Survival with Linguistic Imperialism

The better part of the month has been spent working, running around Santiago’s downtown with the holy mission of spreading the mother tongue. It’s largely been an enjoyable chore. My students are all truly pleasant people and are eager to learn, which has the benefit of making my job fairly easy. I’ve got to say that I’m really satisfied at the moment. For a week or two there I was really scraping the bottom financially, but upon seeing my predicament my bosses were kind enough to pass me my check a couple of days early. Since then the going has been pretty comfortable.

Araucarias in Parque Forestal.
The common name in Enslish
for is the Monkey Puzzle Tree,
so because to the namer they
would surely be a puzzle for a
monkey to climb. There are no
monkeys native to Chile.

The saga with the English institute I worked for before still continues as I still haven’t been paid for my month’s worth of work there, but it finally looks as if those tribulations are nearing their end. I have promises of a paycheck tomorrow, which I really hope don’t pan out to be false since I’d really like to put this behind me and some cash in my wallet rather than stepping up the fight.

I consider myself really lucky that the institute I’m with now only accepts classes on weekdays. The weekends have been pretty laid back lately, spent going to parties with my coworkers and other friends and walking around the neighborhood getting to know the layout of the land and the people. This never ceases to entertain me, and everyday I come across new local surprises.

Dance-Fighting in the Park

There are a few really great parks within about two or three minutes walk from my apartment. The closest, actually just across the street from my block, is Parque Forestal, a long stretch of landscaped land stretching along the Rio Mapocho from one of the city’s main plazas to the central fish market. Gracing the closest park of the park to my apartment building is el Museo de Bellas Artes, which itself is a really beautiful building and houses an interesting collection. The park is a living cultural center in the city and attracts a myriad of bohemians, artists, hippies, and others. Each Sunday evening behind the museum there’s a fair where people collect to sell handmade arts and crafts, watch live performances of music, acrobats, and theater. Every week the fair has a different character from the last.

El Caballo, sculpure by the famous Colombian artist Fernando
Botero outside of el Museo de Bellas Artes.

Last Sunday I found myself completely entranced for well over an hour watching a group practicing capoeira off to the side from the festival. That’s a Brazilian marshal art that looks almost more like a dance, a little along the lines of break dancing but much more graceful and far more impressive. I saw from a distance as the group gather themselves in a circle and began chanting with the aid of a few drummers and one or two people playing some instruments that look a lot like bows and arrows, the musicians percussively striking the strings with a bow to produce the almost hollow sounds. This continued for hours, all the while the participants took turns entering the circle to spar with a partner, seemingly with no pecking order based off skill or seniority. Obvious beginners followed the more advanced and vice versa seemingly ordered by nothing more than whim and fancy. The best ones were impressively fast, flipping over and kicking at their opponent while hanging upside down in the air, the opponent responding with a punch to the air above the shoulder while engaged in some other acrobatics. The most impressive thing about it was that during the whole time I watched I hardly saw anyone even touch one another. I’m was watching this this and seeing the challenge as daunting but all the while knowing that I have to do this. Lessons are cheap, so there’s no excuse not to.

The rear entrance of el Museo de Bellas Artes. This plaza in the
foreground is where the fair is held every Sunday evening.

The other park nearby is Cerro Santa Lucia. Cerro is the Spanish word for hill, but this really is more of a craggy outcropping rising from the center of the city. It apparently was considered cursed by the indigenous Mapuche who originally inhabited the area and was scorned by them, though the atmosphere’s always seemed agreeable to me. It was also the spot where conquistador Pedro de Valdivia founded his new nation along with the City of Santiago so long ago. Much later Charles Darwin took a break from his round the world journey to rest in Santiago. A detailed narrative of his climb to the summit of Santa Lucia can be read in his famous Voyage of the Beagle. Towards the end of the Eighteenth Century the mayor of the city hired a renowned French landscaper and used forced prison labor to transform the eyesore of a hill into a beautiful park complete with winding pathways and stairways leading towards the summit, around the crags, or sometimes to secluded cul-de-sacs. Fortifications, fountains, castles, and chapels adorn the nooks and outcroppings of the hill wherever they can find a footing. It’s the perfect sort of place you’d want to pass the time with your girlfriend in.

