The day I was tear-gassed

I know that my last post wasn’t very entertaining or exciting, but now you get to read about how I became an anarchist, got tear-gassed, and my mom threatened to make me come home! Just kidding. Well, I’m not an anarchist but the rest is true.


Last month, against my parent’s wishes [woops], I went to an education protest here in Santiago. The fight for free public education is a really big issue here and for the past year both the high school and university students have been holding marches protesting the education system. Chile has an extremely unequal distribution of wealth, which contributes to education because the students who come from wealthy families have a much higher advantage of receiving a better education because they can afford it [sound similar to anyone??]. Last year students took over the universities and many high schools for up to 8 months. I help teach english at an all girl high school near where I live and my supervisor told me that the girls at my high school participated and made all of the school faculty leave. Many girls even lived at the school starting in June and ending in December. This happened all over the city. Marches were also held in the streets of Santiago and carabineros [the police] used tear gas and water sprayers to try to combat the massive protests. Although they begin peacefully with people singing, dancing, playing drums, etc. the marches often become riots with people hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails and the carabineros resorting to tear gas.

The protests are either authorized or unauthorized, meaning that the government either approves or disapproves of them. The one that I attended last month was unauthorized so rather than being a peaceful march, it was a violent riot. But it wasn’t initially my intent to even be there. Here’s briefly what happened: I left my apartment at 11:30am knowing that there was going to be a protest at noon nearby where I lived. I figured that I was leaving with plenty of time and was going to go to school. When I got onto the main street [my place is on a little side street], I was greeted by carabineros in riot gear on every corner, armored cars and trucks driving down the street, and people running and covering their mouths with handkerchiefs to try to keep out the tear gas.  

I instantly realized that the situation was already

dangerous and tried to hurry to the metro only 2 blocks away in my flip flops and with my large school bag [obviously I was very unprepared]. The metro stop was closed! I briskly walked to the next metro stop and it was shut as well. I was basically trapped and started freaking out so I found a pharmacy where I could recharge my phone and call someone [my phone was out of money so I couldn’t text or call]. I immediately called my friend Julian and he told me a safe place to go so he could meet me. He totally calmed me down and I felt so much better once I wasn’t alone anymore. We met up with a bunch of other  people from our program and decided to go out and take some photos of what was going on since we were witnessing Chilean history. Let me say that Berkeley protests right now are nothing compared to this. At one point we were standing at a very safe distance just taking photos of a huge tank thing spraying high-pressure water at students on the other side of the bridge into Bellavista and all of a sudden one of the trucks went into reverse and tons of police got out and started shooting tear gas in our direction. We ran as fast as we could, but got it hard. I found Rachael and clung to her shoulder as we tried to continue moving away. I couldn’t open my eyes for more than a millisecond, my nose was running like a faucet, and I was choking and coughing. I had brought cut up limes with me in case this happened because someone told me that they help with the effects of tear gas. I took the limes with me because that same person also said that I would get tear-gassed even just trying to get home [obviously, I figured out that I live in the lion’s den of the protests]. I shoved a lime in my mouth, but it didn’t seem to do anything. When Rae and I could finally see again we looked around and we were the only people standing on the sidewalk. Everyone else was gone. Then we heard our friend Gabriel calling to us from the other side of the street and went to join him and found the rest of our friends.

After getting tear-gassed we were all a little shaken up and took refuge in a park where there were a lot of students sitting down and being peaceful-looking. But when a carabinero truck drove by they all sprang into action throwing rocks and such until the truck stopped. The police piled out of the truck and ran down a different street [yay! We were afraid they were going to tear-gas us again and that we would have to make a run for it]. Once the students realized that there weren’t any police left in the truck they swarmed it and attacked until the driver was forced to leave. A few minutes later the carabineros returned holding a student they were planning on arresting, and discovered that their truck was gone. Then the students once again swarmed the police, freeing the one who was going to be arrested, and the carabineros started firing off tear-gas to clear the area.

