Chile

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.

After a week back in Valparaíso following our trip to northern Chile, my program had another trip, this time to the south, where we stayed in a rural Mapuche (the largest indigenous group in Chile) community. This trip was in many ways a thematic continuation of our previous trip to Arica and Putre, once again with a focus on the oppression of indigenous groups. We arrived in the community of Chapod, where we were divided into pairs and introduced to our host families. I really liked my host family; my host mom was really caring and friendly, as was my host dad, despite me only understanding about 10% of what he said. I also had two fun and outgoing host brothers, three dogs, three cats, and a bunch of chickens that woke me up far too early every morning and just wandered around freely, somehow unbothered by the other animals, helping me gain a new understanding of the term “free-range.” Chapod had an incredible sense of community. Everyone knew everyone, and though I was part of a specific family, I spent a lot of time with other students’ host families as well. I spent my free time playing soccer and cards with my host brothers and their friends, who were the host brothers of my friends on my program. The other frisbee player on my program and I even taught and played ultimate with them. I also loved the way animals would just wander around freely. My family’s dogs loved to follow me and the other student with my host family around, and I got to know the pets of other nearby families as well. We had gatherings in the nearby ruka (a type of building made of wood and grasses with a ventilated roof so that you can build a fire in it) where we got together as a community to hang out and make and eat sopapillas.

Just being part of the community and living with the families was maybe the best part of our time in Chapod. It was really nice to be in a different setting, in the southern woodlands away from the city. Nothing against Valpo, but I’d almost forgotten how much I love trees and just being in more rural areas in general. We also had some cool activities throughout the week. One day we went to the home of another family a little ways out from Chapod. There we had a class on Mapuche philosophy, which focuses a lot on the wholeness and interconnectedness of life and energy in the universe. One of the large contrasts I noticed between this philosophy and a lot of Western thinking is the role that humans play in the world. Rather than the domination and exploitation that underlies Western thought, Mapuche philosophy treats humans as a part of the larger natural world or cosmos and focuses on connection and respect between humans and nature. Later on, we planted native trees as a group and I even got the chance to feed a baby sheep.

Another day, we worked with some of the hosts from Chapod to gather materials to patch the roof of the Chapod ruka. We cut down these tall, hay-like grasses and then bundled them together using long, sturdy plant fronds, which we then loaded onto a truck to bring back to Chapod. I really liked that we got to work with the families that we stayed with during our time there. In general, I felt much more involved in and connected with the community there than I did during our time in northern Chile. To be fair, this trip lent itself to community engagement a lot more, partially due to the size of the community relative to the much large town of Putre, and partially because our stay in Chapod was a lot longer. Regardless, I felt like our time in Chapod was better overall.

A few days after we arrived in southern Chile, there were massive protests in Santiago over poor living conditions and systematic inequality. They were sparked by an increase in metro fares, but it quickly became apparent that a lot more was going on. The protests have continued ever since and don’t seem like they’re going to stop anytime soon. I’m going to focus a later blog post completely on the protests, but for now I’ll talk about them in the context of our time in the South. It was hard to gauge the reaction of my host family to the protests. My parents didn’t really seem to express opinions on the demonstrations at all, even though we started watching the news together every night around halfway through our time in Chapod. Both of my host brothers attended protests in the nearby city of Temuco after the protests spread to every major city in Chile. They clearly cared about the issues at hand and making real social progress, but to me they still seemed somewhat nonchalant and oddly insulated from the whole ordeal. This could certainly be more a result of a cultural difference where I just misread their reactions, but we were in rural southern Chile where the protests seemed distant, only real through the screen of the TV. It was hard to know exactly how they felt, but I know I certainly felt insulated from everything that was going on. SIT (the organization that runs my program), for one, seemed pretty stoked on the fact that the protests started right at the beginning of our longest trip away from Valpo. It gave them more time to figure out what to do, because of course they wouldn’t want to do anything that would put their poor innocent Americans in danger. For a while, our future was up in the air as they discussed moving our program to Peru or Argentina or keeping us in Chapod for an indefinite amount of time. In the end, we stayed in Pucón, the town where we were originally scheduled to just spend our last two nights of our trip, a total of four nights before returning to Valpo. The mandatory state-enforced curfews and state of emergency status were removed, so they decided it was safe enough for us to return.

