Day 70: Mr. Indigenous

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[youtube=IjYP4YK2Bhw]

I never thought Valparaiso could feel so much like home. After my two-week excursion to the north, I was thrilled to return. My trip consisted of a mix of tourism, education and culture shock. It was by far the most unique thing I’ve ever done in my life. But first, I need to catch up on events from before my departure. This entry is a bit longer than the others because there’s a lot to cover.

I experienced two fundamental aspects of the Chilean culture in the week before my trip. The first was what they refer to here as a “temblore,” or earth shake. In the Midwest we would call this the Armageddon. Quite literally, the earth shook violently for a solid ten seconds. I was in a café with my Spanish class (yes, I know Dad, what was I doing in a café during class?) At first I thought someone behind me was shaking my chair. Then I realized I could feel it under my feet as well. All 6 gringos froze in shock for a brief moment, but the Chileans in the café carried on with their day as if nothing happened; they barely paused in their conversations. I was overjoyed. Since my first day in Chile I’ve been hoping for some seismic activity. Temblores are common in Chile, averaging one or two a month. I’d like a slightly stronger on before I go. They’re a thrill like no rollercoaster can give.

The second event was equally as jolting. I traveled to the National Stadium in Santiago and viewed a Chilean futbol game from the center of the bleachers. The Chilean national team was playing Peru. After working in the Palace (the Pistons’ stadium), I thought I knew what rowdy fans were like, but there’s a whole other level of fanatic here. Chileans shout, scream and sing for the duration of the game. The location of the stadium is unreal. It sits in a fishbowl in the center of the Andes. The mountains tower above the stadium on all sides.

(I was lucky enough to be videotaping the game when Chile scored a goal. The video truly captures the atmosphere of a Latin American soccer game. Chile shut out Peru, 2-0).

And then, of course, I went to the north. Half my class went north, and the other half south. The fourteen of us (including our director) flew via a three-hour flight on the airline LAN Chile. We passed the first three nights living in a hotel in Iquique, an old salitre (nitrate) mining city that now survives off tourism. The town rests between giant sand dunes and the ocean, basically making it one giant beach. The town was straight out of a Wild West, dating back to before the 1880s. It’s amazing how a mining city in rural, northern Chile developed the same culture, architecture and feel of a John Wayne movie, long before John Wayne was born - not too mention before the American cinema reached Chile. It had saloons, cowboys and old “western” style buildings.

We spent the first two days listening to local college professors lecture about the old mines of the north, the Incas and the Aymara (my soon-to-be family).

On the third day we left for another city in the north named Arica, but not before stopping at one of the old mines. These weren’t just mines; they were entire cities equipped with houses, theaters, swimming pools, and more. All the miners lived in the city along with the owners of the mine and the people that worked at the local businesses. The city was fully self-sustaining - it had to be; it was in the middle of the desert.

Upon arrival in Arica, we were thrown immediately into a new house, and a new homestay. Arica is a fully modern city sustained by tourism and agriculture. As I would later learn, most of the indigenous people from the Aymara pueblos in the mountains have moved to Arica. I lived with an older retired couple named Matilde and German. It was very similar to my living situation in Valparaiso. I had five siblings, all over the age of thirty, who lived elsewhere in Arica and Chile. I lived in a rather large house with two spare bedrooms, a dining room, two living rooms, and lots of skylights. They don’t worry about holes in their roofs because it never rains in Arica.

The highlights of Arica are a giant plateau called the Morro (wall), two lush valleys and a band of caves sitting on the edge of the ocean. The Morro has a museum dedicated to the War of the Pacific fought among Chile, Bolivia and Peru in the 1880s over the nitrate mines. Arica, Iquique and much of northern Chile were once a part of Peru and Bolivia before Chile invaded and captured the land. My favorite lecture in Arica was from a professor speaking about the “Chilenization” through education of the north. The government more or less had to teach the people to be Chilean. The feeling I got after spending time in the north was that the people seem identify more with Peru and Bolivia because of the proximity and the shared Aymara culture. Yet at the same time, the people tend to be very racist towards Peruvians and Bolivians, often blaming them for the crime in their cities. This is in part a result of the Chilenization after the war.

