One Canadian's Impressions of Chile

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One Canadian’s Impressions of Chile

My wife and I made a five week visit to Chile during the months of February and March 2005. It was my first visit, and it took place at the end of Chile's summer just before Autumn was to begin.

Natural Features:

We travelled by car from Vina del Mar as far south as the island of Chiloe. My wife and I found it to be a dry country at this time of year. In the drier areas, the hills are dotted with scrub or cactus. Where more rainfall occurs, the land is forested mainly with eucalyptus and secondarily with pine. The foliage of the Tasmanian blue gum when young catches the eye as the name implies. These trees are imported species. One can see the occasional large stump of trees that were hundreds of years old that were probably cut in the last century. Native species survive, but are found in parks or areas that were more difficult to log. For example, in the south, seeds from the native avellano are roasted and sold by street vendors like peanuts at a football game. We purchased some in Valdivia. The south is more heavily forested since it enjoys heavier winter rains.

If one travels east and slightly north of Vina del Mar toward the Andes along the Aconcagua river valley, one sees hundreds of palta or avocado orchards. The chirimoya, a spring fruit is also grown in this region. If one travels southeast from Vina del Mar to Santiago, one passes through the Casablanca valley where white wine production has grown up in recent years in an area once thought too far north and unsuitable for wine production. As one passes south of Santiago on Chile's four lane highway, Route 5, one passes through the Maipo, Rapel, Lontue and Maule valleys where acre upon acre is covered in vines grown by the large Chilean and international wineries. The happy marriage of soil and climate, which is often described as Mediterranean, account for the production of Chile's famous reds and whites. The majority of wines can be said to range in price from 1000 to 5000 Chilean Pesos or $2.50 to $12.50 Canadian while the expensive wines like everywhere in the world are substantially higher.

Most of the growing activity in Chile lies on the plain and river valleys between the low coastal mountain range and the high Cordillera or the Andes range of mountains. Much of the rainfall falls on the coastal range, leaving the long thin interior plain much drier and hotter. As one passes south through the wine districts, peaches, pears and apples can also be seen growing. And further south again, where rainfall is still good, crops of wheat are grown. The richer grassland here affords a richer quality of milk and butter also. The dairy industry here is said to be the best in Chile. This applies to the beef and pork industry as well. Chillan, for example, is famous throughout Chile for its sausages, the longanizas being the most renowned. It is not unusual to see huasos, the Chilean cowboys, on horseback in the fields or on the dusty gravel country roads. As one proceeds south from Temuco, one finds the Lake District with its beautiful lakes fed by waters from the Andes, and with rugged mountains or a cone shaped volcano serving as a backdrop.

Because there is so much monoculture in the areas we saw along Route 5, we did not see the biodiversity in bird life I thought we would see. One has to visit parks or areas not so affected by agriculture or reforestation by tree plantations. Nonetheless, near the water and ocean we saw gulls, cormorants, brown pelicans, cattle egrets, black necked swans, grebes and a few ducks or coots. Away from the water we saw chincoles (crested sparrows), swallows, crows, the zorzal or brown-breasted robin (you read that correctly) and hummingbirds. But three birds seemed to stand out. First was the large and noisy ibis as it probed in the fields for insects in small groups of three or four. Second was the tawny-throated dotterel (chorlo de campo), like a plover or killdeer, which foraged as a loner on the ground, but which in small groups would sometimes squabble. The third was a small brown hawk, the chimango caracara. This unusual bird unlike a normal hawk can be found alone, in groups of two or three and even in groups of eight to ten birds. In other words, it is quite sociable. It scratches in the soil to stir up insects rather like a chicken. An unusual domestic chicken we saw was the black araucanian chicken which lays bluish or greenish coloured eggs.

The dry climate of the wine growing region means there are fewer insects also. We saw white cabbage butterflies and fritilleries, but not much else. Many beehives can be seen which are kept to pollinate the grapes or fruit trees. The Atacama desert in the north and the high Andes mountains in the east have acted as a natural wall protecting local species and keeping out foreign species. A recent exception is the wasp or avispa which is believed to have crossed the Andes in trucks in the trade with Argentina. The barrier has been so effective for the most part that the insect that blighted or killed most of the grape vines in Europe in about 1890 has never made its appearance in Chile. Many grapes in Chile are still grown on their own root stock unlike grape vines in Europe which are all grafted onto North American blight resistant root stock. The Carmenere grape, extinct elsewhere, also survived in Chile due to the natural barrier, and so Chile has recently reintroduced this grape to the world.