Rachael and I decided to try to go to my apartment after that and on the way we found a group of students dancing and chanting in the street right by where I live. We stood and watched them for a minute taking pictures and then kept walking until a boy came up to us, made a gun reloading motion with his hands, and yelled in English, “Nooo!!!! Go back they are going to shoot!!!” My first reaction was “Dang it they always know I’m an extranjera [foreigner]!” but then I realized “Oh crap! We’re about to be tear-gassed again!” so we had to run away. It actually took some strategy getting back to my place because I literally live in the war zone.

The high pressure water cannon

Rachael and I being hardcore after getting tear-gassed

Here are a couple photos from the protest that my friend Miki took from his apartment window:

A burning bench is in the middle of the street and those are carabineros all on horseback

After the riot had calmed down I thought it would be cool
to get a photo with a couple of the students.

So that's what happened last month. This past Wednesday there was another protest, but this one was authorized. When I left my apartment that day [readily prepared with my lemons and bandana in case of tear-gas] I was surprised not to see police in riot gear and armored cars driving down the street. Everything was actually totally normal. However, I did notice a difference when I walked to the metro station and found the street to be completely packed with people carrying banners, chanting, dancing, and playing drums. The atmosphere was energetic and happy and I didn’t feel threatened at all. The march began at Plaza Italia, which is right by where I live, and went all the way to the metro stop Puente Cal y Canto, which is 5 stops away. I had to promise my parents that I wouldn’t go to any of the other protests [they are reasonably worried about my safety] so I had to sit this one out, but from what my friends said it was completely different from the first one. There was even a stage at the end with a band playing and everyone was jumping up and down and singing and having a great time. They left when it ended at 2pm because there could be potential riots after that. Thanks for the photos, Mer!

As you can see the education protests here are a really big deal and they have a lot of support [there was 80,000 people estimated at the one on Wednesday]. Props to the Chileans for rallying together to fight for free public education.  


If you're interested in learning more about it, here's an article by the New York Times about one of the student leaders of the protests, Camila Vallejo, and just an overall picture of what's been going on. It's kind of long, but I think it gives a lot of good information to Americans about the education crisis here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/magazine/camila-vallejo-the-worlds-most-glamorous-revolutionary.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all%3Fsrc%3Dtp&smid=fb-share

Until next time--chao!

Grim at Grimaldi

I hate to be a downer, but let me just start this off by saying that this post will be quite different from the rest because rather than being about another awesome adventure, it’s about when I went to Villa Grimaldi, one of the main detention and torture sites in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship, and the General Cemetery in Santiago. Basically this is going to be serious and I don’t blame you for skipping it, but it is pretty eye opening. I know that most people who read this don’t know about Pinochet so first I’ll just give a little background information.

Mr. Matta showing us the gate to Villa Grimaldi

Augusto Pinochet was the Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean army in 1973, which was the year that he led a coup to overthrow Salvador Allende [the socialist president of Chile at the time]. He was then the dictator of the country from 1973 to 1990 [yes, it was extremely recent]. During that time Pinochet created a secret police force named the DINA who would remove citizens from society deemed a threat to the government. About 5,000 were brought through the gates of Villa Grimaldi, located where the outskirts of Santiago used to be, and 240 of those became part of the “desaparecidos” [disappeared] people of Chile from the dictatorship.

Half of the students from my study abroad program and I met with a man named Pedro Matta last Friday to learn about Villa Grimaldi before touring it. For about an hour and a half he explained the function of each building on the property and what tortures occurred there. It wasn’t until later when we were standing in the complex while he told us that the only way to survive such horrors like that is to force yourself to sleep at night that we realized he was one of the people who had been tortured there. He described how he had to mentally block out the screams of other prisoners, the stench of the feces and urine in the cells, everything, just to be able to sleep so that he would have enough energy to endure whatever the next day held.

A mosaic sculpture on the ground--the cobblestones and tiles were
the only things the prisoners could see under their blindfolds

Villa Grimaldi wasn’t what I was expecting because Mr. Matta hadn’t told us that Pinochet’s government had destroyed all of the buildings in order to hide the memory of what had happened there. One of the buildings, the tower, has been rebuilt though and where the others once stood now there is a mosaic plaque on the ground. The rose garden, where female prisoners were raped, is also still there, but now each rose is in memory of a woman who was violated.

