Reflections on Chile

Well, I was going to call this post "reflections on Pinochet's legacy" but I think that's a little over the top and unnecessary. Nonetheless, the results of Pinochet's rule are visible everywhere in Chile today.

For those of you who are less politically inclined, Pinochet was the one-time military dictator of Chile who took power in a bloody putsch in 1973, supported, among others, by the Central Intelligence Agency - yet another example of the "home of the free" doing all it can to deny others freedom. He deposed the democratically elected Salvador Allende, a Socialist. But you don't need to get your history lesson here, there are plenty of places you can find this information if you're more interested. (Pinochet also is an interesting example of international human rights justice. During his dirty war, many thousands disappeared or left the country. He was later granted immunity for life in Chile, but a Spanish judge was able to get him arrested in London on a Spanish warrant for abuses against Spanish citizens. It was a big deal.)

Anyway, Pinochet pushed through some very pro-business, pro-US reforms that sparked the economic upturn in his country that is now among the wealthiest in Latin America, although there as elsewhere people feel that the middle class is being squeezed out. As a result, Chile today is strongly reminiscent of Spain, among other places. Whereas the ownership of a digital camera in Argentina two years ago was definitely something that drew attention, it sees that in Chile everyone has one, and some kind of mp3 player, to boot. In reality, the country hardly feels Latin American: despite the at times appalling infrastructure (lots of dirt roads, and weak septic systems, for instance) the appearance of people, and even more shockingly to me, the costs, were extremely high, close to US levels even. This was particularly true in Santiago as well as a number of tourist destinations around the country.

Another aspect of Chile that differentiates it from everything else I've experienced or heard about South America is A) the general safety of the country and B) the low level of police corruption; I don't think these two factors are arbitrary. While Isabel Allende's "House of Spirits" suggests that police corruption in Chile was minor even before Pinochet's regime, it now it virtually unheard of. I spoke to a lot of Chileans and asked them about it, as my experiences in Argentina have prepared me for bribing, if necessary. All of the Chileans strongly recommended that in Chile, of confronted by an officer, it is better to just go to jail - according to them, an attempt at bribery will only land you in a ton more trouble. It also is clear that Chileans take great pride in this. However, they understand that "western" attitudes about Latin America are such that they really aren't that upset when you ask about it. I thought it was interesting that they were so accustomed to the prejudice towards their law enforcement, but it probably comes from their own experiences in the countries to the North and East of them....

As for general safety, I'd say Chile was definitely, 100% safer than Washington, DC. Not that that's really saying much, but it's also safer than any other place I can think of in Europe or North America. In a lot of towns, people just leave their hiking backpacks sitting on the street, sometimes for hours; I don't really think I saw many bikes locked up; and there's tons of teenage girls travelling alone, camping. In general, although there were a lot foreigners travelling in the country, their numbers were dwarfed by the number of Chileans on the road. Of course, it was summer vacation, but nonetheless, there were many groups of 2 or 3 14/15 year-olds going across the country with a sleeping bags and a tent, including a group of 4 totally clueless kids trying to hitchhike on the Carretera Austral, a 1200km road that winds itself through some truly inhospitable but absolutely beautiful lanscape in the south of the country. You definitely wouldn't see that kind of behaviour in the US, at least not with the same frequency, or so it seems to me.