You can't travel anywhere in Chile without hearing about another natural phenomenon- earthquakes. The world record was set by the 1960 Chilean earthquake at 9.5 on the Richter scale. While in Valdivia on a river cruise on the Rio Valdivia, we passed what looked like a telephone pole in the water, but were told it was the mast of a ship that was swept by the ensuing Tsunami from Corral some two miles up river to the place where it sank. Apparently everyone on board was saved, while many onshore ironically were drowned. The ground level in the area shifted one to three metres in places and some of the buildings disappeared underwater. The river courses were altered to a degree. And seventy-five percent of Valdivia was destroyed.

My wife, who is from Concepcion, recalled how in the 1960 earthquake the ground roared and rolled like waves on an ocean for about three minutes. She said what most people don't realize that the are many aftershocks in the following months, and that life is completely disrupted. In her city, people were without electricity and water for more than three months as the lines were down and water pipes burst. Water was obtained by bucket from a stream and boiled. Half of her school building had collapsed so even after three months only half day school was possible since half the students attended in the morning and half in the afternoon.

You can't travel Chile without feeling a tremor sometime as I did in Vina del Mar on the 13th of March 2005, a quick boom accompanied by trembling walls and floors. Knowing Chile's history, I couldn't help but feel apprehensive for a few moments. It was reported that this quake was an offshore 5.3 magnitude quake 50 km north of Valparaiso.

Social Economic Observations:

September the 11th, 1973 is the defining moment in the Chilean economy for that is when the military toppled the Socialist government of Salvador Allende, and began to transform the public sector by introducing market economy reform. However, many public companies were privatized after the coup d'etat by less than open and transparent means. For example, a manager who works for a natural gas company told me that after the coup the company was sold to some of the directors at a fraction of its net worth. The company shares were paid for after the sale from the company profits rather than from the pockets of the directors. And finally the company, once Chile became open for business to the outside world, was sold for its real net asset value to an American company which owns it today.

A number or international Companies operate in Chile. It is taken for granted that companies like McDonalds, Holiday Inn, Best Western, Avis, Budget and Hertz operate here. But there are others such as Bank Santander, BBVA Bank, Scotia Bank, Bata, GE, Shell, Esso, Barrick, Bema Gold, Teck Cominco and many other mining companies in the north. The Chilean government has been considering making a royalty payment mandatory for foreign companies because many have paid no taxes to the Chilean government for years. This is possible because many companies purportedly earn no profits, a feat accomplished by the company home office abroad charging the local Chilean branch inflated prices for machinery or other capital goods. At the same time, the internationals enjoy Chile's low wage environment.

I met a mortgage manager for a Chilean bank whose annual wage was $7800 Canadian dollars. I learned that there are engineers who work for as little as $15000 Canadian dollars a year. Despite Chile's apparent economic growth and success, unemployment and poverty remain a significant problem. In other words, the growth in the economy has not been accompanied by equivalent job and wage growth. This leads to the prevalent notion that there are two Chiles, Chile One and Chile Two.

Chile One refers to the wealthy upper class whose ownership of chain stores throughout Chile include department stores Falabella and Ripley, pharmacies like Verde Cruz and Ahumada, grocery stores like Lider, Santa Isabel and Jumbo, bus companies like Turbus and Pullman, the Sodimac Home Centers, consumer food suppliers like Watts and Colun, beer producer Cristales, and gas service station Copec. The LanChile airline has been privatized. The transnational highway Route 5 is also in private hands as the frequent tolls attest.

In a country with half the population of Canada, 15 versus 32 million, I expected to find a proportional number of private companies would have gone public in order to raise capital in order to grow and expand their businesses. While Canada has about 1500 companies trading on the TSX or Toronto Stock Exchange, Chile to my surprise has only about 90 companies regularly trading on the Santiago Bolsa. It seems as if many holders of private wealth in Chile One are more concerned with holding and preserving it in their own hands than with sharing the capital gains or dividends with shareholders in a public company, even if opportunities are lost because additional capital hasn't been raised via the public.

