Infographic: Tax Breaks vs. Budget Cuts

A good look at where our national priorities are right now....

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/02/tax_breaks_infographic.html

Word of the day:
hidrocarburos- hydrocarbons
países en vía de desarrollo- developing countries
pudor- modesty, but a very loaded word that describes a certain type of sexuality for women. Used a lot in older international treaties from the 1940s.

You never learn the most from the things you think you will. Take my Globalization and Copper class. While it may not count for much academically, it has made me think about a variety of issues and I might even go so far as to credit it greatly in my recent decision to change my academic focus within my International Relations major. Anyway, today’s discussion was a meta-look at the idea of the university and its relationship with knowledge, government and development. We talked about how the best knowledge is attained: is it possible to do the best critical or investigative research done when the educational institution is controlled by the state or follows a for profit model? How can universities be innovative and leverage this dynamism into political policy? This was all very interesting because at the same time, there’s much talk in the student community (and class itself ) about the need to make higher education free. Suspending concern over practicality of this, however, would this give the state too much control over the university, disenabling its critical role? Would the state ever finance something that was not directly working for its benefit? Would the greater economic productivity created by better educated workforce outweigh the downsides? Where does the model of the “university” go in an age where there arguably isn’t a unified current of thought anymore (but rather a string of separate realities, typified by the idea of post modernism)?

Another train of thought for today:
There are so many times when ideas aren’t communicated because of the different “languages” used. In my econ class today, we talked about the need to frame poverty and inequality as an economic issue, in the sense that over the long term, the productivity lost by having underperforming sectors can put a brakes on even the most superficially healthy economy. (ie. the US????) It’s a sad reality, but using moral and “human rights” based arguments has failed to create a strong enough impetus for intervention. Similarly, today in my law class we talked about women and political/economic discrimination. I think that again this is one reason feminism has had marginal success internationally is exactly this: it has only recently started to show economically the negative effects of discrimination against women.
As much as its easy to disagree with economics being the focal point of our value system, when arguments are shaped in the same language as an opponent, it’s much easier to show how everyone loses from not promoting “just” policies. Cynical to believe this is the most likely way to achieve change? You bet. But maybe a type of diplomacy that will become a career path?

November 9: Outskirts

Word of the day: porte- size (Chilenismo?)
bote- touch, as in when you lightly tap the ball in soccer to control it.

Today was a really weird day. I got back to Santiago right before 9, giving me just enough time to make it to my internship. Memories of my weekend of green were quickly assaulted by a lot of harried people and pavement. It made a lot more sense why every single person I talked to in the South expressed their dislike of Santiago.
Being in Villa San Luis kind of depressed me a lot today. Every time I go there, I want there to be a magic cure for poverty, an incredibly simple and fast solution that will bring everyone’s lives up to a standard that by my estimation is liveable. But the truth is, life goes on, beautiful or not. Collectivos and buses come and go, goods are bought and sold in the feria and in the streets, children go to school, babies are born. Redemption is nowhere visible in the big picture, but there’s a glimmer in the small things: the women in the taller becoming friends and planning a barbecue and an exposition, the few hopeful murals that don’t get painted over with graffiti and the children who have a safe place to play and learn in the Trampolin center. For better or worse, life goes on.

I’ve been thinking a lot about physical space again today both as a globalized entity and one that has a sense of place. I tried out a new micro route today, wanting to see more of Maipu, which didn’t really happen, but still gave me a look at another peripheral comuna, Cerrillos. The bus passed by scenery that seemed indistinguishable from run down areas of the US. A busy stream of cars, gas stations, disused factories and other vacant buildings, graffiti. At one point I even saw “All cops are bastards” written in English, which really threw me for a loop. I’ve already written about the imposition of neoliberal policies has lead to a convergence of the way elite areas appear(see any of my frequent rants about Las Condes/Parque Arauco), but are the places neglected by these models also converging?

Another thing I felt really cognizcant of today was the de-marcation of space. Much of the farmland in the South is marked with light fences but small farm houses are open to the road, which in some of the more remote areas of Chiloé were spaces in which animals simply wandered. This is in the complete opposite of Santiago where everything is gated, iron- fenced, put in place. I couldn’t help thinking on the psychological effect this must create. While gates may protect against crime, doesn’t also a culture of sharing and knowing your neighbor? How can you casually greet iron bars?

