Chile

Where I grew up in rural Washington state, deer are a nuisance that have caused $297,500 worth of car damage this year (you read the statistics on a highway sign when you enter the valley). In Chile, the relationship to deer is a bit different. Three kinds of deer live in Chile. There are red deer, introduced from Europe for hunting pursuits, now invasive pests. There are the tiny pudú deer, absolutely adorable. And there are huemul deer, which find their home near the Andean mountains and on the Chilean national crest. Although huemul are beloved by Chileans, their population has shrunk 99% since arrival of Europeans. The huemul is sensitive to predation and human disturbance (road building, hikers, dogs, towns). Families tend a pretty small home range, most individuals move less than 5km per day. At present, the subpopulations of huemul are quite isolated, which doesn’t bode well for their future. Researchers have been studying these threatened huemul populations, trying to understand what can be done to protect individual populations and the species as a whole.

Look at this male huemul deer trying to run away! Someone has interrupted his afternoon snacking in the shrubbery. Huemules are rotund cuties.

Our last research project of the semester was conducting a huemul deer census in an area called Tamango. The data analysis and write-up of this research was my final project. I spent three days frantically working on my final report and many more hours reading papers about huemul. I also spent five days scanning the horizon for huemul and talking to Chilean guardaparques about huemul. Despite all this, I’ve only seen 3 huemul in my life. I guess that is what being an endangered-wildlife biologist is all about: just hoping to encounter something that tells you it actually exists.

The field research component of the project spanned a week of hiking and backpacking in a mountainous national park on the edge of a large lake. It didn’t feel like work. We ambled through the hills with experienced huemul seekers, (personnel from CONAF, basically Chile’s forest service), observing wildflowers and taking mate breaks. We kept binoculars around our necks, and if we spotted a huemul we diligently took down data for the sighting.

One day I accompanied a super-legit huemul seeker named Daniel Velasquez on a 14km transect across steep shrubby huemul territory. Daniel is an employee of CONAF and his 17 year old son is as well. We ended our transect at a small campo in the midst of the wilderness called Puesto Huemul where Daniel has lived for 20 years. Daniel is an expert at radio telemetry of collared huemul. He could tell you the territorial boundaries of each local huemul family and how old a fawn is just by glimpsing it through the brush. He could spot a huemul 600 m away, and try as I might spy it through my binoculars, I couldn’t even see it on the mountainside.

It was an honor to spend a day with him- his local ecological knowledge was immense. Even though we could only communicate in Spanish, I think I learned more from him than I did from all of those papers combined. He moved across the land swiftly, but stopped to point out to me trees that a huemul had been feeding on or marking with its antlers, or 2cm long tracks of a newborn cría. Degree-toting scientists have nothing on this guy. I think I’ll always remember that day, trying to keep up with Daniel in the land he knows so well.

From my research paper:

Abstract

Conservation of huemul deer (Hippocamelus bisulcus), a species endangered in Chile, is constrained by a lack of data about population dynamics, dispersal behavior and habitat use. However, long term population monitoring data is a valuable source of information for land managers. In November of 2019, Round River Conservation Studies (RRCS) aided CONAF (Corporacion Nacional Forestal) in a spring survey of the humul population within the Tamango sector of Patagonia National Park in Aysen, Chile. Between November 22nd and 30th, 23 RRCS personnel and 10-14 CONAF affiliates conducted surveys of six different sectors within Tamango using standardized sweep survey and walking transect methodology established by RRCS in March 2019. Surveyors identified 12 huemules, including 5 adult males, 3 adult females, 1 adult of unidentified sex, 1 subadult male, 1 subadult female and 1 juvenile of undetermined sex. We compared our sightings with those of the March 2019 census and past spring censuses and saw no significant changes within population size in the last four years, but a notable decrease from population sizes before 2005. Going forward, additional actions must be taken to increase monitoring capacity and inform management decisions. We recommend standardized biannual censuses are continued and care is taken to study juvenile survival, huemul dispersion and use of corridors.