A couple other things that Mr. Matta told us while guiding us through Villa Grimaldi was that he was in college to become a lawyer when he was captured by the DINA and when he was released he was basically like a zombie. I can't even begin to imagine trying to recuperate from such a traumatizing experience like what he endured. He was tortured for 13 months and after being released he left his family and took asylum in the United States and lived there for 15 years before returning to Chile. 


I don’t really want to go through and describe all of the tortures because it honestly makes me nauseous and depressed, but if you’re interested here is a website with everything that he informed us:

http://thelegacyproject.com/acmatta.html

Example of one of the mosaics demonstrating where a building was

The list of prisoners; at the top it reads "The fogotten is full of memory"

Allende's grave

The other place that we went to on Friday after Villa Grimaldi was the General Cemetery. That place blew. my. mind. You see, Santiago is a VERY classist society—where you live, how much money you have, and how well you dress determine what kind of service you receive and how you are treated. As you can imagine, this same idea is reflected in the tombs at the cemetery. We started out at the front entrance, which is incredibly beautiful, and gawked at the enormous monuments build for each individual family. The upper class section of the cemetery reminded me a lot of the one in Recoleta in Buenos Aires, Argentina. We stopped by Allende’s grave and Mr. Matta briefly tried to explain to us everything that Allende had represented to Chile. He was the first democratically elected socialist president and was the source of hope for so many Chileans who didn’t belong in the middle or upper classes. He also told us through tears about the education problem in this country and the disadvantages of the lower class. Even though he came from the upper middle class, he discovered that his privileged upbringing gave him a huge advantage in higher education and therefore he fights for the right of education for everyone. But I’m going to write a post about education and the protests here another time.

Here's an example of a giant, upper class tomb

The tomb for the Chilean soccer team I started following: Colo Colo!

The cemetery is so large that they have cart vendors selling snacks and drinks inside

A memorial at the cemetery for the desaparecidos [people who 'disappeared'] during the Pinochet dictatorship

As we continued through the cemetery we noticed the tombs became smaller until they turned just to headstones and then from granite headstones to white metal crosses and from white to rust. It seemed like all you could see for miles were dirt fields of dried weeds and rusted, deteriorating metal crosses. It was incredibly moving. There are about 5 million people buried there, which is about the same number that are alive in Santiago today. Since they have run out of room in the cemetery they have begun a new process called “reductions” where they remove the corpses after 20 years and put the remaining pieces of bone in smaller boxes and then replace the spot with a newly deceased person. However, the problem with the poorest section of cemetery is that the majority of the spaces are leased because the families cannot afford to permanently keep their loved ones buried. If the payment is not met, then the deceased is removed and cremated and the spot is given to someone else.

Even though Friday was a really dense day and afterwards I felt emotionally and mentally exhausted, it was definitely a very worthwile experience. Meeting Mr. Matta and knowing everything that he has survived is of inexplicable value to me. I can't believe that he is able to go back to the place where all those horrific things happened to him and share it with complete strangers. He is such a gentle, kind man and very inspiring. 


Obviously, I learned a lot from Mr. Matta, Villa Grimaldi, and the cemetery, but to end on a little bit of a funny note, another thing I learned is that thanks to the huge cemetery, if there is a zombie apocalypse then I am in serious trouble.  

Making Pottery in Pomaire

As you can see from all of my photos and previous posts, my study abroad program is awesome. But what makes it even more awesome is that they plan "cultural activities" for us throughout the semester! Only a couple of them are mandatory; the rest are just for us to sign up and go if we want to!















We had one a few weeks ago in a pueblo named Pomaire, located only a couple hours outside Santiago. Pomaire is well-known for their pottery and ceramics and our group had the privilege of eating at a local artisan's home and being personally taught how to mold the clay and make a couple pieces of pottery.

