smooth, if time consuming (we spent probably ninety minutes just sitting in the bus waiting before we could actually get out and pass through customs.)

From there, we made it to Mendoza. We got to our hotel--it was a mixture between a hostel and bed-and-breakfast--and began to explore the city. I must say, I really loved Mendoza. It was quite different than Santiago, being a lot less populated and therefore significantly calmer. We took it pretty slow, using the days to try food and just walk around, exploring the parks near our hotel. We ate pasta, steak, pizza, ice cream. Great food. We also had the opportunity to talk to some locals on a couple of occasions, who helped me locate a stand where I could buy a Lionel Messi jersey (this was my one mission for the trip). Overall, I am really happy with the trip...it basically couldn't have gone better and it only cost 80$ in bus tickets.

Now I am back in Santiago and things are looking different than when I left...lots of people returned to Santiago this week so the streets, and especially the Metro, are more packed. It will be interesting to see what the second half of the program holds.

#8: February 20, 2024: Day 40

 I have been in Chile for forty days, and will be here for eighty days more. I thought that this would be a good milestone, a good way for me to split this journey up, to conceptualize it and reflect.

It has gone by both incredibly fast and incredibly slow. My first day here seems so long ago. And yet, other firsts--the first trip to the coast, for instance--feel like they happened just yesterday. I suppose that's how time works. I feel like I have done so much, but also feel like there is so much I haven't done yet. 

Forty days is about twenty-five days longer than I have ever been away from home. Some days are harder than others. I have now built a good routine into this place--the metro, the shops, the parks, classes--but I would be lying if I said that I didn't miss home. I have realized being here just what a magical place Iowa City is. Sometimes I wonder how much it has to do with the city itself, and how much it is just because I know the place, in a fundamental way.

This leads me to the great, but difficult, part of being in Santiago, which is the experience of a brand new space, new culture, and most significantly, a new language. It is breathtaking to experience something new, to learn something new. But there is also a friction that comes with it. As I move through this 1/3 milestone, I am trying to lean into the friction. This is where growth happens, sure, but it's also where life happens. I try to keep in mind what Kalmia told me before I left, something like: "Don't forget to do stuff." Her only small "regret", about her months abroad in Guatemala, was not doing more stuff. At this point, I am beginning to understand what she meant by this, and I will try my best to keep putting those words into action. And it truly has gotten easier in my time so far...I feel settled in very nicely.

I got some acrylic paints from Lider and my first painting was so terrible. I am telling myself that I would more closely resemble Van Gogh if only they had oil paints. This might be my new favorite fallacy: Blaming the Medium. I abandoned pastel drawing long ago...maybe I'll get some watercolors.

Trip for spring break is set: I'm off to Mendoza on March 1st. My only plan right now is to pick up a Messi jersey. Will keep you posted.

#7: February 8-9, 2024: Londres 38, and the Living Historian

 On Friday, the 9th of February, I met with Julio Aguilar Hidalgo, a historian living here in Santiago. We got in touch with each other through my professor and advisor from the University of Iowa, Viridiana Hernandez Fernandez. We met by a KFC outside of metro stop Los Leones, and walked to a coffee shop nearby. Very quickly, I started talking about the environmental history texts that I have read, my thesis project, and my quest to construct a reading list of Latin American environmental history. He answered my questions patiently and had a lot of interesting things to say.

At one point, he said something like: "I was talking with Viridiana a few days ago about our meeting, and I mentioned that you are here in Chile at a very interesting time, a historic time...between the wildfires in Valparaíso and the death of our former president (Sebastián Piñera)...what do you think about being here in this moment?"

I struggled to answer his question. In the end, the best I could come up with was something like: "These events are tragic and it is an interesting time, but I feel like I lack the context within which these events are happening...because of that, I don't know exactly how to interpret them from a 'historical' angle, or even from a personal angle really.''

This is, obviously, a tremendously unsatisfactory answer. But I think it's true, and I think its a function of existing in any new place. That being said, there are things in Santiago that work against this problem. It could be said that the place itself--understood as a mass of people and infrastructure and noise and art and space, public space and private space--is working constantly to offer up the context within which to understand itself. In other words: the city is an embodiment of the memory of its past, continually re-remembered as it continually makes itself. Events in the present are understood intuitively as part of a continuum of history that grows.

A perfect example of this is the monument that seven of us in the program, led by our professor, the fearless Andrés, went to on Thursday the 8th. It's called Londres 38, a building in downtown Santiago that has gone through many conversions along its continuum. Up until 1973, it was used as a headquarter building for the Partido Socialista de Chile. After Pinochet's coup in 1973, the state converted the building into a torture chamber for political dissidents. In 1975, 1000 victims later, the torture stopped in the building, and its ownership was ''transferred'' to the O'Higginian institute, a Pinochet-affiliated organization bent on obscuring the truth of the building's use. Finally, in the mid-2000s, the ownership of the building was transferred to the state (that is, the democratic state) and its role as a place of memory began. It has since developed into a series of exhibits that remember the past (so as not to repeat it) and wrestle with the future. Speaking to this, one room of the monument is dedicated to those who protested on the streets of Santiago beginning in 2019 in response to acute inequality and a cost of living crisis. There is a clear sense of the connectedness of all of these things across the breathing timeline of Chilean history.