Midway through my semester in Chile, everyone in my program spent a week living with a family on a campo, which are rurally isolated farms, most with aging owners. The purpose of these homestays was to introduce us to one of the traditional ways of life in the region of Chile where we were studying. Meat, wool and firewood production are central to the farm economy here. People call this gaucho lifestyle “threatened” because prices for sheep are falling, the farmers are growing old, and they are selling their land.

When we returned from our homestays, we had the opportunity to reflect on our experiences. I’m sharing some of that here: an outline of what my days looked like, a painting I made of Don Nano and the oxen, and a reflection on hard work and my place there.

Daily schedule

Two pearls of the wisdom of the week: from the Bob Dylan song Señor, “I’m ready when you are, Señor” and “VAmo vam va am amo amos” as spoken frequently in variation by Don Nano.

I found honest work on the campo. Hands are needed for every task. Quick hands, that can pull roots out of the dirt faster than a nervous chicken. Strong hands, that can drag the knife through the thigh of a full grown capon, the next weeks dinner. Honest hands, that tie a good knot and remember where the medicinal plants grow. Tough hands, darker than the dirt. Warm hands, that pass the mate.

These hands do honest work because life must go on at the campo, as it has for generations. You do not forget the hands of your father. There’s no question that you will fix the cart. Buying a part is unfathomable, you’ll whack and bend and scrape and brandish yourself a new one instead. Your mind waging the price of wool is not as important as your hands building the next fence. Things continue. You don’t even have to think about that. But shit has to get done, tomorrow and right now. And at the end of the day, you slump into the beaten leather couch with the weight of a well-worked body and the knowledge that you did what you could and nothing feels better.

Often, there is more work to be done by necessity the farther out you are. At the campo, getting to town takes seven hours on horseback. This is probably the most permanent dwelling I’ve ever visited with no car or driveway, no kitchen appliances and no gas (which means no running hot water). The money is made as it has been for the past 70+ years, selling meat and wool. The living is made growing pasto, avenas, avas y verduras. Collecting leña, building fences. Those posts you cut out of the forest will stand immutably into your children’s time. The permanence is embedded in the laugh lines around Don Nanos eyes, his leathery hands. It’s inscribed in the rutted sheep routes across the hills. Fixed in the ways of life, how the oxen are called to the yoke and the yoke is tied on with soft leather straps and then affixed to the cart with a long braided leather rope and then the team poked up the hill with a pole of willow that is exactly as long as the oxen cart is wide, so you always know which two trees you can squeeze between. Enduring in the way you return with the oxen and slip the straps off and they shake their damp heads with another evening of grazing freedom before tomorrow’s haul begins. Home and work are not separate ideas. On the campo, you are actually making a living. All the pieces, forms of production are here.

The chores are tied to the seasons and the weather. It’s spring, so we’re shearing lambs and pulling wood from the forest. I’ve spent six nights here. I’m young and filled with clear water and fresh air and it doesn’t feel like a hardship at all to do these chores. I’m only passing through, gleaning a new perspective and new experiences to add to an already well-traveled, privileged, set of hands. The nuances of this lifestyle aren’t passed down to me. I’m no child of this place, genetically or culturally. I cannot really be a part of it, nor do I deserve to be. When I say “you” I am talking about the people of the campo, Jeanette and Don Nano and your ancestors and your neighbors. But I do not really understand you. I’m imagining your life, telling your story through the scope of what I know from my history and the lives I have lived in other places. And never out of necessity or tradition. My parents are engineers and scientists. I’ve gone seeking roughness the world over, running from my privilege, hungry for something that feels real. Something in me admires your toughness and is jealous of your life-long connection to this land, even though it’s also an inescapable obligation. Don Nano, your family has deep roots. You’ve probably seen or climbed or cut a limb from every tree on this side of Rio Maiten. I’m envious that your life’s work is laid out around your house, begging to be done, no question on where to go next.

