October 13: The Miners are Out! CHICHILELELE VIVA CHILE!

Word of the Day: cuenta regresiva- countdown

The miners are finally all out, safe and well, Gracias a Dios! It's been really interesting seeing the excitement. Although certainly less public celebration than when they first found out they were alive.
For anyone who missed it, here's the first rescue completed: http://emoltv.emol.com/actualidad/indexSub.asp?id_emol=5992
Last night, the whole family gathered round the TV late at night to watch the first miner come to the surface. It felt a little bit like waiting for the ball to drop on new years, except way more touching of a moment. Beautiful and touching, and that's coming from me, the queen of not being super sappy, so there. One of the those moments that makes you glad the human race is capable of something slightly more refined than killing each other and belching carbon into the atmosphere. If only Al Gore could have made his powerpoint slides as riveting as miner rescues...

Speaking of mining, today was part 2 of the lesson on how international corporations screw over Chile by not paying for copper extraction!!! Basically, corporations don't really pay royalties on copper extracted due to some confusing loophole and they don't have any sort of tax on copper profits.

Oversimplified story, Chile sold copper super cheaply during the World Wars and then during the Cold War and the not so cold Korean War, the US convinced them to keep copper cheap so we could fight communists more affordably. Then, in the 60s, Chile realized that it should probably be getting some revenue out of the mining and moved for a pacted nationalization. Then, according to my professor, who loves to beat on Latin America for economic mismanagement, they basically failed to manage the sales of copper they had negotiated for and essentially gave up and just went back to the old system. Later on, Pinochet's minister of mining continued to privatize things even more, creating laws for international corporations to invest that were so favorable that they weren't even taken advantage of because it was assumed that they would be changed if Pinochet fell. Well, when that came around, not much did change. The situation is so extreme that not even the state can invest in the mining sector without legislative approval. The World Bank and the IMF even say that there's nothing wrong with Chile profiting from its mineral wealth. So basically, the only impediment is political will which continues to see changes to Chilean mining law as something that "can't be done", I'm guessing because of concern over what the international reaction would be like.

Ok, so less awesome than mining rescues, but still crazy! After learning all this, I feel like I did after they made us read a book about water called "The Blue Death" before freshman year of college and I learned that we could all become deathly ill from waterbourne diseases because a) our water supply is totally not safe and secure from birds, manure, pollution, terrorists, etc.
b) water is carried through ancient and disgusting pipeways that are barely functioning
The feeling is something like this:
SOMEONE SHOULD DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS RIGHT AWAY BECAUSE IT'S SUPER SUPER IMPORTANT BUT ITS THE LEAST SEXY ISSUE EVER SO PROBABLY NO ONE WILL EVER CARE AND THE OUTCOME COULD BE VERY VERY BAD. or at least very very not optimal.
So anyway, I don't know what I'm gonna do about it yet other than rant about it in my blog, probably chain myself to a bulldozer. Just kidding.

I went to part 2 of the Marginality forum at the Public Affairs school today in which we watched a Chilean documentary called "Locos del Alma", about a group of patients at a mental hospital who take part in theater lessons and eventually put on a production. Basically, the theme was to look at what we consider as "sane" or "normal" and how this creates marginality.
As anyone who has been near a college campus during exam season, in rush hour traffic or shopping on Black Friday knows, these terms should be a lot more flexible than make them. I wish I could have understood the documentary better, since pretty much all the people filmed had these impossible to understand mumbly accents.
It got me thinking though, about all the layers of people that make up a city. So many times we walk through with a projection of a certain normal expectation onto the people we see, but what about those who don't fit into the "normal" box? What does it mean to be "loco", blind, deaf, mentally or physically disabled in Santiago? And what about those who don't fit into the myth of the Chilean race? What does it mean to be Mapuche, Afro- Chilean, Peruvian, Colombian, Ecuadorian, Chinese, Japanese, Arab, Indian or German in the city space? Or gringo/a for that matter :)