Extraordinarily green. Wow. Pretty cool.

http://emoltv.emol.com/?id_emol=272

To see the video in English, type in "grid" in the search box:
http://video.on.nytimes.com/index.jsp
It's not the beastie boys video, but the other one ..living mostly off the grid

Why did I come to Chile in the first place?

One day, when I was 12, I was at my uncle's house and he began to relate his stories of traveling through Mexico, the Caribbean, Europe, Morocco, etc. His stories sparked my gusto for traveling, especially to foreign places and I knew I would travel a lot in my life. At 17 I decided it was time to study abroad as an AFS student. I was lucky to have the opportunity. (Thanks mom and dad.) Puerto Rico called my name. I was used to cold and 20, 30, 40 below-Farenheit days and I knew in Puerto Rico I would be near the beach, no matter what. Unfortunately, by the time I got around to filling out my application, Puerto Rico was all taken. Cuak. I thought of applying for Brazil, but I wanted to learn Spanish. My first Chilean friend, D, urged me to go to Chile. She was an AFS student in my high school in the States and told me Chile was lots of fun thus I should check it out. Puerto Rico out of the picture, I was off to Chile. Five out of six of the photos that I sent into AFS were of me and my friends and family in three feet of snow. The sixth picture was one of me on the beach in Florida, with palm trees in the background and a big smile on my face. The AFS staff got the picture. They probably saw the photos, and said "pobrecita, mandémosla a Viña." Which was exactly my plan. It was not-so-subliminal messaging. I wanted to be placed in a beach city, even if it wasn't warm 12 months of the year like in Puerto Rico, at least some of the year it was warm.

I came back a couple times for Christmas breaks and visited my host family, friends and travelled a bit around Chile. My host father works at a University and one day he told me that his U had a good master's program in Hispanic Lit and that it was reasonably priced. I was only in my second year of my pre-grad and wasn't really thinking about a post-grad degree yet, but several years later I remembered and came down to Chile to get my masters. So here I am.

Knowing the other, transculturally vogueing

Tzvetan Todorov has a literary theory on "knowing the other." (I'm translating this from Spanish to English.) This is an abstract of his theory.

Understanding a foreign culture, or another person (or a literary text) remits to a simple question, how do we understand the other?

This other can be different from us in different ways:
in time - so knowing the other means understanding history
in space - we use comparative analysis (different cultures)
or the other can be just someone you know

Todorov's solution on how to know the other deals with several successive phases of the same act, although this movement means you have to retrocede in order to advance.

First phase) Assimilate the other to oneself. "I'm a literary critic, all the works I speak of only let one voice be heard: mine." I feel like foreign cultures are structured like mine. The historian only encounters a pre-figuration of the present when he studies the past. There is a perception of the other, but I convert it into a reproduction of myself. There is only one identity, mine.

Second phase) Understanding consists in the disappearance of myself in benefit of the other. "I become more Persian than the Persians: I learn their history and their present, I accustom myself to perceiving the world through their eyes, and I repress manifestations of my original identity."
I'm proud to make the writer I’m reading speak. I renounce myself to fuse with the other. Again, there is one identity, but it is the other's.

Third phase) I re-take my identity, after doing all I could to know the other. My temporal-spatial, cultural surroundings are no longer a curse; in fact they produce new knowledge, this time in the qualitative since, rather than quantative. An ethnologist, I no longer try to make others speak, but to establish a dialogue between them and me; I perceive my own categories as just as relative as theirs. I no longer try not to have prejudices. I pre-judge necessarily and always, but that is the interesting part of my interpretation, since my prejudices are as different as theirs.

Fourth phase) I again separate from myself, but in a different way. I no longer want to or can identify with the other, but not with myself either. (This phase sometimes sends you here.) My knowledge about the other depends on my own identity. This knowledge of the other also determines my knowledge about myself. Knowledge about the self transforms the self's identity, and the whole process can start again, until infinity. The movement never has an end, but moves in a precise direction towards an ideal.

I've had these experiences; I imagine most people have, though I think people living abroad are way more aware of it. I'm sure there are many adaptations you could add to this theory, but in its core I find it quite accurate.

Por si te perdiste algo

Expat identity issues? No worries...Chile is prepared. Just go to Moneda 1342, they'll help you out.