On the campo the land is degrading. Soil that once burst oats is now a crop of hoofprints in dust. Even the fertilizer can’t do the convincing. Invasive grass clogs the tiller and the field is abandoned. There’s a new bridge, and a better road to town. Easy enough to buy some feed, grown somewhere else.

What would you do if someone came here and told you that they think the way you live on the land is unsustainable? There are big questions to pin down and wrestle with and entangle yourself in when you live with your work.

My time on the campo was short. I have no idea how to fit it in with my education in science. Self sufficiency is a different subject. Not even a subject, but a whole life, with different values than identification, analysis and answers. I feel no closer, maybe even farther, to my dreams of making an honest living. I know that the most important thing we can cultivate is a relationship with our land. Trusting the cleanliness of the water, the kindness of the rain. Watching what our impacts might be. When the land gifts us berries or firewood we should give back in the small ways that we are able, like protecting some young new trees from our roads and our animals. I also know that love is felt in doings/makings/things of the hands. A trough that was carved from a coigue stump endows years of water to drink. Every stitch in a crocheted shawl is a gift of time and warmth. A stew that was tended for two hours on the stove is not only food, but a gift to keep going.

The most familiar type of protest that I attended in Chile was the Global Climate Strike in Santiago, as part of the Fridays for Future campaign. The strike happened during Chile’s national holiday, so people weren’t walking out of jobs or classrooms. Nonetheless, thousands of people showed up holding signs that proclaimed the importance of stopping climate change. The climate strike felt very globally connected, knowing that people in so many countries are striking at the same time. However, the climate strike took on a little Chilean spin, bringing relevant and current issues, demanding changes. Many protestors also carried flags for LGBTQ+ people, women’s rights and Mapuche people, reminding the attendees that social movements really cannot exist singularly without each other.

The Constitution that was drafted in 1980 during the Pinochet military dictatorship allowed for the privatization of water. The government thus granted water rights of 90% of the water resources in the country to corporations and industries for free, allowing them to abuse and capitalize on the natural resource. Therefore, many chants that we heard at the march were demanding the return of water rights to the people and the state. The protesters were chanting “el agua, el agua, el agua es su derecho!” And “Piñara, entiende, el agua no se vente!” We were chanting along because we truly believed that water should be a common good. Watching our host families conserve water, and having to buy bottled water for the classroom each day really reminded us how lucky we are to have access to this precious natural resource. 

In addition, the climate strike involved many young people and even children. As seen on National Protest Day, the youth of Santiago is very mobilized and political. People were standing on top of bus stops, holding signs that demanded the end of fossil fuel and the switch to clean energy. At the end of the march, protestors gathered at a park, where activist leaders gave speeches and performers played music. What caught everyone’s attention, however, is a young kid that got up on stage and gave a very passionate speech about his views on the future of the climate, and his future on this planet. The powerful motivation really touched everyone at the event.

I want to take moment to share pertinent background information and my experiences during the ongoing social revolution in Chile. I have been present during the conflict and apologize in advance for the length of my posts.

In 1970, Chile became the first and only country in history to be led by a democratically elected president, Dr. Salvador Allende. Before his presidency, Dr. Allende fought to improve working conditions, public education, and combat inequality in Chile. Through land reform and the creation of scholarships for Mapuche youth, Dr. Allende is the only Chilean president who supported the indigenous Mapuche Community in southern Chile.