So now I’m back in Viña del Mar (the neighboring city to Valpo where I live), with my ability to leave and go about my life freely severely restricted. But at least I’m home. All in all though, it’s an exciting time to be in Chile, and the trip to the south was a good experience.

Recently my program went to northern Chile for a week, where we learned about issues facing the Aymara indigenous group. This trip included a short stay with Aymara families in a town called Putre, high in the Andean altiplano, a flat-ish region at around 10 – 15 thousand feet in elevation (altiplano means high plain). Before arriving in Putre however, we kicked off the week in Arica, a larger coastal city at the northern tip of Chile. Here, we had a cultural exchange of sorts where we met and got to know an Aymara community. They taught us a traditional dance and included us in a Phawa, a ceremony centered on the relationship between people and earth, and we shared with them a song and poem. Afterwards we had time to eat and talk, which soon evolved into more dancing.

In the moment, it felt like a very positive and even profound experience to take part in this meeting of cultures, but as I reflect back, I can’t help but think that we Americans may have gotten a lot more out of it than the Aymara group. After all, they came to Arica to meet us, provided the food, and gave us an intimate window into some very significant and meaningful aspects of their culture. Our song and poem were definitely nice gestures, but Western/American culture has saturated so much of the world that it feels a lot less significant to share. Maybe I’m overthinking it; no one seemed like they didn’t want to be there, but abroad has taught me that I should be more aware of the impact my presence has on the spaces and people around me.

This same doubt I have about the cultural exchange in Arica also applies to some of the activities we did in Putre. We visited a classroom of 6^th graders at the local school, as well as a group of younger kids at a preschool. In both instances, it was fun to be there and meet the kids, but it felt like we were getting the benefit of learning about the education system while offering little in return. In both cases, the schools attempted to incorporate Aymara culture into the activities and lessons. The preschool had a strong focus on Aymara culture and education, but the 6^th grade class fell more in line with Chilean schooling, reflecting the government campaign to foster a national identity throughout the 20^th century in a process known as Chilenization. More recently, there have been efforts to incorporate indigenous culture and language into schools in indigenous communities, but based on what I saw at the school, they don’t seem very impactful. The lesson my program took part in was about the Aymara and English words for different emotions. While it’s great that these students are learning their native language, the fact that they were learning it concurrently with English and learning such basic concepts in 6^th grade is very telling. The schools are still dominated by Chilean culture with just a sprinkle of Aymara thrown in there, a product of the generations of oppression faced by indigenous people in Chile.

On a more positive note, the mountains were absolutely beautiful. We got the chance to go to Lauca National Park, where we visited Lake Chungara, one of the highest lakes in the world complete with a massive volcano as a backdrop. We also got to see the wildlife, including close-up views of llamas and viscachas, which are rodents that look kind of like rabbits.

Later on, after returning from Arica and Putre, my program took a day trip to Santiago to learn more about the history of the military dictatorship in the 70s and 80s and to visit a former torture site. This was our second trip to Santiago for this purpose. On the trip (as well as the previous one) we saw see firsthand the spaces where prisoners were held and learned about the techniques used for interrogation and torture. It was a heavy, sobering experience, but very important in the context of my program. The trips focused on preserving the memory of the human rights violations that are so often forgotten or ignored here in Chile but remain a very important part in not only Chile’s history but also the state of Chile today. Many of the weak state institutions in present-day Chile are relics of the dictatorship and re continuing to cause suffering and inequality now, just as they did decades ago. The country is still recovering from Pinochet-era policies and practices, which only makes the preservation of this history more important.