Chilean male/female relationships: another piece to the mosaic

So I have a slightly altered perspective on male/female relations in Chile. Perhaps, better stated, one more piece has been added to the mosaic. So Vuko and I went to a wedding on Saturday. It was a nice wedding. (As a sidenote, it was the shortest Catholic ceremony I've ever attended, like 3o minutes.) The revelation I had came a couple days later, but it was stimultated by an experience that just didn't fit within my picture of Chileans. So you know the tradition of the bride throwing the bouquet that may provoke a catfight for the flowers that promise a future wedding/marriage? Okay, so all of us single chiks were waiting for the bride to throw the bouquet. She ended up having to throw it three times because no one caught it. And there was a general lack of enthusiam among the girls to catch it, which was made up for when the groom threw the garter. You should have seen these rowdy guys' ebullience. They wanted that garter. When it was thrown, it passed through Vuko's fingertips and a sea of hands shot up to grab it. I don't know who got it, but Vuko came back to our table wounded. He was bleeding. Some dude had taken a chunk out of Vuko's finger with his clawlike nails. I mentioned this to my psycologist because this just didn't make sense, why are these guys sooo excited to be married? She said that Chilean men were probably more enthusiastic to get married than I had previously thought. No me cuadraba para nada. But why? Maybe they just wanted to make a scene, and I wouldn't have thought twice, but Vuko's finger was pretty ugly. There was more too it than just screwing around. One possible answer is that in a traditional Chilean marriage the woman takes really good care of the man. She's his servant, because as Kyle has described, he's the king. So this also means a wedding condemns the woman to a lifetime of servitude, and thus the bouquet was dropped three times. This explanation fits together quite nicely, actually. Though I don't mean to generalize to all Chilean parejas. I'm sure our generation has a ton of exceptions to the rule. But, perhaps it still is the rule?

Well said.

Huevo no es pollo

por Pedro Lemebel

Algo hay que decir, al menos desatar la ira frente a la impudicia de cinco momias del Tribunal Constitucional que se arrogan el derecho de apoderarse del cuerpo de la mujer para decidir sobre sus proyectos fecundatorios. Pareciera que después de tanto andar en el difícil trayecto de la liberación, ciertos proyectos de identidad que creíamos ganados son remitidos a la mazmorra feudal del catolicismo inquisidor. ¿Pero quiénes hablan de la vida y la familia con la boca llena de espermios vinagres? La misma derecha miliquera cómplice del crimen a mansalva.
¿Quién habla de la vida y pone los ojos blancos mirando al Altísimo? El mismo prelado al que se le espumea la boca negando el condón, que es el único salvoconducto en la frontera del sida. ¿Acaso, señor eclesiástico, su celibato pedófilo es más recomendable? Tal complicidad retrógrada entre los magistrados y la curia violenta el derecho que tiene toda mujer a decidir sobre su cuerpo. Si no eres dueña de tu cuerpo, mujer, ¿de qué mierda eres dueña? Mujer pobre, mujer proleta, mujer obrera, cansada de trabajar, lavar, educar, amamantar a la prole que, según estos beatos, te manda Dios. Como si Dios te diera un bono de mantención para la crianza. Como si los críos vinieran con una beca divina. Mira tú, si los ricos Opus pueden darse el lujo de parir a destajo porque les sobran las lucas.
En el fondo, como dice una amiga, este pastel podrido es segregación clasista. Que tengan guaguas como conejas las cuicas UDI, que tienen servidumbre para que les críen a los nenes blanquitos. Porque también, si ellas no quieren, pueden hacerse el aborto de un millón, en el fundo o con el médico de la familia, y después llegar regias al cóctel en La Dehesa.
Pero esa realidad glamorosa no es la suya, señora pobla. Con cueva ha logrado tener tres niños, y aun así, usted y su marido se sacan la chucha para educarlos. Y esa monserga de la vida, del huevito, del feto de días que piensa, canta ópera y recita la Biblia, el feto filósofo que es más que un ser humano.
Quién sabe, quién tiene la seguridad del momento cuando empieza el mambo de la vida. Pura culpa y más culpa que le meten en la cabeza. Como dice mi amiga feminista Raquel Olea, ¿cuando usted se come un huevo, qué se come: un huevo o un pollo. Dirán que esto es facilismo. ¡Manual feminista!, gritará alguna cuica Opus. ¿Y qué? Todas las mujeres populares saben del aborto, del palo de perejil, del alambre y de los riesgos que corren con las aborteras clandestinas.
Además, todas conocen los malos tratos y crueldades a que las someten en las postas públicas cuando llegan con hemorragia. La culpa cultural es la construcción madre, virgen y mártir que ha hecho esta sociedad occidental de la mujer. ¿Qué sabe el hombre de un cuerpo agredido en su género desde que nace? Nació chancleta, decía antes la gente, y las perritas se ahogaban en el río.
Lo mismo pueden decir de mí; qué sé yo de esto, de un territorio corporal tan vasto y mortificado por un designio religioso y parturiento. Y quizá tendrían razón, pero me complicito con la libertad del cuerpo mujer y sus decisiones de supervivencia, de tener o no hijos, de tomar la píldora del día después, después de tener un rico sexo espumeante. ¿Por qué estos rígidos señores condenan a la clase trabajadora a tener sexo sólo procreativo? ¿Y si el polvo era sólo por calentura casual? Si la cachita era sólo para pasar la neura, sólo por deseo. Ustedes, señoronas de misa dominical, ¿conocen la palabra deseo? ¿O sólo se abren de piernas para tener hijos? Pero ese es problema de ustedes, y no tienen que imponer esa moralina al país entero.
Tampoco se crean las damas zorrijuntas que llegar al aborto es una gimnasia recreativa. Si fallaron las pastillas, si no resultó el tarro, si el condón se rompió, la colegiala, la pobladora, tiene que vender lo que no tiene para arriesgarse con un raspaje con gillete mohosa.
Alguna vez le pregunté a mi madre si se había hecho algún aborto. Me dijo que sí con aburrida indiferencia y después hablamos de otra cosa, mientras ella apagaba la tele donde el cura Hasbún vomitaba sentencias y amenazas con cola de lagarto.