After enacting sweeping land reform, and nationalizing both the copper and baking industries, US corporations and politicians alike feared for their interests in Chile. The Nixon administration colluded with the CIA to suppress Allende’s presidency. According to a New York times article published on September 20, 1974 by Seymour M. Hersh, “more than $8‐million authorized for clandestine C.I.A. activities in Chile was used in 1972 and 1973 to provide strike benefits and other means of support for anti‐Allende strikers and workers.” Chile is the most narrow country in the world. The trucking industry is the foundation for stability and resource security in the country. Using US tax generated capital, the CIA paid more than 250,000 truck drivers and union members to strike (Hersh). These strikes led to food shortages and unrest. The centralized city of Santiago which was filled by more than fifty percent of the Chilean population in 1973 was especially affected by the CIA’s covert operations.

On September 11, 1973, General Augusto Pinochet led a crippling coup. Historians still dispute President Allende’s supposed suicide on the first day of the coup. General Pinochet served as the dictator of Chile from 1973 to 1990. At the request of Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, the Valech Report was published in 2004. According to the report, more than 38,000 people were imprisoned, tortured, or killed. Although the exact numbers presented by the Valech Report have been disputed by reputable organizations such as Amnesty International, the human rights violations during Pinochet’s dictatorship are undeniable. After transitioning to democracy after the military dictatorship, the Chilean government has not changed Pinochet’s constitution.

Neoliberal economists across the world have applauded Chile’s transition to economic stability following the 1973 coup. In the 1970s and 1980s, Economics students from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago and other Chilean universities traveled to the United States to study at prestigious universities such as the University of Chicago, Harvard, and MIT. These students specialized in libertarian theory. There are cases of exchange programs for Chilean economists backed by the US State Department dating as far back as the 1950s. While the neoliberal reforms enacted in Chile is revered by many, these changes failed to fight inequality and bring social progress in what is considered the most developed country in Latin America.

Chile is grappling with an array of humanitarian transgressions. The Gini coefficient is used to quantify a country’s income inequality. According the Gini coefficient calculated by the CIA, Chile is 15^th most unequal country in the world. CIA statistics also show that Chile has the 83^rd highest GDP in the world. Much of the wealth in Chile is controlled by seven families. The Angelini, Lecaros, Yaconi, Sarquis, Stengel, Fernández, and Iquiero familes. Breaking the caste-like system in Chile is nearly impossible. Although Chile has the highest GDP in Latin America, nepotism and archaic conventions hinder Progress in the country.

Before embarking on my study abroad journey at Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso I worked with a crowdsourcing group for seven weeks in Santiago. My internship opened my eyes to business conventions in the country’s capital. I commuted to work every day using the public metro system. Traveling to work during peak morning and evening hours was daunting. The metro system in Santiago is out of date and egregiously crowded. Finding shoulder space on the metro during the daily commute is impossible. People are regularly squeezed together like cattle in a corral. Newborn babies howl and the workforce scowls. I never saw a smile on the metro during my daily commute. Tensions in Santiago finally erupted as a result of the dehumanizing aspects of the city’s metro system.

Santiago’s metropolitan government raised the metro fare by 30 Chilean pesos on Friday October 18, 2019. High school and middle school students led protests. Across the country, Chileans voiced their approval of the bravery of Chilean minors who took action and questioned systematic repression in the capital.

On Saturday October 19, 2019, nine public busses and sixteen metro stations were set ablaze by demonstrators. At this point, forty one metro stations were damaged. In the late afternoon while returning to Valparaíso after spending the afternoon at the beach with friends, we saw a convoy of at least ten military busses filled with detainees heading south. Protests in Valparaíso on October 19 began at metro stations across the city. Unlike the publicly owned metro system in Santiago, the metro system connecting Valparaíso and neighboring city Viña del Mar is privately owned. I spent the afternoon with my flat mates watching live broadcasts of protests in both Valparaíso and Santiago. As we watched the news, we could hear incessant clang of silverware against pots and pans known as cacerolazo (a historical way to protest in Chile). Later in the evening, demonstrators in Valparaíso congregated in the streets as metro stations were left in ashes. Six of our close friends left their homes to stay at our house that night. We cooked all the food we had for everyone and filled every pot and pan we could find with water. That evening from the safety of our apartment building’s roof deck, we watched the first night of protests with a panoramic view of Valparaíso. Demonstrators built roadblocks and evaded tear gas. President Sebastián Piñera declared a state of emergency and deployed military forces in Valparaíso, Concepción, La Serena, and Santiago. During the state of emergency, the Chilean constitution allows military forces to detain anyone on the street following the curfew. The Chilean government had not deployed the Chilean military in major cities since the 8.8 M_ww earthquake of 2010.  That evening we watched a group of young men surround a car and eventually set it on fire. The owner of the car, a mother with an infant in her arms, shrieked as they threw a molotov cocktail under the car’s hood. A group of demonstrators entered our building that night and unsuccessfully attempted to set it on fire. As demonstrators rightfully chanted anti US slogans, I sat around the dinner table with my Spanish flat mates. October 19 is a night I will never forget.