Statue in front of el Museo de Bellas Artes

About a twenty minute walk away is the much larger Cerro San Cristoból, capped with a statue of the Virgin Mary that can be seen throughout much of the city. There’s a statue of Jesus of slightly smaller statue just below the that of the virgin as well, his subordinate position to his holy mother a homage to womankind. I remember that when I first arrived to Chile being really amused by friend of mine who had already been to the top of San Cristoból describing the statue with some mumbles as being, “a pretty sweet Jesus.” There’s quite a bit up on the hill besides that pretty sweet Jesus. Lots of trails, two really beautiful public swimming pools, a botanical garden, and a Japanese garden. The city zoo is towards the bottom of the hill. I still haven’t been there, but I’ll need to sometime. Pablo Neruda’s house, la Chascona, is right in front of the zoo by the lion cages. Apparently Neruda chose the location because he got a lot of pleasure out of hearing the beasts’ roars every morning. Who can really blame him? That’s way more badass than being awaken by a measly rooster.

Fountain at the rear entrance to Cerro Santa Lucia

Diddling

At a party some friends and I decided to start an English language writer’s group. We had our first meeting yesterday on the Fourth of July, which has some significance to us since our current membership of four is three quarters American.

As an aside, can’t we Americans think of something more specific to call ourselves? The rest of the people living in the two entire continents that have been calling themselves Americans before our country even came into existence have good reason to be annoyed when we come up to them and arrogantly say, “Hi, I’m American. Where are you from?” I’m waiting proposals.

The Chapel at Santa Lucia

It was really by chance that our we happened to choose the Independence Day for the meeting, but we decided that we might as well take advantage of circumstance and set patriotism as a theme for the first written projects we would share. An interesting topic for a group of expatriots be discussing to be sure.

The front entrance to Santa Maria

My submission was quickly scribbled together just before the meetings start and is still incomplete, unfortunately. Here’s a snippet of what I wrote though.

The first war with Iraq, the good one, happened when I was a child. More specifically, It was when I was in the second grade at a Catholic school in that all American city St Joseph, Missouri; home of the Pony Express and Jesse James, end of the old railroad and start of the Oregon Trail, Statue of Liberty replica prominently positioned in the center. Heartland America. I remember our teacher guiding our class outside into the schoolyard to watch the fleet of planes flying out to Iraq from the nearby army base. I had never known anything close to bombs or war, nor had any of my other classmates, but the endless columns of flying aircraft loudly roaring overhead drug a thick sense of dread and fear along with them that we all felt, though we wouldn’t allow ourselves to show it. We masked our fears with excitement, and that’s how our teacher told us to ask. “Those our our boys kids, going over to protect us.” So we jumped and cheered and threw our fists into the sky like good little future defenders of America.

I really can’t claim that our teachers where the main engines behind our youthful patriotic fervor. In truth there really is little more impressive than seeing ton after ton of army green iron and steel pass through the sky over your head, the thundery rumblings of the engines so loud that you can hardly hear the boisterous shouting of you and the other kids around you. Even more so nothing else was nearly so effective at making us little flag waving, Saddam hating future defenders of the homeland as us kids were to each other.

La Chascona, house of Palbo Neruda by Cerro San Cristoból right in front
of the Santiago zoo

We turned the playground into our own little battlefield during recess, choosing some poor kid to play Saddam and them pummeling him as much as we could so he wouldn’t get hurt enough to run crying to the teacher and rat us out. We never decided that Saddam needed Iraqi soldiers to help defend him, always it was seventeen GI Joes against the evil dictator. Perhaps that was unfair.

