No direction home ... a complete unknown ... like a rolling luggager: The Walls of Valparaiso Talk

16 March 2020

We're currently in Lima, and that's the next blog I'll post. Lima deserves its own blog. But I wanted to post about Valpo, and

the situation in Chile, so here goes.

Sometimes, it takes a while to process a place we've visited, and the reasons are as varied as the location. So

it took a while for me to process what's going on in Chile, what we experienced in Valparaiso, and why we chose to move on.

I always like to review the

history and facts before I talk about our experience. We try to be impartial observers, at least until we get involved in a

country, so it helps to stick with the facts at the beginning.

Our cruise ended on 22 February, and we found a traxi from the port of San Antonio to Valparaiso, a wonderful coastal town full of colorful houses on steep hills, with ascensores (elevators running

diagonally) to get up and down some of the steepest slopes. We booked a hotel downtown, thinking that would make it easier to get around town.

Our taxi arrived in Valpo about noon, and our hotel seemed to be all locked up - metal shutters over the door and windows, no one in

sight. Our driver called a few times but didn't get an answer. He finally moved to a legal parking spot, asked us to stay, and went back to investigate. After a while, he came back, and all was fine. We were a bit early for check in, so the staff had all been doing the

usual cleaning and set up, that's why things were closed up. Or so it seemed.

This turned out to be a family run hotel, with

grown sons and daughters and the older parents all working and living there. A few people spoke some English, and with our so-so Spanish, we were able to communicate.

We were shown our room, dropped off our luggage, and went out for some lunch.

Eventually we went back, unpacked for a week, started to settle in. The wifi was only working in the lobby/dining area, so

we set up our computers. I had all those cruise blogs and penguin photos to post, right?

Some time in the late afternoon or early evening, it sounded

like maybe a sports team coming down the street. Or a parade. The family all jumped up and everyone worked to get those metal shutters down over the huge windows, and lock the gate over the front door.

I got up and stood with the mother, watching out the door. This wasn't a parade, this was a demonstration. Un manifestacion. One

of the big political demos that have been going on in Chile for months. And while we had seen political posters and anti-government graffiti on the buildings, we didn't quite realize that we

were on the demo route, to a plaza or square up the road a bit.

People marched by in various groups, shouting slogans or signing songs or waving signs. Many people had goggles on their heads, and

kerchiefs over the lower part of their faces.

It was a peaceful crowd, despite looking like modern day bandits, and despite knowing that the demos are people angry with the current

administration in Chile, calling for a rewrite of the constitution.

Well, it turns out that the square up the street is where the police meet the demonstrators, and where the police fire tear gas canisters. Those kerchiefs and goggles were protective gear, as people

hoped to either continue marching past the square or at least get home without choking on tear gas.

The father of the family came home a while later, squinting and rubbing his watery eyes. I'm not sure if he was in the demonstrations, or just coming home from another job, or possibly having a beer with

friends. But his wife rushed over, and yes, he had walked through an area of tear gas, or had been in the square when the police fired off their canisters.

Yeah. Not feeling safe and secure right here and

now.

Over the week we spent, which was fairly quiet, we talked to people and I discreetly took photos of the graffiti and protest signs on the buildings,

chronicling what we saw. Some of the signs were wonderful artistically, very creative. But the messages were depressing. The photos of young people who had been killed while protesting was tragic. Signs of attorneys to contact if you get arrested and need to get out of jail. We just got sadder and sadder.

Basically, the economy of Chile is causing problems. As in some other nations I won't name, the rich are getting richer by selling off natural resources. The poor are getting poorer. The government, primarily the rich selling off water rights and such, doesn't really care about the average citizen, and keeps cutting services or financial support. One of the major criticisms we heard was that the retired people's pensions have been cut to such a low amount that the pensioners can no longer live on their stipends. For young people, the free college or university education is no longer available - the funds have been cut, and now everyone will have to pay for their post-secondary education. While other countries are used to that, this was not the norm in Chile, and so young people are suddenly out of school but not able to attend university to pursue their careers, despite growing up in a system where they were told they'd have that college funding available.

It gets worse. The government is selling the water, so that rivers are drying up. Farmers not only don't have water to irrigate crops, they don't have enough water for their herds of cattle and sheep and such, nor is there enough grazing land with the lack of water. Farm animals are dying from lack of water. Wild animals are dying. Some farmers have become so depressed over this situation, and watching their herds die, they've committed suicide. The manager of our hotel, the adult son, became quite emotional telling me about this, and I can understand - this must be so sad as well as depressing to see the tragic situation that has evolved, all from the greed of the present government leaders.

Add in that women are being victimized by angry and frustrated male family members or spouses. Increases in assault rates, increases in murder rates.

And the indigenous people are marginalized even further, as the middle class dwindles and more people are out of work, and as the right to an education fades.

There's a great article in the New York Times providing an overview: www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/opinion/chile-protests.html

It's a mess. People are understandably angry. Their anger comes out not only in the demonstrations, and in families, but also on the walls of the buildings.

Really, this once beautiful city is almost unrecognizable. I've spent time in New York City, and I've never seen so much graffiti, so many political placards plastered all over privately owned buildings. I understand the anger, I understand the frustration. But, well, I like old architecture, so it hurts to see these beautiful old buildings desecrated by the protesters.

It makes me think of Paul Simon's "Sounds of Silence" - "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, on tenement halls, and whispered in the sounds of silence."

We can't read all the signs - some of them are idiomatic, some of them are written in Mapuche, the language of the indigenous people. But there are common themes - that the government are murderers, that justice needs to happen for those protesters who have been killed by the police. That the water belongs to everyone. Equal rights for women. Protection for women. Equal rights for indigenous people. Blood on the hands of the government. Bloody handprints. Photos of the people killed by the police. Photos of protestors killed or injured by the police.

Or one in particular, the right to live in peace.

One graffiti tagger signed their work "without a future crew."

It was sad. It was depressing. And while we both understood, and agreed with this protest movement, it also wasn't our battle or our war. We're a little too old to get tear gassed in another country, and not quite prepared to take rubber bullets for someone else's fight. It feels selfish, but after age 60 or 70, well, we need to put ourselves and our health before other considerations, no matter how sympathetic we might be.

So, we agreed we'd fly to Peru, and spend a bit of time in Lima while we figured out where to next.

Of course, life changed in our two weeks in Lima, but that's another story, and another blog.