Valpo Burning

Valparaíso was engulfed in flames, but not the one I know.

A city embedded in rainbow colored hills, many residents live their lives watching over the Pacific. Gritty but enchanting, the beauty of Valpo, as it’s known in Chile, is hard to understate. Its magic is everywhere. But as any savvy traveler who visits this important seaport city already knows, it can only be found by getting lost — by roaming aimlessly up and down the narrow stairways and wandering around the endless, cobbled bends. At any vantage point, vibrant street art abounds. When the sun sets, the bright colors are replaced by soft orange streetlights.

Then hell literally breaks loose.

Soon after the fire sparked, apocalyptic images of roaring red and orange began to flood social media and news websites. Several days later, the Chilean government reported that 2,900 houses were destroyed, 12,500 people are now homeless and 15 are dead.

But the biggest fire in the city’s history, as President Michelle Bachelet described it, didn’t blacken the picturesque scene that I’ve come to know. During my year abroad in Santiago, I’ve visited this romantic version of the famous port a handful of times. Opportune photo moments, boutique coffee shops, craft beer and a fair share of getting lost in Valpo’s most classic sector mark my affinity for a city that most Chileans now associate with devastation and loss. My vision of a quaint and colorful town hugging the Pacific coast was, at best, far too narrow. After all, the fire flattened large parts of the city that I’ve never seen.

Chilean outpouring of solidarity in the aftermath has been heartening. Volunteers have flooded the city, doing much of the organizing and resource distributing themselves. Community groups and individuals from across the country and beyond have organized campaigns to get food, clothing and other essential goods to the thousands of victims. Schools in Valpo have become temporary homes for refugees.

The unfailing beauty of tragedy is the unity that follows. It’s in disaster that we acquire a heightened sense of connection and become poignantly more aware of the deeper, but rarely acknowledged, truth — that we really are all in this together.

But soon focus will turn elsewhere. Those fortunate enough to be able to replace their homes will begin the arduous process of doing so, a process that may also include recovering from smoke inhalation and burns. Worse still, many people will remain homeless. Among the most vulnerable when the fire broke out were families living in neighborhoods constructed chaotically and irresponsibly during waves of rapid, unregulated expansion and no urban planning. Emergency responders could simply not access some houses.

Now, many people are camping in the rubble where their homes once stood — in many cases, illegally — for fear that abandoning that land could mean losing it forever.

The question of the moment, and that which will persist once the media and we move onto the next disaster worthy of our attention, is how Valpo will be built back to life, and what will happen to those who had little before the flames destroyed their homes, and now have nothing.

One fear is the possibility that as attention fades away, the prospect of reconstruction will become increasingly more challenging. As Patricio Fernández wrote in the iconic weekly, The Clinic: “We know that in Chile the solidarity party does not last too long.” Victims of the 8.3 magnitude earthquake that recently struck in the Northern region of the country know this fate perhaps all too well.

On one visit to Valpo in January, a good friend and I neared the top of a hill, well above where Pablo Neruda’s house still stands. Trying to be courteous travelers, we said hello to locals sweeping the sidewalk outside their homes or sitting on their front doorstep enjoying a cigarette. However, the further we climbed, the tenser I became. My companion, a fellow American, had not understood the conversation I had earlier that day with the staff member at our hostel about places to avoid. In short, stick to the tourist map. Well off the map already, we continued up only until an older woman finally stopped us and suggested we head back down.

We obliged. A few hundred more feet and we likely would have reached the top, where an unforgettable view of the port, the rainbow colored hills and the Pacific would have welcomed our arrival.

But opposite the ocean is another view: a less romantic version of Valpo. One not glorified as a World Heritage Site, but one that undoubtedly shares in the whole identity of this important seaport city. Now a horrible fire will reshape that identity, and my heart will remain heavy for a Valparaíso I barely know at all.

Heading home, where I’ve been all along

I was never enchanted by Santiago.

From above, the dense, brown smog makes it hard to see the city at all, let alone the Andes. The architecture is bland, poorly maintained and out of place. Even Plaza de Arma’s historic cathedral stands in the depressing shadow of a brutally modern high rise.

