#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.