After spending a few days in Arica listening to lectures and touring the city’s landmarks, we drove to the Antiplano. The Antiplano is a vast region high in the Andes, notable for its flat land, exotic wildlife, volcanoes, and lakes such as Lake Titicaca father north in Peru. We spent two nights in a hotel in Putre, the largest of the small Aymara pueblos of the precordillera (the area of the mountains on the way up to the Antiplano). Putre is now a tourist village and has running water and an internet café - impressive for an Aymara pueblo. We spent a full day visiting Lake Chungara, a small lake next to a volcano and full of flamingos, and then bathing in hot springs. After this day of leisure, it was time for the moment of truth, the five-day stay in the indigenous pueblo. We split up into four groups and each went to different pueblos.

My pueblo, named Socoroma, was only a half hour from Putre. Socoroma is the second largest of the five main Aymara pueblos of the precordillera, but don’t let that fool you. The town consisted of 25 families, most of which were elderly couples over the age of 50. At one time Socoroma had been a city of about 400 Aymaras, but now most of the children have moved to Arica to study or work. The majority of the homes in the pueblo are now abandoned, making it feel like a ghost town at times. Sadly, Socoroma is dying, and the inhabitants are the first to tell you. None of the families’ children want to stay and work in the fields. There’s a school in the pueblo, but it has only six children. The people of Socoroma are currently attempting to save it through tourism as Putre has done. Every day a few tourists would ramble through the center of the pueblo on their way to Putre or Lake Chungara.

I lived with an Aymara couple named Faustina and Rafael. We lived in an adobe hut with a dirt floor. The home had a faucet with running water, but no bathroom. Luckily, one of the neighbors had a bathroom with a toilet that I was permitted to use, but I didn’t shower for the entirety of my five-day stay. I slept in the storage closet. It had a bed as well as food, supplies, and meat hanging from the ceiling.

My Aymara mother had bad arthritis and walked with a cane. She stayed in the house all the day and cooked marmalade and bread to sell to the people in the pueblo. The kitchen had a relatively modern stove/oven combination but nothing more. My father worked in a field growing potatoes, strawberries and alfalfa. The fields stretched along the steep hills and cliffs near Socoroma. Everyone lives in houses grouped together in the pueblo and travels long distances to their fields. My father rode a donkey to his field more than a mile away.

I woke up at eight o’clock everyday. Some days I would help in the fields and some days my father and I would hike through the hills. He showed me old Incan artifacts: old statues and paintings of more than 2000 years. Socoroma has been a settlement for more than 3,000 years and the Aymara people have existed even longer. The Incas conquered the Aymara around the year 1300 AD. There’s a road not far from Socoroma that my father told me leads all the way to Machu Picchu in Peru. The Inca mostly left the Aymara alone, and the people retained their culture, the same culture they still maintain today. For example, as we were exploring, Rafael would point to holes in the ground and explain that they were used by the Aymara/Inca thousands of years ago to store crops. Then all of the sudden he stopped, pointed to a spot in the dirt, and said, “dig.” I dug my hands into the ground to find a hoard of my father’s potatoes that he had been storing there since the May harvest.

It was quite difficult to understand the Aymara dialect of Spanish but I found a way to manage. My Aymara parents found my name difficult as well, and chose to call me by some sort of grunt that sounded like “Ken.” They were very nice and, of course, like all Chileans, they fed me more than I could handle. We ate lots of vegetables, mainly potatoes, and meats such as chicken, sheep, pig and llama. I actually enjoyed the food a lot, but I’ll eat almost anything.