And the people. Santiaguinos are notoriously cold. I imagine being smashed into public busses and metro trains like sardines could have that effect. And I’ll never forget the lady in the post office who scowled at me in utter disbelief for missing what she had said. I’m just a gringo who wanted stamps and she must have just endured jam-packed Transantiago. Customer service is not a cultural staple here—and aloofness even extends to the highest realms of society. During a brief job stint at a cater service I waited on the then President of the Republic. He neglected to say thank you when I retired his dirty glass.

But I didn’t come to Santiago for Santiago. It was merely the city where I would be living and studying. I didn’t need to love it here. What it would provide, I thought, was access to experience and history that could arouse my Guevara-esque idealism and it would be a portal to Earth’s southern fringe. Patagonia, after all, was always an essential, unspoken reason for deciding to come to Chile.

Even after six months, I had not gained a sense of wonder about Santiago. It often seemed to reflect the worst of America—hyper-consumerism and mayonnaise—and that was unsettling. There were parts of the city I had to avoid because seeing Latin America’s tallest shopping mall made me sick to my stomach. This, of course, was awfully inconvenient because that phallus symbol of capitalism can be seen from just about anywhere.

I haven’t been in Santiago for a while. I’m set to return soon and the truth is I’m not filled with the same apathy I was when I left three months ago to gallivant around Patagonia and Buenos Aires.

Since I’ve been gone I began to miss the busyness of it all, the sense that something is always going on somewhere—a farmer’s market, an art exhibit, a film festival—and my bike and I can get there with relative ease. I never thought I’d miss weaving through traffic, a death wish in Santiago. Sundays were the best for riding. I could pedal my single speed down the city’s main arteries with no fear that at any moment I could smash into, or be smashed by, a ton of black and yellow steel because on these mornings the streets are closed off and ever more health-conscience Santiago gets outside.

Part of the joy of traveling I suppose is learning to cherish loneliness, to be singularly present with the beauty of the world. But as rewarding as life on the road has been, I am ready to return to the intensity of Santiago. My abovementioned contempt for the city is admittedly shallow. Behind the haze, the KFC frenzies, and the disgruntled commuters is important context that I’ve left out. That context helps explain Chile’s flexing of their strong, albeit recently reacquired, democratic muscles. From the heart of the city, I watched Michelle Bachelet give her acceptance speech after she was elected president—I remember feeling motivated by her vision for a more equal Chile. That context also explains an inspiring generation of young people who lead protests of tens of thousands demanding that Santiago and their nation do better. The leaders of these movements are my age.  They are eloquent, thoughtful, and ambitious—and far more so than I could ever be.

That context explains why Chile recently remembered the 40 years that have passed since a military coup that led to the imprisonment or torture or exile of nearly 40,000 people, and the killing and disappearing of more than 3,000. The legacy of Chile’s 17-year dictator is still strangely polarized, but this year enjoyed vibrant dialogue informed by new information. Santiago is the hub for these history-defining conversations and I’ve been in the middle of it.

Obviously my characterization of Santiaguinos is shamefully general. To paint such broad strokes would be to ignore the professors who have taken extra time to explain complicated concepts to this struggling American; or the Chileans who have shared their personal histories with me of life during and after the dictatorship; or the host family who welcomed me into their hearts and became real family. To do so is to ignore Lucas, my five-year-old host brother, a three-foot body of love and enthusiasm who, as I was leaving for my trip, ran toward me to hug my leg.

“Te quiero, hermano,” he said.

It’s good to be home.

Quiet city, restless mind

This is the first time in a while that I’ve had complete peace and quiet. My host family is gone and a week of celebrating Chile’s independence is finally catching up with this proud nation. Stores are closed, the streets empty. It’s calm here. I like a hushed Santiago, but it’s not quite conducive to peace of mind.

At this point, the honeymoon period of study abroad has just about worn off. Life has evolved into a relatively normal routine, as it was always going to. There are of course little adventures along the way, but normally I go to class and I go to the newspaper and I come home to sleep.