After our trip, I stayed the night Santiago with a group of friends rather than returning to Valparaíso right away with the rest of the program. The next day, one of my friends wanted to look for a gift in downtown Santiago for his host family. As we walked further downtown, we noticed there were few people on the street and no cars; it was almost eerily lifeless. We started to pass groups of carabineros (national police of Chile) dressed in full body armor at each intersection. My friend asked one of them what was going on. We learned there was a protest, and it looked like we were in its path. We kept walking and ended up on the opposite side of a large, divided road from the demonstration. The protest seemed fairly tame from what we could see. A mass of people marched forward, pounding drums, chanting, and waving flags and banners. Despite this, a steady jet of water sprayed from a water cannon on a massive armored police vehicle that drove alongside the protesters. Protesters who had left the mass and seemed to be trying to get away from it, particularly groups with younger children, passed us on the sidewalk. We stayed and watched for a while as the protest and police vehicles moved closer and closer. The flames of a Molotov cocktail flared up on the street near one of the police vehicles. We watched a group of armored carabineros complete with riot shields run to the front of the protests in a grossly militaristic formation. It seemed that in the few minutes we were watching, the carabineros became gradually more repressive of the protesting; at first I could only see the water cannons, but a short while later came the loud pops of tear gas canisters and the absolutely chilling sight of a group of carabineros shoving against the side of the protest, batons swinging.

Someone on the street had told us it was a Mapuche protest (the biggest indigenous group in Chile), but we didn’t put together until later that it was an anti-Columbus Day (known as Día de la Raza in Chile) protest. The Chilenization I described earlier in this post is really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the centuries of abuses faced by indigenous groups in Chile (not to mention like everywhere else too), and this oppression is still in the process of entering mainstream awareness here. I was most struck by the excessive police response to the protest, which did not look like it needed a whole lot of policing. I wouldn’t say I was surprised, however, as the police here in Chile are well known for their abuses of power, including protest suppression. But witnessing it firsthand really sears it into your mind and overall consciousness in a way that just hearing about it doesn’t. A few weeks earlier, I saw two carabineros smacking a man they had already arrested and cuffed before throwing him into the back of their police van. Both events are harsh reminders of the excessive force and brutality regularly employed by the police here. And the way the protest was suppressed highlights the unreceptiveness of the government as well as the disconnect between the state and the people.

When the protests in Chile started and state violence and repression was escalating, my program was on an academic excursion to a rural area in the south of the country to learn about Mapuche communities and cultures and their situation in current Chilean society. It was a difficult time to not have consistent access to service or Wi-Fi, but I checked Twitter religiously when I could and endured cable news at night to stay as informed as possible. I talked with my host brother in Valparaíso, Fabi, and asked him how the city is. He responded: “fighting nonstop.” Good. He’s marched every day, getting driven out by police and fortunately avoiding beatings, bullets, arrest. Others have not been so lucky. All of this is happening in the real world, but within the SIT program bubble is a whole different universe. We talked about the protests, its causes, and its grand importance in a couple isolated instances for maybe 15 minutes. Aside from this, all discussion of the protests has only been in relation to our safety and security, which are allegedly being threatened, or the potential loss of credits while people lose their freedom and lives in the streets, or potential disruptions to our academic schedule. To me, this self-absorption is a joke, especially since we, a group of US college students, are one of the safest in the country with our extreme privilege. The last thing on my mind is credits or our next oral exam and somehow it’s all they can think about. The directors say that, worst-case scenario, we complete the semester in Mendoza, Argentina or Cuzco, Peru. Our stay in Pucón at the end of the excursion is extended two more full days as they scramble to make an updated plan, both short-term and long-term.