Realizing I only have a month or so left is terrifying, absolutely terrifying. Having declined the option of extending for a whole year, I’m wondering if I made the right choice. Will what I will gain intellectually from being back at Tufts be on par with what I would gain personally and linguistically from staying in Chile? Have I changed as a person as much as I wanted to, and in the right ways? I’m trying to not see this as an end point. You never can know where you will end up in life and I want to keep all of my options wide open. While I often wonder if my ability to not get attached to things is damaging, it may be useful in the long run. If anything, I’ve realized how adaptable I am this semester. Apart from people and decent coffee, I don’t really miss much from back home. My friends joke about how I’m supposedly a “bad american” since I’m often ignorant of music, movies, tv and don’t have much of a nostalgia for the foods or fashion of home. While in some ways I’m starting to see this as an element of elitism that I need to exise, I think I am well equiped to absorb other ways of being. Not to compare myself to a whiteboard by any means though: if anything, this experience has shown me how deep seated my prejudices and habits are, whether for fault of my nationality or not: my impatience, desire for instant results, directness, independent working style, etc, etc.

October 26: ¿Cínica?

Words of the Day: False cognates edition!
cínico/a- In normal Spanish, this means cynical. In Chilensis, it means lying. Easy to remember if you think that cynism is an false worldview.
personalidad jurídica- legal status (a false cognate if I've ever heard one)

Yesterdays post is proof of why I should not blog while trying to figure things out at 2 in the morning. Surprisingly, going to my internship made me feel less cynical today, as much as the zone sometimes depresses me.

I guess yesterday when I was denouncing the notion of "social change" in bold strokes, what I really wanted to say was that I've become disillusioned with the idea of large sweeping change. Change when it ever does roll around comes from the small things. Probably, the work that goes on in El Trampolin and most other NGOs will realistically probably never bring people truly out of poverty, at the very least not in this generation. But that doesnt mean it wont generate tremendous good, albeit on the micro-micro-micro level. For instance, empowering a group of women to stand up to a corrupt local official so that they can use municipal space for an income generating sewing workshop, as they have the right to do. Giving the next generation education and options. Or just building links between people who otherwise would have absolutely nothing in common.

October 6: Caldo de Cabeza

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.

October 1-3: Parks and Recreation

After getting out from my internship on Friday, I went over to Parque O' Higgins for an event held by Un Techo Para Chile (One Roof for Chile) that was part of a larger event in which all the youth in chapters from all over Latin America, were gathered both for dialogue and a march to draw attention to the poorest in Latin America. It was certainly inspiring to see all the students gathered there, from literally every country and it was nice to see a more diverse mix of faces than Chile often has to offer. It's fascinating to me how diverse Latin America is in contrast to the American stereotypes of those living to our south.

The majority of the speakers were either government or international financial institution types which was interesting but sort of predictable after a while. They patted themselves on the back for approving the largest social spending budget in Chilean history and talked about the importance of youth as leaders and the need for more economic growth to improve the lot of the poorest of the poor. I stayed for a little while but then I started to feel a little overwhelmed. I used to love going to rallies when I was a bit younger but it's not really my scene anymore: I supposed I've grown to jaded to see the efficacy of it in the big picture, beyond the encouragement that being in a group of similarly minded people gives. And while I can dress up to fit with the institutional scene, I haven't quite gotten to the point yet where I agree entirely with what they're saying. I'm at a middle stage in my personal development, I guess, and I feel like I don't quite have a group to belong to.

With too much on my mind after the morning, I went for a walk around the park. To make a New York analogy, Parque O' Higgins is Central Park, exceptly slightly smaller and somewhat less centrally located. It has a theme park though, a pool, picnic areas, small lakes with little pedal boats and tons of space for just hanging out. It was quite beautiful, sitting at an interesting angle for views of the city and mountains, which I hadn't expected given how crowded it was alleged to be during the Fiestas Patrias. It made me sad to think about all the kids who despite being a metro or bus ride away don't have regular access to nature. For instance, many of the kids who are involved in activities in El Trampolin never really leave their immediate area, not necessarily because of lack of access by transport, but often because it's hard for them to get free time as many of them are charged with the care of siblings and infants from the age of 7 or 8. This is definitely a challenge so many societies face: finding ways to un-shrink the worlds of kids in lower economic brackets.

