18 September is Chile’s day of independence (from Spain), and the entire country celebrates. The University of Talca holds no classes during the preceding week; it’s something like spring break. On the weekend, there are celebrations all over Chile, including Chilean rodeos (which are different from rodeos in the US), cueca dances, and other traditional activities.
For our holiday, a house on the coast for a long weekend near a town called Chovellen. On the day we left, the weather was perfect – sunny and about seventy degrees. The drive from Talca takes about two and a half hours, though we stopped for lunch in Cauquenes, Chile’s third city, adding about an hour to our trip. The route we followed is called Ruta los conquistadores, but I don’t know if it is so named because it really is the route the conquistadores took, or if it is merely named in their honor.
In any case, the scenery along the way was incredible. The wooded hills which constitute the coastal cordillera were visible at every point of the drive. At times we drove over them and at other points we drove alongside them over flat land occupied by small farms. These farms are quite different in appearance from the large agricultural operations along Chile’s main north/south highway.
Communities on the shore all seem to have certain characteristics in common, and the coastal towns we encountered after crossing the coastal cordillera were no exception. The poblaciones on this part of the journey, Pelluhue and Curanipe, had the familiar smell and feel of the shoreline villages of Florida, where Rebecca and I grew up, though they are quite different in appearance.
The Chilean coast in this area is more like the coasts of northern California, Oregon and Washington than the palmy and placid beaches of the southeastern United States. It is rugged, rocky, and relatively unpopulated. The short beaches are punctuated by cliffs and arms of rock that reach out into the Pacific. The scrubby but lush vegetation is comprised of a diversity of bushes, trees (mostly pine), wildflowers, cactuses, and grasses. The black sand forms vegetated dunes, perhaps 10 feet high, which separate the beach from the cliffs. The smell of the ocean, an insistent breeze, and the sound of the waves crashing forcefully against the rocks are the sensory bedrock of the place. Many of the waves dissolve against the sand with a gentle hiss. Others are so powerful that the basslike vibration they create rattles the panes of glass in our house. These sounds, together with a spectrum of others made by the waves, have a repetitive symphonic effect. You can practically feel the mountains eroding into the sea.
To reach our cabin, we turned off the coastal highway and followed an unpaved road to a cleared area in a pine forest with room for three parked cars. This small parking lot overlooks the barrel tiled roof of the caretakers’ house. Their whole family was eating lunch on the patio under the shade of an arbor overgrown with wisteria when we arrived.
Manuela and Fernando, the kind-faced elderly couple who look after the complex of seven houses, walked up a flight of stairs carved into the hillside to greet us, accompanied by a man of about forty named Diego. After making sure that our truck had four wheel drive, Diego asked us to follow him as he drove down a rutted, unpaved, very steep hillside road. The road is another example of Chileans’ comparatively risk tolerant nature; one side of this clay road (very slippery when wet, as I later found out) is a cliff. Let’s just say I didn’t need coffee after the drive.
After about a quarter of a mile, we arrived at our cabin. It is constructed of thick white walls and coarse cut wooden beams. The wall facing the sea is entirely rustic glass, and the floor inside is made of large rough bricks arranged in a herringbone pattern. The narrow galley kitchen had unfinished open shelves and a single long wooden counter. It came equipped with everything except sheets, towels, and food. A rough dining room table with two rough benches along the sides and two rough chairs at the ends would seat 10 comfortably and 12 cozily. A small but effective cast iron wood burning stove occupied one corner of the room. The rather moist firewood was supplied by Julio, the compound’s handyman.
As we were getting settled, we heard giggling outside and realized that we were being spied upon by a couple of young girls, perhaps 5 years old. Eventually they were replaced by an older group of children who tried to befriend our boys, but our boys, who are shy in English, are positively reclusive in Spanish. The boys and I went down to the beach with them and dug in the sand, flew kites, and admired the scenery. That night, we had a windy, cold, smoky, brief, and delightful bonfire on the beach.