The best way to one up the other boys and assure that you wouldn’t be selected to be Saddam at recess that day was to show just how much more you really hated the villain than the them, and just how far you would go to prove it. One kid would say, “When I see ‘em I’m gonna fart in his face, right up ‘is nose.” The next would pipe up and say, “That ain’t nothin’. I’d piss in ‘is a cup ‘o lemonade and give ‘em like a gift, and then watch ‘em drink ‘er right up.” One day the stakes were getting especially high when we where waiting in line to go out to recess and I said, “Yeah, I would drown Saddam and the whole country just like this,” when I hawked up the biggest, greenest lugee I could muster and spat it out onto the globe where Iraq was positioned. Everybody in the class started cracking up, but my teacher also noticed and wasn’t at all happy about it. “But I spit on Iraq, only Iraq” I said. “I was really careful not to hit the other countries, I promise,” honestly believing this explanation would suffice in justifying what I’d done. It didn’t, according to my teacher. Spitting on school property is still against the rules even if it’s done to to express your hatred for the enemy.

I had to sit out at recess that day, but at least there would be no chance of my turn coming to be Saddam. That night I felt bad about getting in trouble with the teacher so I spent an hour working on a drawing to present the class in our art lesson the next day. It was of a man in a turban guiding a camel through the desert, who was carrying a SCUD missile launcher between its humps which curved upwards to point straight up into the sky so that whatever missile it shot out would come back right down on it. The other students loved it, and the same teacher that disciplined me the previous day put it in a colored paper frame and placed it prominently and proudly in the school hallway for everyone to see.

I’ll post the rest once it’s been completed, and very probably there will be changes to the section I’ve posted here too since it’s just a first draft. Please do recognize that my attitudes towards patriotism and war have changed considerably since I was a child in the second grade. This would be a little more obvious taken from the context of the entire yet to be completed work, but since the selection I have offered here was not in put into that context I feel that it’s necessary to point that out.

Plaque in Cerro Santa Lucia commemorating Charles
Darwin’s visit to Santiago. It reads:

Una inagotable fuente de placer es escalar el Cerro
Santa Lucia, una pequeña colina rocosa que se
levanta en el centro de la ciudad. Desde allá­ la vista
es verdaderamente impresionante y única.

An inexhaustible source of pleasure is to climb Cerro
Santa Lucia, a little, rocky hill that arises in the
center of the city. From there the view truly is
impressive and unique.

We were all really pleased by the with our first meeting. It was more fun than anything, and each person had something interesting and insightful to say on the subject, even if all of the pieces we shared were thrown together without much time to spare before our get together began. It’s perhaps not surprising that a sub-theme of equating American patriotism to the consumption of junk food arose amongst our work. It certainly seems to be an apt metaphor to me.

One interesting conclusion that we were surprised to realize is that our feelings against the patriotism of our home countries have softened a little since being abroad. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing like seeing your own country fall apart from a distance that gives you a fair amount of perspective and a good amount of pain as well. There’s little more effective than seeing the rest of the world’s opinion of your own country’s actions and in some cases of your own countrymen themselves to foster a certain amount of bitterness and disdain. But the truth is that I’ve seen a lot of the same behavior abroad that I first came to abhor in my own country, even if perhaps its not quite as bad and if it’s manifestations tend to be a little healthier. The other side is that living abroad really brings the truly good aspects about your own country. You realize that you’re extremely lucky that you have a place you can return to that offers relative safety and security if things get too heated where you’re currently residing. This is comforting though I have to admit that given the direction my country is heading in I don’t have a lot of confidence that things are going to remain that way in my own country, but at least for the moment things haven’t gotten so bad that there’s nothing worth returning to.

A stencil of a tablet used by the indigenous
peoples of South America to ingest hallucinogens

My thoughts could continue forever along these lines. If you’re really interested then read the rest of the piece I’ve put above when I post the completed product.

I’m looking forward to buying a guitar and getting back into playing. This will be a priority after my next paycheck. A few a my friends are planning on the same, which is great. Music truly is a tribal activity, it’s not really meant to be done alone all the time. I think I’ll clarify this point later.

A Continuación

I’ve got a lot coming up. I’m going skiing tomorrow. It’ll be my first time on the slopes in South America. The day after I think I’m going to a costume party out in the country. My friend Mickey arrives in Lima Peru on Tuesday, and I’m taking the last half of the week off work to go exploring and camping in the Atacama desert of northern Chile with him. I’ll be sure to take lots of photos and chances are my post might be a little more frequent in the coming weeks, so check back soon. Chao.