Fortunately, my work at the paper is always changing. Sometimes I’m in the office for ten hours, other times I’m out taking pictures of postal workers on strike, or I’m interviewing famous Chilean musicians in their homes. It’s been a wonderful opportunity, if not at times a tad overwhelming.

My most profound moment to date came during an interview with Tito Fernandez, a famous Chilean folk artist. When speaking with a source in Spanish, I oftentimes lose track of what’s being said and rely on my voice recorder to make sense of it all later. This strategy doesn’t make for the best interviews, as it’s difficult to question an idea or ask for clarification when I’m not sure what the idea is in the first place. And it was no different with Tito Fernandez.

Until he said he was tortured.

I had missed his statement’s context, but it didn’t seem to matter.

It was difficult to move forward with the questioning. And no easier for a fellow reporter. I couldn’t say much, but she managed to spit out something. “Entiendo,” she said hesitantly.

It’s true that as humans we both understood. We know that torture was real before and continues to be real today, but it was different to hear that truth spoken plainly to me by a victim. Empathy manifested in me physically—I felt shivers shoot through my body and an unpleasant sensation in my stomach. I couldn’t intellectually process what I had just heard. And I’m still trying to make sense of it.

I’m very much struggling to understand the reality of Chile today, one that bears the memory of a dark and recent past but now thrives as one of Latin America’s strongest economies. I shamefully confess that words like ‘coup,’ ‘dictatorship,’ and ‘torture’ are words my mind was relatively numb to before. My connection with them was simply mundane—regretfully unsympathetic.

But now I have real relationships with people who were affected by a military regime that 40 years ago deposed of a democratically elected president, censured the press, blanketed individual expression, and exiled, tortured, and killed people. Yet, at the same time, I know other people who attribute Chile’s roaring economic success to policies implemented by the same oppressive government that tortured Tito Fernandez for his political beliefs.

In this moment, somehow the complicated context that surrounds this nation’s fresh history seems arbitrary. A phrase like ‘human rights’ suddenly means far more than it used to for a naïve progressive like me. Now that I personally know people whose human rights were stolen, I can’t help but see the fundamental value in unconditionally recognizing them.

I do know, however, that the context is important and that the ideological contradictions and nuanced interpretations of history matter in bringing clarity to the larger story. Especially as a young American trying to piece together fragments of knowledge and experience, I do feel a responsibility to understand where I now live, even if it’s just for a year. I think it’s important I recognize that my country played a role in my new home’s past and its suffering and try to interpret how that fits into the narrative of our entire world.

We’ll see if I have any luck in the next ten months. In the meantime, I’ll continue with my relatively normal routine and worry about peace of mind later.

Land Mines, Journalism and Getting Over Myself

Life in Santiago has hit me hard and fast. I was maybe naïve (stupid?) to think it wouldn’t be so. What was my Theology quiz about? What was the point my professor was trying to make? What was my source’s answer to my jumbled question? I only have partial answers. But ignorance is bliss, right? Not exactly.

Still, there’s a beauty in the struggle. Even if the knowledge is imperfect, I’m learning a tremendous amount everyday. The best example is likely at the newspaper, where I’ve had a chance to have my first significant experience with journalism—a career I’ve convinced myself I want to pursue. The truth is, however, the anxiety I’ve felt this last week during my internship has given me pause.

I walked into the office on my first day without a clue what to expect. I knew I only had a couple hours to be there and get situated before I had to leave for class at noon. I whipped out my laptop and a notepad and started, as I so often do, twirling my pen in my fingers. I was nervous—really damn nervous. After all, this was my first shot to make a good impression on my co-workers and editors. This could be the beginning of my career!

Reporters and interns began filling the small room, and our editor-and-chief eventually arrived with a white board where he had written the stories for the day. He handed several assignments out quickly: Chile’s economic growth at the end of the second quarter; the final set of candidates for Chile’s presidential and congressional elections; and the results of Chile’s soccer clubs in Copa Sudamerica.

And then he mentioned the last story on the list. “Peruvian man steps on land mine.”