When we first arrived we were taken to the artisan's house/workshop where his family made us breakfast [we were ravenous!!!!!!] consisting of bread, jam, milk [the cow was in the field next door], and these crunchy, sugar coated fortune cookie tasting things. It was exactly the nourishment we were seeking. Afterwards, we were taken up to one of the hills outside the town to watch some of the men make clay bricks. A guide told us about the entire process, which included building them into a large pyramid type structure and lighting a fire underneath to harden them. [Althought I could be wrong--I was only half paying attention because I was oogling over a precious dog. Of course one of the program leaders had to tell me to stop touching it. Sorry for being an animal lover.] We also walked past this perfect looking pool of clay and naturally I had to stick my hand in it [what was going on with me that day?!] and then I tried to hide what I had done until I could wash my hand, which was nearly impossible. At least I didn't get scolded that time.

After our brief Pomaire history lesson [I thought the coolest part was that the founders of the town were Incans], we went to the artisan's house/workshop because it was time to get to work with our hands! We were split into two groups and given a pottery master who proceeded to give us a hunk of clay and instruct us on how to form it into a vase, cup, or bowl. He also showed me how to make little flowers to decorate the vase I made.

My pottery work

Then came the really fun part: using the pottery wheel!! He chose me to go first since I was already done with the first project and he easily made a beautiful bowl to give me an example of what to shoot for. It was so much harder than it looked! My bowl didn't turn out perfectly [I blame my tiny hands], but I didn't care, I was still proud of it.

By then our bellies were hungry again and it was time for another homemade Chilean meal! It was empanadas de pino [http://bit.ly/1TJjPf], cazuela [http://bit.ly/bQFYbb], more bread, and yummy red wine. Afterwards, our group was let off into the town to go explore the wares of the shops. Some of the things we found in the stores made out of clay were kind of strange...like a giant version of ET and recreation of cartoon characters. But there were also tons of really beautiful pots and all different sizes of pigs. [For some reason the pig is like the classic symbol of Pomaire. The guide probably explained it to us in the beginning, but I didn't catch it]. I didn't buy anything to take home because I'm 99.9% positive that it would break in my luggage because I'm catastrophic like that. However, I did manage to buy mermelade made from some kind of melon/squash that I had never heard of and a cool baseball hat. 

Julian, Rachael, me, and Natalie making our toast

And of course I found a couple cats to have a photoshoot with while I was there:

That's all there is to say about the trip to Pomaire. I'll write about another cultural activity in my next post because we are going to Villa Grimaldi, the detention and torture center for Chileans during the Pinochet dictatorship, this Friday. It's going to be an emotional experience, but it'll give me the chance to explain that important time in Chile's history, which I haven't written about yet. Chau!

Chillin' at the Chilean beach

One of the closest/best summer vacation spots for Santiguans [I looked up online what to call someone who lives in Santiago] are Valparaíso and Viña del Mar. They are two beach cities only about 2 hours away and are right next to each other on the coast. Reñaca beach is said to be "the most beautiful beach" and is part of Viña. For a little weekend trip my friends Natalie, Meredith, Rachael, and I decided to check out these places before it got cold. For those of you who didn't realize it, the seasons are opposite here from the US so I came during summer and I'll get back to California for summer too! Best of both hemispheres woop woop! 

Here's a view of Renaca beach

From the hill where our hostel was in Valparaiso

Anyway, our weekend getaway wasn't nearly as eventful as the other trips I've gone on, but that was a good thing because we needed some good R&R from the first couple weeks of class [Ok, maybe we just wanted an excuse to go on another vacation]. The cab driver ripped us off a couple luka* from the bus station in Valpo to our hostel, but we were in joyful spirits because it was sunny! We dumped our stuff in our room and immediately left to go to Reñaca. On the way to the bus station we found tons of awesome graffiti so naturally we had to take lots of photos of it. 
*luka means $1,000 Chilean pesos

There are tons of little buses that go between the beach cities so we hopped on one of those, which wound up being a very exhilarating experience. It seemed like the bus drivers were racing each other and having a competition for who could make their ride more petrifying/roller coaster-like. But my friends and I were loving it because we thrive on weird/scary things now. 

Of course when we got to Reñaca we all had to use the bathroom [tmi??] and headed to McDonald's since they are universally recognized for having clean, nice restrooms. We all got satisfyingly delicious coffee drinks there, which had manjar in them!!!! Manjar is the Chilean version of caramel, but DON'T call it dulce de leche. That's what Argentineans call it and there's a debate between Chile and Argentina about which one is better [even though they are basically the exact same thing]. Also, random comment but I thought it was hilarious when the cashier rang up the "Frappe [like frappucino] Manjar" because the register abbreviated it to "Frapman". Don't know why I found that so funny, but I'm pretty sure the girl and guy working behind the counter thought I was crazy. 


After the manjar rejuvenation, we walked out to the beach and even though it was cold, Nat, Mer, and I decided to go ahead and strip down to our bikinis. There were maybe 5 other people on the entire beach so it was kinda obvious that it wasn't the time to be tanning, but we didn't care. Rae was way too cold though and just laid down huddled on her towel. 

Once the sun finally did start peeking through the marine layer, Mer and I went to go test out the water and were surprised by a wave and wound up soaked. Chile is known for having cold water so we were chilly after that. But not too long afterwards we went to actually go swimming and it was very refreshing. I tried not to compare the Chilean beach to the ones I went to with Abby in Rio because Reñaca didn't even stand a chance, but it was still a beach and the sun was out so we had a good time. That is until we realized we were all getting extremely sun burned thanks to the fact that there's no ozone layer over Chile. We also noticed that we were getting hungry so we packed up our beach gear and got onto a bus back to Viña, did a little street shopping, and then were convinced to eat at a restaurant named "Africa" [kind of a Rainforest Cafe wannabe, but some of the wildlife inside was literally just stuffed animals]. Natalie and Meredith split a salmon a lo pobre and Rachael and I halfsiesed a lomo a lo pobre and it was soooo delicious!! I can't remember if I've explained this typical Chilean dish before so I will now. It's some kind of meat [salmon, lomo--like steak, churassco--like carne asada, etc.] with french fries, onions and eggs. Nom nom nommmm. It's one of my new favorite food groups. Yes, I love it so much that it's an entire group.

Feast your eyes on that!

We also got heaps of camaron con queso [shrimp with cheese] empanadas 

That night we practically forced ourselves to go out because we were all in pain, especially Nat, from the sunburns. We alternated using the Aloe Vera as we got ready and then went to go find a club. The hostel we were staying in was way up on the hill facing the ocean so it was about a 15-20 minute walk to the club area. In Valpo there's a street that's lined with them though so that made it easy to find one. We didn't want to pay to go in [duh] so we found a free one and went inside. We were the only gringas in there, which was perfect, and the best part is that they didn't play any American music!! You have no idea how annoying it is to be in South America and listening to English club music. We would much rather listen to Spanish music while we're here, of course.

Wherever I go, I always find a cat to love on

My face covered with sand after waking up haha

The following day was spent once again at Reñaca, but it was colder than the day before and we were super tired so we took a nap on the beach for a while [I fell asleep face first in the sand]. After our little siestas, we spent a while trying to find cool street shops in both Reñaca and in Valpo, but didn't have any luck because it was Sunday and most places are pretty dead on Sundays. However, when we were on our way to the bus station later that day we stumbled upon TONS of street venders, which was annoying because we didn't have time to look at any of their stuff since we were already running super late to catch the bus. But we did make time to stop and get some churros rellenos con majar [churros filled with majar!!! Churros here a little different though cause they aren't covered in cinnamon sugar--still amazing though. The best one I've had was in San Antonio, Chile. It was filled with manjar and then dipped in chocolate. Heaven in the form of food.]

Mer took a photo of us asleep on the sand

Me, Natalie, Meredith, and Rachael

On the way home we slept and talked and at one point Mer, Rae, and I were belting Bohemian Rhapsody and other passengers told us to be quiet. Lolz. And that was the end of our beach weekend. 


Then I found 10 luka [that equals $20 usd]. 
Just kidding.