Title: I'm making soup from my brain! I'm not sure anyone actually uses this expression anymore/ever used it (it's from the often unreliable "How to Survive the Chilean Jungle"), but I like it anyway since it supposedly means to think about things too much until your brain ceases to function. It describes well how one feels after too much econ and political whiplash in a language that is not your own.
Words of the Day: Let's Talk about Economics!
los flujos de caja- cash flows
las utilidades(in a financial sense)- earnings
IVA- Value Added Tax (VAT)
filial financieras- Offshore banks in the Carribbean where you don't have to pay taxes.
casa matriz- headquarters ie of a bank
la lucha de clases- class struggle ( Now I can talk to Marxists and investment bankers- Hurrah!)
So I learned a lot today. I learned about the different types of armed conflict and which types of human rights accords apply when. Then I learned about the economic effects of the Porfiriato in Mexico, a period of dictatorship which screwed over campesinos pretty badly but modernized and industrialized Mexico, in a very specific way. Then I learned about how transnational corporations essentially pay no royalties on Chilean copper.
Typically for college though, the most thought provoking part of my day was not actually class, but a colloquim type thing I went to at asuntos publicos entitled "Marginality and Space." Basically, it was the first part of a 3 part film/discussion series looking at issues surrounding marginalized communities in Chile. First, we watched a 20 minute "documentary" from 1958 called "Las Callampas" which technically means "mushroom" but came to mean shantytown, referring to the way communities rose up suddenly, like mushrooms after the rain. It told the story of the founding of the población La Victoria, which was formed during a "toma" of land in which un-used government lands were occupied. As the film showed it, a bunch of people who lived in miserable conditions walked onto some land to build houses and struggled at it for a while. But BAM! the Catholic church organizations of Chile swooped in to the rescue and helped the poor people build houses. Then everything was great.
This was fascinating for me, because we had actually gone to La Victoria during orientation and talked with a group of women who had been part of the toma. Their version of events had been a lot more about self-reliance, communal action but also the revolutionary nature of what they had done. To a certain extent, these sentiments still seemed really strong in La Victoria and are what make it so much more hopeful than other poblaciones. And of course, everyone critized the film for that reason.
So after that, there was a discussion between 2 academics and leader of a movement of pobladores. I learned a lot of interesting things:
-There has been a constant push for liberalization of public housing, regardless of whoever has been in political power.
Under Pinochet, lands were privatized, under the Concertación (liberal politicians post-Pinochet) construction was privatized and most recently, under Piñera, there have been attempts to liberalize public housing.
- Chile does not have a public housing policy written into law.
Tomas of land, as I was reminded, are at their root a very revolutionary act in that they fly in the face of the idea of private property. The actors who engaged in them may have not actually seen them that way and just have been trying to improve their lot in life but that aspect still stands. As I see it, it's a reaction along the lines of "Ok, government, you're not going to address my lack of adequate housing. I am a citizen of this country, so these public lands are pretty much mine in a sense. I'm going to build a house here if that's ok. Please don't bring out the mounted police and tanks. Thanks so much." As my mom loves to quote from Beatrix Potter's "The Tale of Pigling Bland "All I want is to have a little garden and grow potatoes." Obviously, it's a little more radical than that, the idea that one is entitled to something, but in a certain spacial context, ie urban lands that weren't being used anyway, the logic makes sense and seems fairly harmless. Unless of course you are a developer who was planning on buying the land and making a great profit.
Essentially, we ended up discussing:
Question: What is the most optimal?
a) No action
b) Slow action from below, perhaps underfunded and disorganized but by and for the same people
c) Institutionalized action from above, reinforcing certain ideas about class hegemony and imposing uniform solutions but well-funded and probably well-meaning
Answer: If we knew this one, we'd all be doing great.
This part of the discussion mainly focused around the role of Un Techo para Chile, which is at this point, especially due to its post- earthquake role, is the major player in the construccion of a new physical paradigm for Santiago. Basically, the poblador movement leader criticized the organization for being an example of a dialogue that proposes that poverty can only be solved by rich U Católica types as a top down solution that is necessary to prevent political ferment among the masses. Un Techo para Chile has as its mission to do away with campamentos, but doesn't specify the need to do away with poblaciones. This is sort of analogous to the discussion over whether it is enough to have NGOs that attempt to "alleviate" poverty rather than "eradicate" it. New housing, he argued, is good, but it doesn't change the economic situation of pobladores and furthermore can be detrimental because it breaks a lot of the communal ties that enabled survival, such as communal fires and the olla común, cooking together. While I thought the speaker overemphasized the communal nature of shantytowns, his point certainly had some validity. Is it better for institutional impositions to "better" people's lives rather than them organizing the changes they want on their own? I'd usually describe my political views as "O for crying out loud, stop bickering over ideology and GET SOMETHING DONE" this did give me pause. Maybe not everything is worth rushing into: maybe structures created and the class messages are significant. However, I do think it's better for the rich to be involved in philanthropic work than not at all. Despite whatever marxists would say, Chile's upper class isn't going anywhere anytime and from my perspective, they might as well be thinking about the issues facing "the other Chile" even if it is patronistic. Ideally, all the young people engaged in volunteer work will be impressed by the experience to work for political and social change.
So all this made me think about my internship, El Trampolin and NGOs in general: are external impositions better than nothing even if they are loaded actions? I really really hope so. I guess all we can really do in the end is strive for sincerity, compassion and an open mind. And maybe if we're lucky, something worth doing will come out of it.
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