Living Museums

          Oftentimes we learn about horrifying things that happen in the world, go to a museum or monument to learn about it, try to make it more accessible to our personal lives, and maybe gain a shred of sympathy. We return to our comfortable lives and maintain a separation: a mentality that whatever story being told "belongs" in a museum and doesn't exist in the real world. But the stories of Chile are not locked in a museum, they live and breathe in the streets everyday.
          I had the opportunity to talk with some individuals about their experiences before, during, and after the dictatorship in Chile. Here are two anecdotes I remember clearly:
           Someone who was a child during during the dictatorship lived in a house with pillars in front of it. The military would use them for cover if there was gunfire in the streets. Her mother would put her in the bathtub to ensure that no stray bullets would hit her through the walls. It sounded like this happened on more than one occasion.
          I spoke with someone else, an adult during the dictatorship, who told me that she was making her way home from a party with a friend. They were in the street after the toque de queda (curfew), and they ran into a truck full of the military. They were stopped, and she was accompanied home by a soldier. She never saw her friend again and, to this day, has no idea what happened to him.
          The conversations were never planned, the stories would rise up in conversation and drift away as the topic was changed. I have no way of empathizing or relating to what they were saying; I had no idea how to respond, if I even should respond, and I would wonder how many more stories are told everyday or waiting to be discovered. I think the best thing to do with situations you can't understand is just listen and try in whatever way to place yourself in their shoes, in their life, in that moment.
          Parents of children who lived this reality desperately want a better future for their children, and want to ensure that their lives are easier than their own. I noticed that in the classroom, students were extremely insecure and did not trust their own decisions. I talked with the teacher I helped about this, wondering if there was more to this issue than what I saw on the surface (lack of motivation to learn English). She responded immediately that a lot of it has to do with the way parents are raising their children in the aftermath of their experiences living through the dictatorship. They want their children to have easier lives, and ensure they never have to live anything close to what they experienced. In my school, one way this appeared was through ensuring their children had an "easy" time through high school. It's not my place to answer these questions (is it even my place to ask them in this context?): to what extent can you shelter your children from the world? Do children learn best from their own experiences, or from stories told? How can we ensure that our children live comfortable lives, but maintain work ethic, empathy, and the desire to help others?
          In my place in life, I'm just starting to consider these questions, and maybe I'll have a tiny answer in 10 or so years. Until then, I can only ponder...

A few of my students!

Sprawling City, Limited Connection

          It's hard to talk to a Chilean on the street, especially in Santiago. The teacher I was assisting said that this is because Chileans like having a low-profile, since they are naturally isolated from the rest of the world with mountains and ocean. It's comfortable to be used to your own people and not open up to strangers easily, and being in a huge city makes it that much easier: you can be anonymous. That anonymity puts up a wall and makes it harder to see those walking down the street as people just like yourself, wandering around wondering what to do with their lives.
          This is mainly why I became much more critical of Santiago during my second round in Chile. It also may have been because I was there during the winter, when the skies are a constant, suffocating, polluted gray. That environment would make anyone exhausted. Whenever I would get on the metro, I would mostly see detached, angry faces avoiding eye contact. I learned that few people are here because they actually love the city. Santiago is where all the opportunities are: the jobs with money, the best universities, and semi-accessible quality healthcare. I've never heard of a country that is so centralized: all of the government and institutions that offer a shred of social mobility are trapped in one place. For example, university students hoping to move upward in social class are often those who already have the means to do so; travel expenses, living expenses, and tuition at the highest quality universities make it nearly impossible for the lower class to get an elite education. So Santiago is the most attractive for those looking to move up but repellent to those who have been there for a long time, and it creates a weird dynamic that I couldn't wrap my head around in the limited time I was living as a semi-real person this time around. There's always more to learn, and it makes me sad I wasn't there longer to understand this dynamic better.
          One thing I learned about myself: I love to strike up conversations with strangers in line, smile and make eye contact with people I walk by, and laugh on the street for no reason. That, to me, is home and how I truly want to live.

Santiago as viewed from the Saltos de Apoquindo trail