#6: February 2, 2024: Isla Negra and Pomaire

 On Friday, the 2nd of February, our program took a day trip, again to the coast of Chile but this time south of Viña del Mar, to a town called Isla Negra. This was the last place where Pablo Neruda lived before his death in Santiago following the coup on President Salvador Allende. In Isla Negra, Neruda was buried, exhumed, and buried again following an investigation from 2013-2015 into his cause of death--as this investigation showed, his cause of death was murder, not cancer. Neruda and his wife rest there in Isla Negra, their feet pointed toward the sea. 

His house there, now the museum Casa de Isla Negra, was fascinating. It turns out, Neruda was much more than a poet. The museum displays a vast array of his collected artworks and artifacts, as well as his insect and shell collections. As one can surely imagine, he was fascinated with natural life. This must be a reason why he found Isla Negra to be a creatively stimulating place. Looking out from his windows, one gets a tremendous view of the ocean, churning water continuously against a wide and sturdy outcropping of boulders on the shoreline. This flow is beautiful from afar, but got to be somewhat violent as we got closer, hopping between the rocks. Faced with this threatening advancement of waves, I began to think about the small earthquakes we have been feeling in Santiago so far this semester. On the coast and in the city, over the past 15 years, much destruction has been caused by earthquakes, especially in conjunction with coastal waters. Neruda's house itself sustained damage from a 2010 earthquake, and Pomaire, a small town we visited on our way back to Santiago, was badly damaged by the event. Both places, as our program visit itself demonstrates, operate with strong tourist economies. Both the interjection of natural disasters and the disruption of things like the COVID-19 pandemic have altered these economies in ways that are often difficult. 

When we ate at a restaurant in Pomaire, La Fuente de mi Tierra, our placemats had a message on them: "Mr Tourist: Buy Greda (clay sourced locally, pottery being a historic and present commodity in Pomaire), help maintain and sustain our identity. Pomaire is sinking, and that is caused by the invasion of products that don't contribute to tourist development in our town. When you buy these products, you encourage and enrich the person who only looks for their own self-benefit. Prefer Greda."

Indeed, walking through the block of Pomaire dedicated to shops, we were confronted with a puzzling assortment. Many shops carried the same types of goods, often sold for very different prices. Some sold "artisinal"-seeming hats, others sold ball caps. There was much pottery, but also many other goods that simply seemed more "touristy". These distinctions were lost on most of us (who did not read the placemat closely), and I think this flattening might be part of the issue. Tourists do not have a discerning eye for engaging with a new environment in which some of their actions might help stimulate a delicate and precious set of livelihoods, while others might work against them. We spent an hour sweeping through the town, an advancing wave, and then we were gone, retreated back. What kind of force did we enact upon the town?

I have been thinking a lot about the tourist visa that allows me to stay here. What kinds of obligations does this designation imply? What are my responsibilities? What is my role here? Do I have one? These are complicated questions, and I am not the one who can answer them. I think the best I can do is to take the messages I receive, on restaurant placemats and in the classroom and through the dynamic structure of the earthquake-resilient buildings that move beneath my feet, and internalize them as best as I can.

#5: January 27, 2024: Is This Heaven? No, it's Fantasilandia.

 Fantasilandia, a theme park within Parque O'Higgins, is the place where celebrations proliferate, thrills abound, and young adults and children make themselves dizzy for entertainment. The food is fatty, the rides are just about functional, and a Pepsi costs four times what it does outside of the park's gates; in all manners, this magical place reminded me of home. This is also not to mention the abundance of cerveza circulating the premises, a precious commodity on any ninety-degree day, especially in fantasy-land. Inhibitions must be thoroughly dismantled before one takes on "El Boomerang", a gut-churning rollercoaster that rivals Chile's coastal bus system in terms of velocity and g-force.

I myself mostly stuck to the kids rides: A teacup that spins inoffensively, a rotating swing, and the refreshing water rides. I found myself mostly fascinated not with the rides themselves but with the aura of the place. It reminded me of Lost Island in Waterloo, and Arnolds Park in Okoboji. For the longest time, I thought there was something distinctly midwestern about theme parks, but Fantasilandia has disrupted that notion. I guess thrills are universal.