And my translation into English

The egg is not the chicken.

by Pedro Lemebel,

Something has to be said, at least to unleash the wrath towards the disrespect of five conservatives of the Supreme Court who appropriate the right to take power over the woman's body in order to decide her fecundity projects. It seems like after getting so far down the path to liberation, certain identity projects that we thought were won are remitted to the feudal dungeon of Inquisition Catholicism. But who talks of life and family with the mouth full of vinegar sperm? The same militarist right accomplice of over-assured crime. Who talks of life and directs their white eyes looking towards Almighty? The same prelates whose mouths foam negating the condom, which is the only safeguard against AIDS. Perhaps, mister ecclesiast, your celibate pedophile, is more recommendable? Such reactionary complicity between justices and the ecclesiasts violates the right that every woman has to make decisions about her body. If you are not the owner of your body, woman, what the hell are you owner of? Poor woman, proletariat woman, working-class woman, tired of working, washing, educating, nursing offspring, who, according to these prudes, God sends you. As if God gave you a voucher for raising children. As if kids came with a divine scholarship. Look, if the rich Opus Dei people have the luxury to give birth to child after child incessantly, because they have more than enough money [to raise them], than, deep down, like a friend of mine says, this rotten cake is class segregation. The Dehesa snobs from the UDI (conservative party) can go ahead and have babies like rabbits, since they have servants to raise their little white babies. Because, if they don’t want to have the baby, they can have a million-peso abortion, on the country estate or with the family doctor, and then arrive looking great, to the cocktail party in the Dehesa. But that glamorous reality is not yours, poor woman. With luck you’ve been able to have three children, and even so, you and your husband work your asses off to educate them. And that tirade of life, of the egg, of the fetus of days that thinks, sings opera and recites the Bible, the fetus philosopher is more than a human being. Who knows, who has the security of the moment when the life mambo begins? It’s just shame and more shame that they stick in your head. As my feminist friend Raquel Olea says, ¿when you eat an egg, what do you eat: the egg or the chicken? This should be an easy one. ¡Feminist manual!, an Opus snob would scream. What does it matter? All the poor women know about abortion, about the parsley stick, about the barbed wire and the risks run with clandestine aborters. Moreover, everyone knows about the bad treatment and cruelty that they are subject to when poor women arrive to the emergency room with a hemorrhage. Culturally, occidental society is to blame for defining woman as the mother-virgin-martyr. What does man know about a body assaulted since it’s born? She’s born a good-for-nothing, people used to say, and the female puppies were drowned in the river. They can say the same about me; what do I know about this, about a corporal territory so vast and mortified by religious and child-bearing intention. And maybe they’re right, but I commit to the female body’s liberty and her survival decisions, of having kids or not, or taking the morning after pill, after having rich, bubbly sex. Why do these rigid gentlemen condemn the working class to only have procreative sex? What if screwing was only for casual horniness? If getting it on was only to remedy desire? You, ladies of Sunday mass, do you know the word desire? Or do you just spread your legs to have children? That’s your problem, and you don’t need to impose that superficial moral over the entire country. You must not believe, prude ladies, that having an abortion is recreational gymnastics. If the birth control pills didn’t work, if they had bad luck, if the condom broke, the school girl, the poor woman, has to sell what she doesn’t have to risk herself with a rusty razor blade scrape. One time I asked my mom if she’d had an abortion. She told me she had with bored indifference and we talked about something else, while she turned off the television where the priest Hasbún vomited the same repetitive sentences and threats.