The next day was overcast and occasionally rainy. In the morning, a man walked up to our cabin from the beach selling loco, the local version of abalone. It was very hard for me to understand him, but we bought a couple of bags and cooked it for dinner that night. The instructions were to boil it for about 30 minutes, which we did. It filled the house with the smell of the sea. It wasn’t so good by itself, but the next day, Rebecca made very good loco chowder from what remained.
Later that morning, the boys and I took a short walk on the beach and found a penguin standing in the surf. Eventually, it lay down in the waves. After watching a little longer, we left. After an hour or so, Rebecca and the boys found a dead penguin washed ashore. We think it wasn’t the same one since it appeared to lack a marking that we saw on the first penguin. Perhaps penguin number one was looking for a lost companion. We buried penguin number two in the sand.
Later, Sam and Rebecca took a walk to the south, and after that, I walked with the boys even further south. The scenery was as I described earlier, only more so. It has been a long time since I have seen a stretch of waterfront land so undeveloped. It’s nice to know that such places still exist. That night, it rained hard.
The next morning I got up around 5 AM and did some math (details available upon request). Around 8 AM, the rest of the family got up, and after breakfast, we went down to the ocean and took a short walk. We didn’t see anything as interesting as a dead penguin, just the “usual” crab claws and whiplike kelp. The waves were particularly strong, and later in the day the boys, who were playing on the beach, got surprised by an unusually big wave that rolled them about in the surf. They were drenched from head to toe, and Manuela and Fernando came down later to caution us that their son had seen what happened and almost ran down to the shore to save them from being sucked out to sea. After that, they took great pride in relating how they “almost died.”
Later we wanted to go to a town called Chanco hoping to see a rodeo, but the previous night’s rains meant slippery conditions on the road up the hill, so much so that our truck could not get the car up it. Carlos, another family member of Manuela and Fernando, loaned us his truck, which was parked at the top of the hill, so that we could make the trip. As it turns out, the rains also caused the rodeo to be cancelled, but we enjoyed a nice walk and a simple fair in Chanco.
On the way back to Talca, we passed a rodeo taking place in a wooden stadium beside the Ruta los conquistadores and stopped to check it out. Chilean rodeos are different from rodeos in the United States. As far as I can tell, there is just one event, in which two huasos (Chilean cowboys) act together to try to pin a cow against the wall. One of them pushes the cow forward, and the other uses the Chilean horses’ ability to run sideways to do the actual pinning. The contestants earn points depending on how fast the pin occurs, what parts of the cow’s body are contacted during the pin, where on the wall the cow gets pinned, and so on.
The behavior of the normally mild mannered horses is a real spectacle. When they’re waiting for the cow to come out of the gate, their nostrils flare, their ears go back, their eyes open wide, froth runs from their mouths, and they jump around like a drop of water on a hot, well oiled skillet, legs pumping, sand flying from their hooves. When the cow finally enters the ring, all of that tension evaporates and they become focused, powerful, fluid motion intent on nothing but pinning the cow. The huaso and the horse move like one magnificently coordinated creature.
Now for a couple of catch-up items. A few weekends ago, we were enjoying a relaxing day at home when I heard something that sounded like a large truck passing outside. Rebecca and I looked at each other and realized that we were experiencing an earthquake. I ran to the back room to tell the boys that they were in an earthquake and to tell them to stand with us under the threshold. They complied, but Gus wanted to know why. I told him that the roof was least likely to fall on his head if he were under the door jamb. His eyes got really big! The earthquake didn’t feel particularly powerful, but I later learned that it was the most powerful earthquate to hit the area in at least three years. It measured about a 6.0 on the Richter scale in Talca. In Curico, where it was centered, it measured 6.7.
Afterwards, Rebecca and I discussed whether it would have been better to go outside. I asked one of my colleagues at the Instituto, and she said that the danger in doing that is that you might get hit on the head with falling roof tiles. According to her, the threshold of a doorway is the right place to be.