#4: January 19-25, 2024: Viña del Mar, Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos

On Friday, January 19, our program went on a weekend trip to the coast, ninety minutes west of Santiago. We started in Valparaíso with a trip to the Valparaíso Fine Arts Museum located in the Palacio Baburizza, a 20th century home-turned-gallery featuring the once-private collection of Pascual Baburizza. As enjoyable as the art inside the museum was, those in our group were particularly struck by the amount of art outside it. Indeed, Valparaíso is known as a "bohemian" city full of street art and culture. Like in Santiago, graffiti abounds. We then went to the Dunas de Concón, beautiful sand dunes overlooking the coast. There, we rented what are essentially snowboards which we covered in wax and used to sled down the dunes. It was physically demanding, and some in our group fared better than others...I myself was respectably middle-of-the-pack in terms of velocity and distance.

Later in the day, a smaller group of us (8) split off from the main pack, who were headed back to Santiago, and boarded a bus to take us from Valparaíso to Viña del Mar. This bus experience, which we endured four times over the course of the weekend, was strange to say the least. The fare was only 450$ CLP (about 50 cents) but the bus itself was packed like a can of sardines. In fact, during the ride I began to get jealous of canned sardines; at least they don't have to be conscious of their acute compression, and are free from the gut-wrenching lurches made by our bus as it careened around corners, rocketed down winding roads, and frequently slammed to halts as it arrived at its numerous stops. Just before I hurled, mercifully, we arrived.

I loved Viña del Mar because the ocean reminded me Lake Superior in Duluth, which reminded me of home. There is something about that sheet of blue, defining the endless expanse of space and erasing the distinction between water and sky, that grounds me. With this grounded feeling, I began to wade into the water. I got comfortable with the temperature and the pulsating waves--water would flow in, and with strength it would pull back--but I soon found myself with a little more than I could handle. A much bigger wave, the kind just not present on Lake Superior, came forward. Being a midwestern boy, I did not know how to react, and I did what turned out to be the wrong thing, jumping high up into the wave (rather than down through it). The wave threw me back, bobbled me around, and spit me back out onto the beach. I was able to laugh it off without getting my pride hurt too bad, but I can't help but feel that the ocean beat me that day.

Head full of sea salt, I headed with the group to our hostel and we got on with our weekend, trying local food and spending time with each other. We came back Sunday afternoon, exhausted and sandy.

The week that followed, leading up to this present moment, has been perhaps the most difficult period so far. We are in a strange space in between the initial "honeymoon phase" (as our program advisor's called it) and the rest of the semester. For me, I think I am in a unique position, where I have lived in the same city for my entire life. I don't know if I have ever been away from Iowa City for more than a couple of weeks! I am breaking new ground here, but it is difficult. Amidst my gratitude for Santiago, which is such a beautiful place, and my excitement to continue with this incredible experience, I really do miss Iowa City and the family I have there. I am taking comfort in the fact that it will be there for me in a few short months. Also, I am present in the knowledge that this program will fly by. There are 15 weeks to go and I know they will be over soon. Time works very strange.

Oh yes, the Human Rights Museum. A group of us, led by our Government and Politics professor Andres, went there yesterday, Thursday. Andres led us through the museum, reading for us and explaining various exhibits, testimonials, and historical events. Fundamentally, as Andres told us, the museum's function is to remember the horrific events of the Pinochet Dictatorship in Chile (1973-1990) through information and testimonials of its victims. The first step toward reconciliation, justice, and the maintenance of "fragile" democracy in Chile, he says, is uncovering truth. A potent form of this truth is in simply collecting and displaying basic information about the victims of dictatorship, their names, ages, and the places they were seen before being killed, tortured, or made to "disappear". It was a solemn experience, but Andres was convinced that it needn't be; it should function to remind us of this wonderful thing that we have, democracy, and what is at stake if we don't protect it. Indeed, it made me see the best in this place that I am a guest in.

#3: January 15, 2024: Gran Torre and the Metro

 Last night, my voltage converter stopped working, so today I had to go get a charger. I decided that this was a good excuse to visit Gran Torre Costanera, the tallest building in South America. It was the farthest I have been from my student housing close to metro stop La Moneda—but still only twenty minutes away on a single metro line. Truthfully, I didn’t make the most of my stop. I only went as high as the third floor, where the technology section of a Falabella caught my eye, I purchased my charger, and went home. The interesting part of the experience mostly came from the metro ride itself. Spending 11 stops on the metro where I had previously only spent two or three, it began to sink in more viscerally the incredible nature of the metro. Our program advisors had remarked on its large ridership (two million riders per day) but standing there, bodies all around, was a physical reminder of the relationship that seems to exist between people here and this transportation system. It is fast, efficient, widely used, and (from my perspective) affordable. Though it was crowded, I had a great time.  

I’ll leave it there—short post just remarking on the rad metro here! 

EDIT, January 16: Weirdly, I went back to Costanera Center today and went to the top. It was totally amazing. This place is so beautiful.