However, on October 28, the curfews and states of emergency that the president had imposed on so many parts of the country are finally lifted and we are set to return to Valparaíso, where our program is based. We are advised to avoid the main part of the city due to ongoing protests and to more or less remain in our homes for a week with a suggested curfew of 8 p.m. Fat chance. My first day back, I stepped outside my house and heard tear gas being fired and sirens throughout the late afternoon and early evening. I looked down into el plan, the center of formal city life, and saw huge police vehicles, guanacos spraying water at protesters, and people running. Fabi says it’s like this every day, which is no surprise. I mention the gunshots and sirens to my host mom and she seems entirely unfazed, almost unconcerned. People here seem accustomed to these sounds and scenes of resistance, but that’s easy when you’re sitting at home in the cerro, the neighborhoods in the myriad hills marking the city where most of Valparaíso’s population lives. Up in the cerro, it’s a completely different scene. I went for a run and saw many people and families strolling on the sunny late Monday afternoon. There were several people with signs returning from the protests, luckily avoiding the police violence. There’s a police station across from a park near my house and there was a lot of squad cars and other vehicles coming and going. My friends in other parts of the city report an uncomfortably heightened police presence in their neighborhoods too, despite the fact that the protests are always in el plan, never in los cerros. My cerro is plastered with homemade signs and posters denouncing the government and the system, showing solidarity with the protests and the movement. These signs and fresh graffiti adorn the whole city. I realize how much I’ve missed this beautiful city and its strong spirit of resistance.

This past week I ventured to the Northernmost tip of Chile to explore one of the country’s beautiful national parks. Even before officially arriving in the park, the views along the drive took my breath away. The park was located at 15,000 feet and the drive was breaking through clouds and entering a surreal landscape. One of our many comments was that it was one of the most barren landscapes we had ever seen; no trees as far as the eye could see. It felt as though we were on Mars. When we finally arrived to Lauca National Park, we were stunned by the lush greenery and incredible amount of biodiversity. There were alpacas on one side of the road and flamingoes on the other! We spent the next few days camping at one of the highest elevation lakes in the world, complete with volcanoes that reached heights of 21,000 feet 

View of Lago Chungura (with flamingoes and vicunas in the background) at ~15,000 feet

On this trip, we met many hitchhikers and other backpackers. It was interesting to discover that almost everyone we met was from Europe, we met two different groups of Germans on our trip and a backpacker from Slovakia. I was very curious as to why so many Germans would be visiting a fairly obscure national park in Chile. Over the months that I have been here, I have learned that there is a fairly strong German presence in Chile and that they were actually one of the largest immigration groups in the early 1900’s. Their presence can be seen in German sandwich shops throughout Santiago, Chile. One of my favorites is Fuente Aleman, which serves huge sandwiches called Lomitos.

We also travelled to a town called Arica, which is world-famous for its surfable waves, and, most importantly, its famous wave called El Gringo. Arica hosts world championships for surfing and has a stunning coastline. I got the chance to take my first surf lessons ever at one of the best locations to do so. While in Arica, we stayed in a hostel near the shore. We got to take yoga classes with the owners and even got to take care of little black lab puppies that had just been born. Many of the people that had been born in Arica, such as my surf instructor and the hostel owners, had ventured to locations such as California and eventually settled back down in Arica. It’s charm and absolutely stunning coastline made me understand why. I have heard time and time again that many Chileans think the coast of Chile is very similar to California and that many have visited for that reason. Sadly, no one mentioned they wanted to visit Connecticut (understandably so).

This trip to the North further solidified my knowledge of the welcoming outdoor community and gave me the opportunity to learn more about a different aspect of Chilean culture, which includes many foreigners, such as the germans. Onto the next trip!

I am so much happier to be back in the jungle than I expected to be. The weather in the Andes was wonderfully cool, and because of that I didn’t sweat the whole time I was there, even when we were hiking. I had finally adjusted to the altitude and was able to walk up a flight of stairs without panting. I love the food, the people, and the atmosphere in Cusco, and I was not ready to leave. When I stepped off the plane in Iquitos and immediately started sweating, it just reaffirmed my hesitations about being back. However, all of those feelings changed when I stepped through the gate.