Chile One in Santiago is represented by residential areas like Los Condes, Vitacura or Providencia where you will notice the well manicured lawns and fenced houses or condominium apartment buildings with their swimming pools and, of course, 24 hour security. Nearby are shopping malls every bit as well appointed as any quality shopping area in North America or Europe. The owner may have a housekeeper or cook or gardener. Drawn from Chile Two, these employees can be had for as little as $350 Canadian dollars a month. Outside the city, the wealthy build mansions that look like homes in Hollywood or prime waterfront areas in Florida. It is known that the top ten percent of the population enjoy 40 percent of the total national income, while the bottom ten percent earn less than 2 percent of the national income.

Chile Two, on the other hand, is represented by concrete apartment buildings of two to four storeys opening onto sidewalks in the downtown or dirt and dusty yards in the suburbs with stark interiors like tenements in New York City. On the fringes of the city are found individual wooden homes or shanties built from a conglomeration of materials found, bought or scrounged over a period of time, and facing onto dirt roads. Such are the areas of the poor which are found throughout Chile. If poverty is tolerated among the poor, the state of homeless animals is worse. It is hard to avoid seeing, for example, scrawny homeless dogs, a few of whom are covered with sores or flies.

How can you describe a small town or village in Chile. A few paved main streets. Gravel or dirt side streets. Modest houses with a garden in the yard to supplement the food supply. Houses and buildings painted white if not weather beaten down to bare wood. And always at the centre or heart of the town, a plaza. Here or in close proximity are found the Municipal building, the local police station, and the main church. Not far away the local grocery store and a few small shops. A railway station if the rail line passes through it. In short, a small town in Chile today is how I imagine small towns to have been on the prairies of North America in the 1920's.

To digress from the description of towns, it should be noted the story of the railway is a sad one. The Pinochet regime’s idea of progress was to build the Route 5 four lane super highway. But the price was to discourage the passenger rail service. To this end the regime had many railway stations torn down in the name of progress. In Concepcion the large concrete railway station still exists as an abandoned boarded up shell, and a reminder of what was once a great and proud rail system.

Yet the Route 5 which was built to replace the passenger rail system is not without imperfections. The builders did not always take into account local needs. In consequence, where the road passes through small towns, pedestrians sometimes walk along the road edge using it as a sidewalk, or cross from one side of the road to the other because there are insufficient overpasses. Even bicyclists can be seen lifting their bikes over the median barrier as they too cross the road. And occasionally individuals stand roadside offering something for sale. And sellers of soft drinks and snacks appear at many tolls along the Route 5. Can you imagine this happening on a high speed highway in North America?

On the other hand, Route 5 traffic is well served by Esso or Copec gas stations which sell Coke and snacks you might find anywhere in the world. But there are also roadside stands or rustic restaurants with signs offering Mote con Huesillos. This refreshing chilled snack consists of cooked wheat grains and stewed whole dried peaches served in a sweet peach juice.

A larger town would have a Mercado or concrete building housing a market selling an array of goods from food to clothing to handicrafts. In the incessant need to earn a living, Artesanias selling handicrafts have sprung up in every city, although to be honest, many of the same products are found wherever you go so that supply outstrips demand. The inefficiency of it reminds me of a government make work project. Near the mercado, a feria or market of a more temporary nature is often found, with stalls and canvas or plasticized awnings overhead and sometimes structures which are somewhat more solid. If there is a Saturday market, the farmers and fishmongers bring their products in for sale by truck, or even in the horse drawn two wheel single axle cart which is still a not uncommon sight today.

Privatization in one sense means that everyone is a businessman. At the bottom rung is the street vendor selling no more than what he or she can carry. On the next rung is the stall. Climbing the rung eventually leads to a large business occupying several thousand square feet or a small chain. When compared to North America there is a vast array of different stores with a substantial number of them being mom and pop operations.