No one slept well. On Sunday October 20, 2019 we woke up with the sun to hoard as much food as we needed for the coming days. In the early morning glow, the rancid smell of melting metal, tear gas, and burnt rubber filled the air. Uber and the bus system were both shut down. All the shops near our house were closed. The ten of us walked in a tight group across the city and found one small market that was open. We filled our backpacks with enough food for the next few days and were sure not to take too much. As we walked home, cacerolazo filled the streets. On our way back from the grocery store, we found ourselves trapped between various demonstrations. An elderly couple and young mother with her child were next to us when an armored military vehicle dispersed teargas on us. We were four blocks from the closest protest. None of us were shouting. None of us held a communist nor Mapuche flag. After navigating the demonstrations, we made it home safely. Later in the day, members of the military fired guns at demonstrators directly below us. We watched with our windows closed. As the news played on TV, civilian footage captured on the street below our home was broadcasted across the country.

The next morning, we made our way to the airport in Santiago. We spent the next week in Buenos Aires filled with guilt as we watched friends’ publications on social media showing the atrocities back in Valparaíso. On October 21^st, President Sebastian Piñera declared, “Estamos en Guerra” (We are at war). By Friday October 25^th, he voiced his desire to march in Santiago with his fellow Chileans.

While the demonstrations throughout Chile are justified, the movement is fragmented and unorganized. The military allows desperate civilians to loot local businesses. Looting has set precedent for violent action against the pueblo (Chilean people). Over the past month, there has been Progress and loss. On my very street I have seen cars set on fire, grocery stores looted, tear gas dispersed, pharmacies set ablaze, and demonstrators shot. November 12^th was the most violent and emotionally draining day of my study abroad experience. I heard thousands of gunshots throughout the day. Grappling with the desire to help those in need while also ensuring my own safety has not been easy.

The protests are not just about the spike in the metro fare. Demonstrators are fighting for a new constitution, reproductive rights, and a just pension system. Many Chileans who do not attend university are drafted into the military. A father told me that his son with autism is forced to wear a patch on his arm at school. There are many fascist practices in the Chilean government. I have cried for Chile. I have cried for Valparaíso. As a US citizen, I have felt guilty. As of today, opposition leaders and the ruling government have agreed to hold a national referendum.

I ask everyone to send positive energy to lawmakers and the people of Chile.

***note: I wrote this on October 19 at the beginning of the uprising. I did not have access to Wi-Fi at the time, as I was on an academic excursion in a rural area in the south of the country. I plan on posting more selections from the journal I started keeping on Chile’s mass mobilizations against economic austerity and the oppressive neoliberal system.***

