Techo para Chile

Last weekend I went with the organization "Techo para Chile" down south to the town of Santa Cruz, an hour south of Rancagua. Techo para Chile is basically the same as Habitat for Humanity, and they've been doing most of the post-earthquake reconstruction here in Chile. Mostly they've been building small, temporary shelters for people to live in during the winter. There was a ton of volunteers this weekend, but it was very unorganized. I'm glad I did it, and we did construct a house, but I spent most of the weekend standing around waiting. This isn't my picture, but this is what the houses we built look like:



This week was mostly filled with normal stuff, some homework (paper, presentation, and test), a couple nights of poker, and some general loafing. It's to be expected, but by now I definitely feel like I fit in here, and have settled in. I feel like I'm just at any other college for the semester, and I'm in the normal swing of things. Although I like the excitement of new places and foreign countries, it's also nice to be in a rhythm.

Allende

I'm currently preparing a presentation on Salvador Allende, so I'm going to give a brief history lesson to you all.

Salvador Allende was the first democratically-elected socialist president in the world. He was elected in Chile in 1970, and quickly began to institute his far-reaching socialist reforms. This included nationalization of the foreign-owned copper mines (which some years makes up to 75% of Chile's exports), nationalization of many foreign-owned businesses, and land distribution of the latifundios. Latifundios were the huge traditional Latin-american farms that were owned by a head family (usually white) and worked by very poor campesinos (usually indigenous or a mix) in near slavery. If you know about share-cropping in the southern US, it is essentially the same thing. Anyway, Allende took the land from the owners, broke it up into smaller sections, and gave it to the people who had been working it.
instituted many other socialist reforms, but those are the main ones.

These reforms, needless to say, where very unpopular with the rich, ruling oligarchy which had previously controlled Chile. However, they were wildly popular with the lower class, and after the first year of Allende's economic policies inflation went down 12%, the GDP went up 9%, and unemployment decreased to only 3.8%. Allende and his political party had a very high approval rating, and won additional seats in the congress. However, these economic policies were also very unpopular with foreigners, especially the US.

The US was in the middle of the Cold War, and during this time Nixon and Kissinger were in power. Apart from the forced seizures of US-owned companies, Nixon and Kissinger saw the election of Allende as an ideological loss to communism. The US had spent 3 million dollars in support of Allende's opponent in the 1964 elections, and they spent a half a million in anti-Allende propaganda in the 1970 election. When Allende was elected, the Nixon administration began it's plan to destabilize the government enough to allow a military coup to occur. They did this through a variety of means, but here are some quotes first:
* "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." — Henry Kissinger
* "Not a nut or bolt shall reach Chile under Allende. Once Allende comes to power we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and all Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty." — Edward M. Korry, U.S. Ambassador to Chile, upon hearing of Allende's election.
* "Make the economy scream [in Chile to] prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him" — Richard Nixon, orders to CIA director Richard Helms on September 15, 1970.

Anyway, the US spent about 8 million dollars destroying the Chilean economy, and it was pretty successful. The country started going down the tubes, and CIA activity in Chile fomented a military coup and helped to produce the conditions to allow Allende to be overthrown. It took a lot of time and money however, because Chile had had a long history of democracy and a very stable government. In the end, the military coup occurred on September 11, 1973, and Augusto Pinochet took power for about 17 years. His regime was marked by numerous human-rights abuses with about 3,000 people murdered for political reasons, up to 30,000 brutally tortured, and up to 80,000 imprisoned.

Sorry I got a little winded, but I think it's pretty interesting. Feel free to post comments or questions.

Isla Negra and Vineyard

On Saturday I went on an ISA day trip down south to a vineyard and Isla Negra. Wine-making is such a big deal in Chile, and it was definitely a new experience to visit the vineyard. We drove past hundreds of acres of grapes, and seeing the factory was very interesting.
Isla Negra is one of the houses of the famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. I learned two things from the visit to his house: He was very rich, and he was very eccentric. He loved collecting odds and ends, and his house is full of ships' figureheads, shells, bottles, and butterflies. He even built several rooms in his house specifically for some of his collections.
On Sunday, we went out to eat with the family because it was Mother's Day. I also played frisbee, and was able to talk to a lot of people on Skype.
On Monday, I caught up on sleep, and did a lot of school work and reading for next semester. If anybody has a jellyfish-related question, please send it my way. I'm sure I can help.

MJ

Well, there are few things betting in life than watching your seven year old Chilean host brother dancing to Michael Jackson. He especially likes the "Smooth Criminal" music video, and his dancing is actually pretty good. Here's a sample:



Other than that, my week has been pretty relaxed. Classes were normal, and on Thursday night I played poker. We had dinner first and we ate some delicious fajitas, a relatively unknown food in Chile. I lifted for the first time in a month this week, and as a result I'm still pretty sore. A good sore though. Today I'm off on a field trip with ISA, and I'll have to show you some pictures of that tomorrow.

Regular posts once again

Well, my stitches are healing nicely, and for the first time in over a month, it's cloudy here in the vineyard by the sea. It's not actually raining, but all of the Chileans are decked out in their raincoats nonetheless. Last night I played poker again, and won about three dollars. All in all this puts me at about 15 dollars on the plus side of things, but if you factor in all of the chips and drinks I've bought for those nights, I'm probably about even. Today I had two classes, nothing crazy to write about, and I think I'll go for a run this afternoon.
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Back from my run, it was great, and it's definitely hard trying to shower without getting my stitches wet. I hope a little humidity doesn't bother them.

I guess the funniest thing to happen today was a poem that we read in class. It's by the super-famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, and it is entitled, "An Ode to Bread". I don't really need to say more on that subject.

Back to normal

Sorry I haven't updated for a while, things haven't been too crazy here, but it's been nice getting back into a rhythm. Over the past couple weeks, I've been just doing normal things, going to class, hanging out with my family, and playing games. My classes have been going well, and over the past two weeks I had two tests, but other than that, nothing too crazy. My one test in Oceanography was pretty easy, the most complicated concept on the test was tectonic plates. My other test was in anthropology, and the concepts weren't too hard, but the test was an essay, and it's rather hard to write a three page essay in Spanish without a dictionary. However, I think it went well. We'll see.
I've been hanging out a lot with some of the guys on the frisbee team. We usually get together to play poker two nights a week, and we also play basketball sometimes too. Altogether, I normally hang out with them three days a week. When we play poker, we usually play until 4 or 5 in the morning. If you know how much I like games, you'll understand :).
However, I was playing basketball last Friday, and I was on the receiving end of an accidental elbow. It hit me just below my eyebrow, and split my skin open pretty well. It didn't hurt, but I was bleeding profusely, and I got to experience the Chilean health system, and I now have five stitches for a week. My experience in the hospital was pretty good, and I was treated rapidly and well. It only took about an hour from when I walked in to when I walked out.


Here's some sunset pictures that might be a little more pleasant: