Yes it’s hard being in el culo del mundo. Living in Santiago, it does sometimes feel like you´re living in a dirty, stinking, smoggy, cramped culo. But life goes on… and I´m going to blow some sunshine up this culo. Perhaps my memory is to blame (it rivals the protagonist of Memento in capacity for shortness) and I blame my short memory on living in Chile. Since I´ve arrived and lived here I have a terrible memory for things… but it seems to many Chilenos don't have one kind word for their own country and are forced to mostly depend on los piropos culturales that visiting gringos shower each summer. Though maybe they are just being lateros and want me, the exotic gringa, to tell them what a great country they have.
Good qualities I've noticed that Chileans have:
Improvisation, resourcefulness, practicality…I kind of think of these qualities in a bunch. My impression is that MacGyver is sort of a hero for Chileans because he can make anything happen with just what he can find in a kitchen. There’s actually a Cristal beer commercial here where several guys want to have a barbecue but they have no grill, so they consider several different objects at the house they’re at (like a bird cage) and they end up using a bed spring (or something) as a grill. Just like MacGyver but they aren´t out to save anyone, they just want to drink beer and eat meat and use minimal effort to achieve this end. Homer Simpson also is an Icon because he’s practical too, and drinks beer... I’ve often seen sand sculptures of him in Viña al lado la Avenida Perú and he’s on many t-shirts bought in Patronato.
Another Chilean quality that I quite enjoy is black humor; they make fun of morbid things. In comparison with the United States, where saying something politically incorrect can lead you to being hung by your toenails from the center square, being un-p.c. is quite acceptable here. It has kind of a carnival-style fun to it. At the moment, not one example comes to mind (memento). I´ll add it later.
They also have an incredibly developed capacity for criticizing their own culture…which can be seen as a good quality.
And of course the "cariño latino" is quite pleasant, the besos on the cheeks when saying hello to friends and acquaintances and it seems they have a stronger sense of community within established groups of friends, for example, like in the sense that they notice each other more, like in the US, I feel it's a lot easier for a person to get by "disperceived" like, for example when a friend and I showed up at a Halloween party dressed as Taliban about 5 years back, no one batted an eye or even commented on our absolutely un-politically correct costumes. It was only a party of like 20 people. Okay, that disperception wouldn´t happen in Chile. That's what I mean, maybe there's more dialogue?
These are some of my positive impressions of Chilean culture up until now…
1 comment:
Yeah, some Chileans have an obvious dislike for all of their neighbors: Bolivians, Peruvians and Argentinians. At first when I got here I sort of thought it was a joke, like how people from the States joke that Canada is the 51st state, but some people really don't like these other nationalities. I suppose its like people in the States who are racist against Chicanos and Latinamericans.
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