On Saturday, I went for a run along Tobalaba, where there is a wonderful park. Providencia, one of the most upper class comunas, really is a model for public spaces and exercise. There are bicycles for rent and bike lanes in many areas. Additionally, almost every playground also features exercise parks for adults which are a fantastic idea. People of all ages and exercise levels work out on them and I personally find it less odious than just doing exercises indoors somewhere because it has the positive association of playing on a playground as a kid. This is something that really could be a great way to combat the obesity epidemic in the states.

Sept 14: Really Exploring Cuzco

Word of the Day:
mami(cita)- form of address
polo- tee shirt, without a collar (go figure on that one...)
cojín- pillow case
chicha morada- until Chilean chicha which is alcholic and made from apples, this is made from purple corn, tastes cinnamony and is not alcoholic. Although I did see a translation somewhere as "corn beer," which seemed sort of misleading.

After a night back in Cuzco and a quick out for Machu Pichus (grape brandy known as pisco, orange juice and creme de menthe) by the Plaza de Armas, I hit the town early to walk around on our last day there and also get a bit of much needed time away from the pack. Despite being a tourist mecca, Cuzco definitely has its own unique vibe that is somewhat separate from the crowds. I decided that I would try and check some of that out on my last day there.

I had a very reflective walk which showed me how small indeed the touristy areas were. There was such a contrast between the institutional splendor of the old churches and archways and the informal bustle of the streets. Uniformed schoolchildren traveled in groups. People gathered at informal stands to eat and drink, off ceramic plates that the vendors then washed. People with scales offered to let you weigh yourself for a small fee. Stop signs were lacking. Women carried and nursed babies in colorful shawls. A band played outside the church, with a traditionally embroidered banner hoisted high, no doubt for someone's feast day.

I wandered into a market, which was pretty much the coolest thing ever. I have been known to cry at the beauty of farmers markets, and this one was pretty close to being a tear jerker. Everything was organized by section, with entire sections devoted to lamb, chicken, beef, artisanal goods, cheese, bread (in giant wheels!), grains, gorgeous vegetables and another section of informal restaurants with small counters. The vendors were mainly older female indigenous women, grizzled and tough. I realized how present traditional styles of dress still are, especially among the middle aged and above. So many people were wearing the bowler hat and skirt combo, with their long straight hair in two braids. I had previously thought this style had been preserved because tourists find it interesting, but I'm pretty sure that's not accurate.

I thought a lot on my walk about what it means to be a tourist and to "want to get to know the local culture." So many times we want to fool ourselves into thinking that taking a walk to see the sights, buying some indigenous weavings and going to a culture show will give us a taste of what life is like. But really, is it possible to know anything of the reality of a place? especially one that struggles with poverty without knowning what it is like to struggle to put food on the table, to live with physical insecurity, lacking clean drinking water, health care, waste disposal and education. Similarly, it's far to easy to take in the surroundings and assume that just because people live in less than ideal conditions that they lack agency or unique skills.

We spent much of the rest of morning in the artesanal markets which were filled with far too many beautiful things than I had money for. It was also customary to bargain a bit, which I found uncomfortable, mainly because I'm really bad at it, but also because it seemed absurb to tell someone that I think their handmade textile handbag is worth less than $10 US. Plus, Peruvians have the habit of sounding really friendly, because they call everyone "amiga" (friend) which makes you feel extra bad. However, I did successfully bargain down a few items a little bit, once I got into the swing of it more.

Then, my friend Regina and I wandered around another non-touristy area of the city, just taking in the sights, having some snacks and wandering. We talked a lot about the way that societies are organized by their own rules, which might not be codified by something like traffic lights but doesn't mean they don't have their own workable logic.

Wonderful way to end the Cuzco part of the trip. Then, we got back on the bus for more fun. The movies were better this time, including the spanish version of "The Hangover" which uses laughable amounts of Mexican slang and "The Proposal" but there was not heat or AC on the bus, both of which were sorely needed at various points. Also, the lack of AC made the Australian men sitting across from me whine like little babies which was incredibly annoying. Australia is a hot place, right? They should have been able to deal with it better.