On September 11, 1973 in Chile, a military coup against the first democratically-elected socialist government in the world shook the country to its core and forced its radical political imagination and ambition into hibernation. The following 17 years of dictatorship banned and violently repressed social movement and organization of any kind altogether. During this regime, Pinochet forcibly instituted a neoliberal economic system that reaped great growth for the already wealthy and powerful and afflicted the country with gross socioeconomic inequality. Despite official reports of decreased poverty levels, the system persists to this day in Chile and overall socioeconomic inequality is maintained, if not exacerbated. Politicians make it their business to maintain the system, and, as a result, the vast majority of the country are entirely disillusioned with the formal political system: voter participation has fallen every national election since the country’s transition back to democracy in 1990 under terms negotiated with Pinochet and his fascist regime. However, there exists a swelling demand for change that is increasingly finding expression outside the formal system and instead in social movements and mobilization. For example, in 2011, Chile experienced a wave of student movements that began to alter the political landscape and reasserted the power of the people to catalyze change outside of the formal system. The people are once again bringing that power to the attention of the country and the world and demanding that their voices be heard over the oppressive noise of a system that tries to drown them out.

In Santiago, the nation’s capital, the metro fare was raised to secure more profit for the private company that runs the city’s transportation system. This increase makes a real difference for the workers who must commute to and from work each day to make ends meet. In Chile, thanks to neoliberalism, privatization reigns supreme and public services are few and far in between — Chile is the only country in the world with privatized water. So when this fare increase was met with large protests in Santiago, these demonstrators were mobilizing against the entire neoliberal system that has been so detrimental for the lives of so many Chileans.

The mobilization in Santiago catalyzed more action in other cities, such as Valparaíso, where our program is based and where there has been a strong presence of student movements in recent history. The people want structural change. And they take to the streets to make this known. And how does the government respond? By sending militarized police out into the streets against its own people to suppress citizen action with tear gas, armed vehicles, bullets. By declaring a state of emergency, a condemnation of the protests as a threat to general public safety that also suspends civil liberties and enables mass arrests of more than 700 protesters as of today. By imposing a 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew in the entire Santiago metropolitan area, the provinces of Santiago and Chacabuco, and the regions of Coquimbo, Valparaíso, O’Higgins, and Biobio. More cities and regions follow, and the hours are expanded. This curfew reminds me of the one in place during the dictatorship as a form of social control. This is not a coincidence: the dictatorship never really left, but merely shape-shifted into the fancy new packaging of “neoliberal democracy,” a revolting oxymoron that plagues much of the Western Hemisphere.

It is incredibly powerful to be here in Chile while the people are rising. I am fully with the people in their fight. However, the reactions from the media, the establishment, and some of the people around me disgust me, though they don’t surprise me. They are the same distraction tactics that have been used time and time again to detract from and delegitimize mass mobilization around the world. The cable news airs “coverage” of the protests that consist of aerial shots of buildings burning, and the viewer is led to believe that protest means destruction, senseless destruction. There is no space given to explain the movement’s goals or the larger sociopolitical context. This absence is purposeful and demonizes the movement, negates the necessity of its existence for the people who are out fighting for their right to a dignified quality of life. The system would prefer us to lament the irrelevant damage to a few meaningless buildings and condemn the alleged violence of the protesters, while the carabineros (Chilean police force with a history of abuse that operates as an autonomous institution) crack the skulls of high school students in the streets and the state systematically starves its own people.

I am in a study abroad program that claims to be concerned with “Cultural Identity, Social Justice, and Community Development” — and yet half the people in this program, who love to hear themselves talk about social justice and human rights in the safety of a classroom, as long as it remains theoretical, show their true colors as soon as the words turn into action. They too speak only of the fires, of people “taking advantage” of the situation as an excuse to destroy. They willingly and eagerly regurgitate the skewed narrative the system feeds them. I see resistance, resilience, and determination; they see broken glass and smoke. They could speak of alternative political expression, of collective action, of the better world for which these protestors are striving. But they choose to abandon their supposed values, they choose to adopt the lens of the oppressor, they choose to be complicit in this way. It is incredibly frustrating to feel that they do not comprehend, nor respect the importance of what is occurring here in Chile. But whether they open their eyes or not, the change is coming. The people are making sure of that.