Immediately, the dog who lives at CAS, Negrita, ran up to everyone to greet us. She was so excited to see us and missed us all so much that it warmed my heart. All of the staff was happy to see us as well, and it made me feel good as well because I hadn’t realized how much of an impact we had made on their lives. My roommate and I were so excited to go in the pool when we got back. We were just happy to lay around in the sun sweating, even though this was something I was dreading before. Even classes were exciting, even though before we left for Cusco it was hard to stay awake because the heat and the humidity were putting everyone to sleep.

While I was spending all my time in the jungle, I hadn’t realized how much I had come to love it here until I wasn’t here for some time. I love all the sounds at night, and I love how every morning I hear a different kind of bird. I love playing volleyball with everyone after class, and I love lying in the hammocks Sunday morning reading a book. Right before we left for Cusco, all I could think about were the things that were annoying me, but once I spent time away from the center, I realized how much this place feels like home to me and how I have come to cherish my time at CAS greatly.

The picture is of the Center for Amazon Studies (CAS), my home for three months. This picture was taken by Anna Chah.

This post was written for my abroad program, Round River. I’m sharing it here as a window into a couple of days in the beginning of the program.

It takes us the better part of a day to wind north from our base camp in Cochrane, then east through the Chacabuco Valley, to reach the stark landscape on the other side of the mountains. We pass through Patagonia National Park, then across land owned by the Carabineros (Chilean police) and into parcels owned by the Chilean military. The sharp mountains open up to pampas- land well loved by wind. We roll over a hill and glimpse a few cozy red and white buildings tucked among poplars. This outpost– Predio Militar– is our destination.  A few horses graze quietly and a tiny bit of smoke streams from the largest building. Until a couple of years ago, the military maintained a sheep ranch on these pampas. Now Predio Militar is only occupied to maintain Chile’s sovereignty in the region near the Argentine border. A lone soul, Sebastian, is stationed out here. No one told him we were coming, but he welcomes us with smiles and the invitation to use the buildings as our home. After we settle our belongings among two cabins we go for a quick evening nature walk and learn to identify Festuca grasses, Neneo plants, Caiquen (the Upland Goose) and the Austral Negrito (a black and red flycatcher) before a strong storm blows us back indoors. Even though the cabins don’t have running water, electricity or thermostats, being invited to sleep indoors feels like a privilege. As wind screams outside, some of us share stories and mate in the dark. The skies are clear, it’s the night of the new moon. After a bit of dinner we sleep soundly on real mattresses.

The following morning, I wake up early and see a vast blushing sky, the perfect cue to put on my running shoes and see what I can see. I jaunt towards a laguna I stumbled upon the night before. The exposed bedrock is the color of stale blood. The lake is rimmed with mud and early birds. Fifty strikingly pink Chilean flamingos wade on the far edge. One flamingo flies right over my head, and I notice its strange shape in the air- the bird has long heron-like legs and a curved black beak used to sift through lake substrate. At 7:15 a globe of warmth crests over the bumpy Argentine horizon and a huge rock that looks like a canine tooth spreads the first rays. Neneo thorns and bleached sheep skeletons snag the golden light. This is a special place. I already feel tethered to something here as I watch dawn pull across the mesas and Utah-like desert of the East towards the sharp and snowy peaks to the West. This landscape is on the cusp of a mountain range, a little bit like parts of Wyoming I visited this summer. Devoid of sheep, the land is being grasped by wildlife. I find caiquén feathers and footprints of plover. When I return to the cabin, we whip up a hearty breakfast of eggs, toast and onions. Then we prepare for a day of field work.