The Aymara culture is fascinating. They usually dress in brighter colors to liven up the brown terrain of the precordillera. Everyone wears a hat to block the sun and it’s common to see woman wearing brown or black bowler hats. They don’t bath often, and only change clothes every couple of days. Hygiene is not a major priority. I once asked my Aymara grandpa if he would like some toasted corn. He simply responded, “No, I have no teeth,” and flashed a big, toothless grin. Most of the people in the pueblo were missing the majority of their teeth as well.
(But even in the indigenous pueblo, there were times I didn’t feel all that far from home. On my second night I sat in the kitchen talking to my mother while me listened to Abba’s “Dancing Queen” on the radio.)

The highlight of the week was November 1st, Day of the Dead. Everyone in the pueblo is Catholic and they celebrate the holiday as a day of fiestas rather than a day of morning. I went to the cemetery around lunchtime with my family to put flowers on the graves of their ancestors. After about an hour, everyone gathered in the center of the cemetery to drink wine and pisco and celebrate the dead. They drank and talked and sang church songs. The incredible part about the Aymara is they don’t care who you are, if you’re there you celebrate with them. No one thought twice about the fact that I was not Aymara. It didn’t matter at all to them; they were happy to have me share in their traditions.

I truly came to appreciate the SIT program in the cemetery that day. While we were celebrating in the center, a couple of Austrian tourists walked by the entrance of the cemetery and were filming the Aymara celebrations. At that point I realized what an incredible experience I was having. Here I was, in the midst of the Aymara people, celebrating with them as if I was one of them. That’s the best part of this study abroad program. I was immersed in the culture, living and socializing with the indigenous people. Tourists were filming me as though I were a member of the pueblo. I suppose in a way I was. Later I spoke with the Austrians in English and even translated a conversation between them and an Aymara man. The couple was certainly confused about why I was there. But sure enough, once they went near the congregation, the Aymara handed them classes of wine and told them to drink up. If you’re there, you celebrate.

I came away from the week feeling very at peace and lucky to have had the opportunity. The crazy thing was, on the fifth day I felt comfortable walking abound the pueblo and talking with the friends I had made (all of them much, much older). Sadly, I doubt Socoroma will still be inhabited in 20 years. No one of the younger generation wants to stay in the city. It not only represents the death of the pueblo but also the dwindling of the Aymara culture that has been maintained for thousands of years. Not many of the people of Socoroma could speak the Aymara language, and they don’t teach it in the school. I wonder how much longer students will have the opportunity to do what I have done.

We left the pueblo on Friday and returned to Arica. I immediately showered, and then showered a little more. On Saturday each group of students gave an oral presentation on our pueblo, and then had the rest of the weekend to spend with our families. I went to a birthday party for my sister. She and her husband had a villa in the valley with a swimming pool, cabana, butler, and an extraordinarily well-furnished house. It was a part of Chile I had never experienced. The whole family went, 20 people in all, and we barbequed, swam and played ping-pong. It was a relaxing way to end the two-week trip.

The next day the class flew back to Valparaiso. I was excited to see my Valparaiso family once again, and to see the city that I now know so well. Valparaiso, Chile has never seemed so modern.

From this point until the end of the program I will be living in Valparaiso and working on my independent research project. I am researching the social responsibility of Chilean businesses. This entry has been long enough so I’ll write more on that next time. I’m feeling great and very happy to be back with my gringo friends who went south as well as my Chilean friends. I now feel very comfortable living here and I’ve even managed to get myself a Chilean girlfriend named Iris. ISP will soon be taking over my life but for now I’m enjoying the freedom from classes.

My only bad news to report is that upon my return to Valparaiso my computer had a mini-crash and I lost the majority of my pictures from my trip to the north. I still have some, but many of the pictures of the pueblo were lost, including the pictures of my Aymara parents. At this point I’m happy to have saved some of the pictures.

I suppose I should end this with the one Aymara word I learned, “Jikisinkama” (until next time).

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