Also a few weekends back, I was a member of a committee to select Chilean Fulbrighters who would go to the U.S. to study engineering. The process is confidential, so I can’t reveal a great deal, but I think it’s OK to mention that the dossiers of the applicants were a cross section of Chile, including such topics as forestry, structural engineering with an emphasis on earthquake resistance, robotics as applied to mining, information systems with an eye towards modernizing the way Chile does business, information systems with an eye towards increasing computer access among the impoverished, and more. It was very interesting to be on the other side of the selection process.
The rest of the committee consisted of Denise Saint Jean, the woman who runs the Chilean Fulbright commission, and a couple of gentlemen who I later learned are widely known and well respected leaders in the Chilean business community. Afterwards, I had lunch with Dr. Saint Jean and a friendly computer science professor from the Universidad de Chile.
Research and teaching are going well. I got a nice result a while back which I am checking against known results. If it is new, I may present it at a December combinatorics conference in New Zealand.
A few nights ago, the boys were part of a school play about an indigenous creation myth concerning Chiloe, an island in the South of Chile. Gus played an evil serpent and Sam was a fish. Other grades presented other local myths. One concerned the arrival of the conquistadores in the northern deserts of Chile and another was from Isla de Pascua (Easter Island), which is part of Chile.
Afterwards, there was an outdoor party at their school, where the students and many parents gathered and visited. They served cotton candy, popcorn, Chilean style shish kebab, bread with pebre (a simple but delicious mix of onions, tomatoes, and herbs), and mote con huesillo, and unbelievably sweet tealike drink made from dried peaches.
One of the fathers was walking around with a plastic Barbie bag slung over his shoulder. I was wondering about his fashion sense until I saw him pouring his friend a cup of wine from a bottle concealed in the bag. He caught me staring and offered me a cup, which I accepted. We had a very nice conversation over our glasses of contraband. While this sort of thing would definitely be frowned upon in the states (I’m trying to imagine smuggling a bottle of wine into a fundraiser for Snowden, my children’s school back in Memphis), it seems it is accepted with a wink and a nod here.
I just finished reading A Nation of Enemies, Chile under Pinochet, by Pamela Constable and Arturo Valenzuela. It is a long and heavily referenced book, and requires a bit of fortitude to get through it, but it is well worth the effort. It describes how the U.S.-supported coup of 11 September 1973, which overthrew a democratically elected leader, affected various sectors of the Chilean populace. One of the fellows that served with me on the Fulbright committee was mentioned as playing a role towards the end of the Pinochet regime. Prior to that, I read My Invented Country, by Isabelle Allende. If you are interested in learning more about Chile’s political and cultural climate, this is a nice informal place to start. A Nation of Enemies is a good second book to read, or a good first book if you’re looking for something more scholarly.
A brief snapshot of the political scene here is that the nation is deeply divided between leftists and rightists. The leftists are in the majority, but the rightists control the money and the media and exercise considerable political influence as a legacy of the changes enacted by Pinochet regarding the way members of congress are elected. In short, two people get elected in each vote, practically ensuring that the rightists will always have an equal seat at the table, even if they enjoy the support of a significant minority of the population.
It is not a good idea to talk about politics in general or Pinochet in particular in casual contexts, partly because some people lost land or family during or prior to the Pinochet years, but mostly because people are totally talked out about the subject. According to a Chilean humanities professor of my acquaintance, Chilean humanities professors are the exception to this rule. A pale comparison might be talking about nothing but the Clinton impeachment for 30 years.
Still, many people are curious about my feelings about President Bush and the upcoming election, and these questions often reveal the political leanings of the inquirer. As I understand it, about 30% of the people here support Bush and the Iraq war, and 70% are in opposition.
As I was preparing the bonfire on the beach a couple of nights ago, Fernando approached me and initiated a conversation that eventually turned to political matters. He asked my opinion of Bush, which I shared, and I asked his. He told me that he didn’t care for Bush, and when I asked why, he proclaimed, with what struck me as a mixture of pride and stubbornness, “porque yo soy izquierdista!” He started to talk about the Pinochet years and the election that preceded them, but other matters called us away before I had a chance to learn more. If you read A Nation of Enemies, you may find yourself wondering as I did about this dignified gentleman’s experiences during those difficult years.
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