The pampa around Predio Militar is home to the Ñandú, the Lesser Rhea. There are only a couple of tiny populations in Aysén so being able to observe these ostrich-like birds is quite special. One special fact about the ñandú is that they are polyandrous- the males make the nest and protect the bright green eggs that the females lay. Round River’s goals at Predio Militar are to monitor the ñandú population as it expands in this new habitat, find opportunities to increase the species dispersal ability, and diminish threats like dogs and fences. Every February or March, Round River conducts a ñandú census by doing area sweeps. September falls within mating season, so instead of roaming around and potentially disturbing ñandú nests, we’re sticking to other projects. Our first objective is to check camera traps that were set up over the winter by Katie Adaze, a Round River student. The camera traps take photos and videos when they detect motion, and are a useful tool to observe wildlife without a human presence staked out in the steppe. We locate three camera traps positioned along a fenceline, and change their batteries and download months of images. Fences are the biggest remaining impediment for wildlife like guanaco and ñandú. For a guanaco, jumping a fence involves the risk of getting snagged by barbed wire and dying a slow death strung out on a metal clothesline. We watch a video of a condor eating the eyes of a guanaco mother whose life ended up with such a fate. It’s gory and impressionable, to say the least. Ñandú rarely find their way through the fence, so when they’re threatened they can only run parallel to it. By documenting the wildlife present along the fences, we’re building a case to take them down. Since the sheep have been moved off the land, we only need to convince the landowners to let us take down unneeded fences and open up new habitat for a couple of pretty unique species.

The first two camera traps are located near the road, but the third takes us over rolling hills and across grasslands. The terrain is far more intricate than it looks at first glance. Hidden within the rolling steppe are gulches, rocky outcrops and muddy creeks. We spot the broad tracks of ñandú, grazing guanaco, small prints from a fox, and a swooping Cinerious Harrier. Mid-afternoon, we startle an adult ñandú. The flightless bird flees on foot, spreading its wings wide to look bigger than it is. I can’t help but laugh out loud at the bouncing feathery blob ahead of me. Long legs carry it quickly–the species can run up to 65 miles per hour. After checking the last camera trap, we walk back to Predio Militar. On the way, Shay leads us to anarchaeological site, a cave evidently used by the Tehuelche/Aonikéènk people. There are old blue markings on the walls. The color is unique and we ponder which minerals are present in the paint to make it so. Hunkered in the cool, windless depths it is easy to tell why the Tehuelche lingered here. Outside, everything is constantly swept by sun and wind. In here, there is a little bit of quiet. One side affect of this is that sheep seem to have spent a lot of time here too. Mikkel jumps on the bouncy manure-caked ground of the cave and exclaims that it is quite audible how much sheep poop there is. Gabe Kayano adds “I’ve never seen so much poop.” We leave the cave with some unquestionably excellent quantifiable data about sheep poop.

When I wake up on our second morning at Predio Militar, my first glimpse is a freshly snow-dusted landscape outside the window. I visit the laguna, and it is crusted in a thin layer of ice and the flamingos are absent. At 9 am, we begin a twenty-minute point count of bird species on the edge of the laguna. We form a ring, facing outwards towards different slices of habitat. I sit in the center and take notes of every species we observe, how many individuals there are, their behavior and which habitat type they’re spotted in. We make a total of twenty sightings, including Upland Geese, Southern Lapwings, Andean Condor, Crested Duck, American Kestrel and Buff-winged Cinclodes. Shay even spots a Two-banded Plover, the first recorded Round River sighting of this species in Patagonia. The data from our point count is added to a multi-year database of counts that have been conducted from this same spot. As we walk back towards the cabins, we see a Least Seedsnipe. For our first two days in Patagonian steppe and pampa habitats, we encountered a great variety of species and experienced some new field methods. We also covered a couple of lectures about the birds and mammals of Patagonia. To round out our introduction, Shay read us several Tehuelche myths. We learn about Allal, the first boy, who was carried to this land by birds. Kiuse the plover came up with the idea for the swan to put Allal on its back and help him cross the ocean to come to this land.

Before heading back to the Chacabuco Valley, I take one last look around the pampas. The light keeps striking new peaks, drawing out new moments of awe.

Time feels altered here. Rocks take odd shapes and tell different stories in every direction. Layered upon the landscape are the footprints of Tehuelche people, sheep ranchers and modern day wildlife biologists. We’ve only passed through, but learning about the local human histories and the wild plant and animal inhabitants has lent me a sense of place that feels special.