Lovely. I’ll take it, and I’ll try my absolute best to do a fantastic job.

I was sent to work completely lost. Of course, at this point I’m on the edge of a breakdown—longing to be back under the maternal wing of my high school newspaper teacher, who required a story a month.

Aimless and insecure, I called the Peruvian consulate in Arica, Chile’s northernmost major city just miles from the boarder, to see if I could get them to confirm that this man did indeed step on a land mine, and whether he was dead or alive.

I called at least seven times before I figured out how to dial out of the Santiago Metropolitan region. When I finally got an answer at the consulate, there was no one available to talk to me, a concept I didn’t understand until the third or fourth time the Peruvian secretary explained it.

I ended my first day at the newspaper. Still completely lost. I’d spent more time trying to figure out how to make a phone call than actually collecting information. I had no leads and I felt defeated. I would have four hours to report and write the story the next day. How would I get it done?

And then I realized that I was writing a story about an immigrant who stepped on a landmine coming to Chile to find work.

An immigrant. A human. A land mine. A weapon used to kill humans. And I’m pissed off that I can’t impress my editor during my first two hours on the job.

What’s the beauty in the struggle? Maybe it’s being able to put my struggle in perspective. Maybe it’s realizing, little by little, the enormity of good that my privilege affords me. Maybe it’s being able to write a blog post, and by the end of it, feeling compelled to—oh, I don’t know—get over myself?

I confess I let the pressure of learning and living in Spanish and thinking about my future overwhelm me a bit too much.

My story is done and my byline published, for the first time in my life. Thanks to one great source, a Major in the army, I was able to learn a lot about the history of land mines in Chile. (Thank God he spoke English.) It wasn’t a fantastic job, but it was my first job. The Peruvian man lived, but his left leg was amputated below the knee.

What I’ve learned are only partial truths—about land mines, about journalism, about myself. But I do know two things. One, reporting is hard, especially in Spanish. But grasping the very human element of journalism’s purpose is something I’m thrilled to continue exploring, despite the anxiety it’s wrought.

And two, I’m extremely lucky to be writing this story.

A Lesson

We had plans to attend Cine Migrante, a film festival at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights, on its opening night. The premier started at seven o’clock. In typical Chilean fashion, we showed up 20 minutes late expecting to get in without a problem. When that logic appeared to fail us, my host dad—unwilling to accept his culture’s unfaithful relationship with punctuality—leaned over and whispered in my ear: “There’s a lesson here,” he said.

In that moment I wondered if some version of that lesson, if learned, could have prevented the inconveniences I’ve experienced trying to attend class here in Santiago. Unfortunately, showing up on time is not the golden rule, and alleviating the disorganization and miscommunication that has characterized my short time in Chilean college will require far more than a higher regard for timeliness. In fact, a regard for showing up at all is probably the right place to start.

On the first day of class, I walked aimlessly with a blob of other international students in search of the political science department. We followed the masses. The unfortunate part is that we were the masses, and we were lost. The fortunate part is that the campus isn’t terribly complicated. So we found our way, but only after ascending and descending the same flight of stairs nearly three times.

We eventually arrived at our destination, a comforting site. Chairs pushed under long tables and a classic, black chalkboard brought my anxiety some temporary relief; I sat down, pulled out my notepad, and started twirling my pen in my fingers. Andy, a friend from Seattle, was seated next to me, and we recounted our struggles arriving to Santiago: His bag nearly didn’t make it to Chile; and my plane was delayed two hours  because an entire load of luggage was misplaced, and we needed to re-fuel immediately after leaving the terminal. Was Chile making sure we were ready for her?

Wondering where the Chilean students were, I asked Andy if two girls sitting a row behind us on the opposite side of the room looked Chilean, and then I heard them speaking French.

After 15 minutes, the professor still hadn’t arrived. But another foreign student finally did, and he told us this class wasn’t set to start until the following week. I’m still not sure how he knew that, while everyone else was clueless. This includes the countless Chilean students I asked to clarify the confusion.