The transportation system in most cities can also serve as a metaphor for the state of business in Chile. In the yellow pages, you will find about a dozen bus companies offering inter-city service. Within the city, public transportation is organized so that the different bus numbers follow prescribed routes with regulated fares, say for example 250 pesos or 50 cents Canadian, but each bus is a separate business. Paralleling the bus system is the collectivo which is a car following set routes at regulated fares, and about 50 percent more expensive than a bus fare, but each car being a separate business. Finally there is the taxi system which operate as taxis do elsewhere, that is with flexible routes and very high fares relative to bus fare. What is clear is that the consolidation of businesses has barely begun in Chile.

Even a small town goes into business in a sense for the municipal government is sure to have a person on every street near the plaza collecting parking fees. And even on streets in a residential area where no municipal parking fees are collected, a self-appointed individual will watch your car making sure no one breaks into it or steals it, again for a fee. This kind of work seems to be a substitute for the government unemployment insurance the unemployed are entitled to in Canada. Many gas stations charge a fee to use the washroom. Some city parks are gated and require an entrance fee or if no entrance fee, then a fee for the use of a picnic table. The user pay system is practised widely in Chile. And there is also the voluntary fee known as the tip. Don't forget to tip the boy or girl who bags your food items at the grocery store. At the hotel, it is customary to tip the housekeeper who made up your bed, changed your towels and tidied your room besides paying your bill.

Between the wealthy and the masses, who earn a living as best they can, is the middle class. They send their children to private school if they can afford it. One sees evidence of this during the lunch hour when high school students wearing their school uniforms crowd the main plaza or shopping area. And those students who perform well enough in the national exams at the end of secondary school win a place in the university system. The education system as a whole is sound, and the universities produce doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, economists, accountants and business graduates as well qualified as any in North America. Those families that do well can afford a large home and employ servants. And families of the lower middle class live in modest homes and do their own cooking and housework. The middle class although not wealthy still form part of Chile One. Nonetheless, the downward pressure on wages due to the globalization of the world economy appears to have eroded the standing of many in this class also.

Politics:

It seems one can't talk about politics in Chile without referring to the left or the right, whether one considers the period before the 1973 coup d'etat by the military led by General Pinochet or the period subsequent to the coup d'etat. The left seems to have stood for state ownership, democracy and equal opportunity, while the right has stood for private ownership, and has pursued the entrenchment of wealth and power in the hands of the upper class.

Before Pinochet stepped down and returned the government to civilian rule in 1990, his regime framed a new constitution which tends to weight representation toward the right. In the upper house, or Senate, 9 of the 48 seats are granted by appointment. The Security Council appoints four senators, one each from the army, navy, air force and police. The conservative Supreme Court and the President make the remaining five appointments. The public admission in the Autumn of 2004 by the Chilean Army that it violated human rights during the Pinochet years, and the revelations in the spring of 2005 of the theft of public funds by General Pinochet which he deposited into secret bank accounts in the USA, have led the right wing political parties to distance themselves from the former Pinochet regime, and to support for the first time amendments to the constitution so that all unelected senate appointments including those made by the armed forces and police will end in 2006, the assumption here being that the amendments will be passed by the Congress.

In respect to the lower house, or Congress, the electoral districts were redrawn prior to the hand over of power in 1990 so that in the conservative rural areas, the population is overwhelmingly conservative while in the urban areas efforts were made to draw the maps so that the centre-left supporters were offset to some degree by supporters on the right.

Each of the 60 districts returns two representatives to the Congress by a system of proportional representation. The party with the most votes elects the first representative to the first seat, but must have double the vote of the second party to secure the second seat. This arbitrary threshold means that in an urban area where the centre-left parties have been balanced with the right through the redrawing of electoral districts, it is not possible to double the other parties vote so the outcome is that this second seat is won by the second place party. In other words, one seat goes the the centre-left and one seat to the right. In rural areas which are overwhelmingly supporters of the right, both seats go to the right because the doubling threshold to win the second seat is met. Although over simplified, this explanation serves to explain how the electoral system is skewed toward the right.