a few concerts in Chile

Tuesday we went to see Riders on the Storm, aka The Doors minus Jim Morrison. It was an excellent show, in a nice-sized theatre, downtown Santiago. Before the Doors came on, this sucky band called Delta played. I don’t know what the organizers were thinking to schedule them before the Doors. I’ve been to high school band concerts that were better than Delta. And the musical style was totally different. But the Doors rocked. Excellent show, they played all the classics with lots of guitar and piano solos-including a flamenco intro to Spanish Caravan, and random commentary about alcohol, drugs and George Bush. All the musicians were solid, I especially enjoyed Manzarek and Krieger, the keyboardest and guitarest.

We had tickets in the gallery, the highest part of the theatre - but the theatre's not that big so I liked our seats. As Delta was finishing, the people from our section began jumping over the handrail that separated the high gallery from the low gallery. And then at some point the security guard disappeared at one of the stairwells down to the low gallery and tons of people rushed down into the lower section. It was entertaining to watch all this and all the movement left us with lots more room. Then just before the Doors came on, people started jumping from the lower gallery down to the floor to be right by the stage. This was quite the affair as the drop was about 10-12 feet, and it turned into a human waterfall. The original jumpers began to jump and scream from next to the stage "el que no salta es pavo", loosely translated as "he who doesn't jump is a wuss" and so they egged the audience on. I bet 200-300 people jumped. We saw a couple people eat cement, heavy. But mostly, the people already down grabbed the feet of people on their way down and then precariously jumped down or tried to find footholds-and rather quickly because there were security guards. This was definitely entertaining and worked as build-up to the band's entrance to the stage. A good show, well worth it.

Vuko went to the Ozzy Osborne concert at the estadio nacional a couple weeks ago. He absolutely loved the concert and came back raving about it. He got up right next to the stage. I was happy he had gone and even happier that I hadn't. I like Ozzy Osborne, but big concerts here are not my scene.

Two years ago Vuko invited me to see the Beastie Boys here in Santiago in Ciudad Empresarial in this huge pabellón. First Chancho en Piedra came on, and we began slowly making our way through the crowd towards the stage. I very much enjoyed that show, the lead singer came on in a typical Chilean school uniform, for girls. The short plaid skirt really hizo juego con sus piernas re-peludos. He was hilarious and the band was good. The place was packed. Chancho en Piedra left and were as close to the stage as we could get. I felt like a sardine all packed in and I couldn't see anything except the shoulders of the kid in front of me and it was difficult to move. Vuko saw fine because he's like 6'3 while most Chileans are 5'4. We began to wait. I wanted to go to the very back of the pabellón where there was space but Vuko wanted to be as close to the stage as possible. It was hot and stuffy. After waiting for the Beastie Boys to come out forever, I finally convinced Vuko we should go outside for a bit. My back hurt from standing awkwardly, smashed against a bunch of other fans for like an hour. We barely got outside and the Beastie Boys finally made it on stage. One of the Beastie Boys, seemed confused, and was trying to figure out where was the VIP section because to him it just appeared like one big audience. He was surprised to realize the VIP section consisted of the first 20% of the crowd and the VIPs were all packed in sardine-style, just like the non-VIPs, they just were closer to the stage. The group put on a good show, but the sound was a bit messed up. We ended up watching from the back of the pabellón, like 100 meters away. I was too traumatized by the quantity of people that squished together to get close to the group and didn’t want to get any closer. But it was a fun show and the only time I’ve seen the Beastie Boys. But now I shy away from the big concerts in Chile.

A few years back some friends, my cousin and I went to see Kraftwerk in Santiago. It was in the Estadio Victor Jara, a much smaller venue than Espacio Riesco and Kraftwerk is less well known than the Beastie Boys. Good show.

And last year Vuko and I went to see Paul Gilbert, who is an electric guitar virtuoso. I only went because I thought Vuko should see him since he loves the electric guitar. This concert was in the Teletón theatre. Waiting outside, I noticed it was a total sausage fest, the only girls were with their boyfriends (as in my case). I began bracing myself for a testosterone-infused couple of hours, which described my experience of the groups that played before Gilbert. Not at all my style of music. Then Gilbert came out and did a really enjoyable show. He's an incredible guitar player and quite charismatic on stage, and funny. He even improvised a song about the technical problems they were having as the sound people worked to correct them. I was pleasantly surprised by Gilbert (and the band)’s talent and the performance in general. I definitely recommend his shows!