No professor showed up that day. We finally realized that the political science department would be starting the following week, and we should attend classes then. I accepted that we must have missed that information somewhere along the way, but then I tried to attend a class in a separate department on a different campus. And, no surprise here, the class’s time and location had completely changed without notice.

That night at the museum, we eventually made it in to see the premier of the film festival. Sure, we had to sit on the floor, but we got to see three great shorts and Grammy nominated artist, Anna Tijoux, wrap up the night with her impressive band. And we didn’t miss a minute.

I still haven’t attended one class, and I can’t be completely certain when I will. But I’ll figure it out, and I’ll enjoy the little adventures along the way. I think my host dad’s lesson, whether he knows it or not, is that things have a way of working themselves out—even though here in Chile, it may have to happen later.

Tired but happy, to say the least

Stop thinking; start writing. That’s what I need to do. But the excitement and frustration of integrating into a new life are parts of the transition that show the mind no mercy. I sleep well at night, to say the least.

Communicating in Spanish, of course, is the most tiring part of the experience. It’s impressive how hard the mind has to work to understand what I’m being told, and to process the information well enough to respond competently. Nevertheless, I love learning the language. I jump at the frequent opportunity to ask for directions; and I’m anxious to arrive home for dinner, where a long conversation usually awaits. Last week, my host mom, Laura, and her good friend gave me a history lesson on Pinochet’s military regime. It lasted five hours. I was grateful for the insight and thrilled to be learning more about this complicated place.

Managing a city as big as Santiago certainly tests the mind, too. The busses do not run constantly on a fixed schedule. No, the busses come and go with no regard for punctuality—and that’s completely fine with Chileans. The metro, on the other hand, runs efficiently and provides a much more pleasant commuting experience. It’s clean and simple to use. Of course, I walk when I can, but in a city of six million, nothing really seems that close, including the nearest metro stop. And to be clear: riding a bike in Santiago is not like riding a bike in Seattle.

The staff at my study abroad organization and my host family have been extremely helpful. I’m lucky to have arrived in Santiago with so much Spanish experience, but still, I struggle. For that reason, I’m also lucky to have people around me who understand my transition and are here to help along the way. Take Vicente, my 15-year-old host brother, for example. Yesterday he spent nearly 20 minutes calmly explaining to me a current trend in Chilean fashion. As I struggled—and ultimately failed—to grasp what he meant, not once did he express an ounce of frustration. I have a strong support system here.

My house is humble and busy. Music is always on. Lucas and Salvador are Vicente’s younger brothers who are full of energy and questions. Lucas, 4, loves dancing to Michael Jackson, and his adorable moves would make the King of Pop proud. Gus, Laura’s boyfriend, is youthful, and he always seems happy. Yesterday, he played coach while the boys and I fell victim to his exercise circuit in the park. I love spending time with everyone. And already, I have a very high regard for Laura and Vicente.

There is a tremendous amount still to learn about each member of this family, and I’m excited to do so.

The burdens of communicating in Spanish and integrating into this new city are tiring, but so far it seems that I couldn’t have it any better here in Santiago. I’ve slept well, and no doubt I will sleep soundly tonight. I’m happy here in Chile, to say the least.

The First Post

Welcome! Thanks so much for stopping by. For the next year I’ll be studying in Santiago, Chile, and this site is where you’ll find the first draft of my South American story. I’ve been fortunate enough to travel before, but I’ve never had the discipline to record my experiences and shape a worthwhile narrative. For this journey, I hope to write far more than I have in the past, evaluating and interpreting my new life in Santiago. I’d love if you came along for the ride.

Since I’m not quite certain of the blog’s direction, I’ll let it take on a life of its own. I know how busy our lives can get, so I’ll try to keep posts brief and engaging. I’m going to do my best at sticking to a relatively strict schedule (which I’ll determine later), but in the meantime, I appreciate you bearing with me while I find my blogging feet!

Be sure to subscribe by entering your email address in the “Subscribe Here” bar at the end of the page — that way you can receive updates via email every time I publish a new post.

And now, on to the adventure! Thanks again for reading.