An impediment to constitutional change besides the weighting in favour of the right is the two thirds majority vote requirement. Another peculiarity of the Chilean constitution is that the heads of the military cannot be removed by the President, which makes the military independent of civilian democratic control unlike in a normal democracy. The current proposals to amend the constitution, if passed, will restore the President's right to dismiss military commanders.

As for the military dictatorship, you can't travel anywhere in Chile without hearing about its impact on people. In Valdivia, we took a river cruise, and the boat Captain told us that he had been tortured and imprisoned for three years, although he committed no crime whatsoever. In Puerto Varas, a woman told us how in her school years, the curriculum was state controlled, and that certain books were completely banned throughout the country. Another woman from Copiapo in the north told us how the police yanked her school books from her grasp and searched for banned literature, meaning any literature from the left. In Concepcion a man told us how he had been dismissed from his accounting job with the railway, and that his wife had to bake and sell these goods for a period of five years before he could find proper work again, and that he still needed to work in his retirement years. A younger woman in Concepcion told us how the privatization of her pension plan had been a disaster so that she would be unable to retire at the normal retirement age. What was clear was that the military rule, in addition to fear and intimidation employed during its tenure, had an economic impact which still reaches into every family today.

This is not to discount the impact on the families of the 3000 disappeared who were murdered by the regime. The commission, which investigated what had happened in respect to imprisonment and torture, documented some 30,000 cases of torture, and this is only of people who came forward to testify, not to mention those who have died since and could not testify. The commission in their report released in the Autumn of 2004 concluded what they uncovered was only the tip of the iceberg.

The abuse of power which countenanced the outlawing of the communist or Marxist parties, the dissolving of Congress from 1973 until 1990, the banning of union activities and the burning of books cannot be ignored either.

It appears that despite the reintroduction of civilian democratic rule in 1990, the centre-left governments during the presidencies of Aylwin, Frei and Lagos have continued the policies of privatization and foreign investment, in the hope that growth in the economy would provide more jobs and better wages. While the wealthy and the upper middle class may have prospered, it seems the benefits have not "trickled down" sufficiently to help the working poor, underemployed and unemployed. And the middle class also has seen wage erosion under the pressure as low wage economies elsewhere threaten jobs. No reform movement appears in sight which would address the inequality in the distribution of incomes between the highest and lowest income earners.

In 2004 the unemployment rate was reported to be 8 percent, and the poverty rate to encompass 20 percent of the population. It seems no coincidence therefore that the incidence of property crime has reportedly increased in recent years, and is a topic of discussion in the newspapers. Wherever we went, we were warned against pick-pockets, muggings, and of the need to lock things up securely lest valuables be stolen.

Chilean Ways:

The working day is often ten or more hours per day. As job cuts have been made to trim inefficiencies out of the system like in other countries, the remaining employees have been expected to pick up additional workload. The longer hours are not compensated for by an afternoon siesta which doesn't exist for the most part. As a people, therefore, Chileans seem to be go about their daily work in a perpetual state of fatigue.

If the main meal of the day was not taken during the lunch hour, supper may be taken about 9:00 pm or later. Dining at late hours also means bedtime is later than in North America, often well after midnight, and not long before the start of the next busy day.

When guests are entertained in the evening, one can expect drinks before supper, perhaps a fruit punch, pisco sour or wine with olives or some other snack to mitigate the effects of drinking alcohol on an empty stomach. To my mind, the belief that olives can soften the effects of alcohol indicates Chileans are still close to old rural beliefs, and explains why honey is said to have health promoting properties, and why herbal remedies are so widely sold.

Finally, late in the evening, the meal will arrive. The asado or barbecue is a favourite method of preparing meat. Yet as a nation which is close everywhere to the sea, fish of one kind or another may also be the main course offered. I can also mention here that the influence of the aboriginal peoples can be seen in the use of beans, corn and squash in Chilean cuisine; the national dishes Porotos Granados and Pastel de Choclo serve as good examples. Whatever is served, if a Chilean has decided to offer you hospitality, you can be sure the host will be welcoming and generous in a most open fashion. And since Chileans both love to talk and laugh, you can be sure the conversation will be lively throughout the evening.

These were some of the impressions made on one Canadian by the people and places of Chile during his five week visit to its central and southern regions.

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