For Shame

OK, sorry it's been so long, guys. Really, nothing that interesting was going on in my life for the longest time, and then things picked up, so I haven't gotten around to recording it. Plus, I was kinda bummed out for awhile, and that's not too interesting to read about. Things are lovely again, though, don't worry.
So here, I'm posting the story of a little weekend trip I took awhile back, which was actually much more exciting at the time than I am sure I convey here. But enough with the apologies. Much more is coming, I assure you. I'm going to Vinalemana and Valporaiso this weekend, plus I have lots of little cultural and linguistic things I was thinking about, so enjoy for now, and stay tuned.

from Oct. 3:

EAP took us on another field trip this week. As part of our lessons on rural Chile, we went to visit the country’s largest private museum, in Santa Cruz, and El Huique, which is the last remaining preserved hacienda. Both are located in the 7th Region, in the Central Valley (ahhh, California!), about three hours south by bus.

The museum is pretty amazing and wildly eclectic. The private collector had everything, and though it’s a bummer that money could buy such important items that rightly belong to the public, at least it’s now in a museum, instead of in a private home. So we saw everything from archeological pre-Columbian artifacts (including one of the oldest mummies in the world) from the Americas (OK, I know that’s somewhat redundant; I just meant it’s not all Chilean), to artifacts of all aspects of Spanish colonization, to representations of modernity.
Random. There are about five guys marching through my neighborhood right now, forming a miniature marching band, without the rest of a parade to accompany them.

While we were hanging out in Santa Cruz after lunch, waiting for the bus to take us to El Huique, a Critical Mass of clowns appeared on the city’s Plaza de Armas. Yes, I took pictures. Apparently it was a hospital fundraiser, but damn, those guys were having a good time. And it made me think of Halloween Critical Mass coming up in SF. I was inspired, but alas, I’ll have to wait till next year to get my silly self dressed up on my bike.

Anyway, the museum was pretty cool, but I thought El Huique was far more interesting, especially given the history of the role of the countryside in Chilean history. Going back to the question of who settled various parts of the Americas, you can see that the Spaniards were not country people, whereas the British and other Europeans were born to farm and make their way in the "wilderness" they found in their new colonies. So from the very beginning, the Chilean elite was far more focused on building their cities and commercial centers (most significantly, Santiago, Concepción, and Valparaiso), while they dominated the country from afar. They lived in the city 9 months of the year (or in Europe), and only came to the country for the summer months, where they would oversee their haciendas during harvest. Typically, families would hold huge tracts of land for agriculture, with hundreds of tenants living on the land, working for them. It wasn’t quite feudalism, but at least a close cousin.
The particular family that owned El Huique was Basque (like most of the Chilean elite), called Errázuriz Echenique (yes, as in the two presidents of Chile in the first half of the 20th century), and they didn’t last long.
The hacienda was built in 1929 when those two families got together (they already separately owned the thousands of hectares side by side; it was just a matter of joining it across the river), and there is no one left directly in the family. After President Eduardo Frei passed the agricultural reform in 1967, the owners of the latifundos freaked out, since they couldn’t handle the 80 hectares that were left to them, when the rest of their land was collectivized. They would rather sell out than live with the humiliation of losing the land they "owned." Also, there was considerable class warfare in those days, and lots of the haciendas were taken over by the campesinos, and in the process, they often destroyed the property of their landlords. Pity.

But hegemony reigned at El Huique, and the folks that worked the land there were pretty loyal to the family. So when they lost their land in ’67, they donated it to the army (!) to be kept in perfect condition. The majordomo of the property (the house slave, as it were) was named a Sergeant or something. To this day, the folks that run the museum are descendents of the peasants: they give tours of the property and possess encyclopedic knowledge of the Ezzásuriz Echenique family. Creepy. But it’s a beautiful house, with amazing collections. A fantasy world for the rich to live in, while everybody else worried over their comforts. They even had two chapels on the property: one for the family, and one for the workers (because you know God can’t handle dealing with their souls all at once; it would be too confusing).

After they rushed the kids who needed to get back to Santiago to the bus station, about fifteen of us stuck together—with one of the program coordinators and her two daughters and friend—and headed for the beach.
It was like a dream getting there, because it was dusk as we left Santa Cruz again, and I slept on the bus, awakening to the killer sunset over the Pacific. Funny enough, everybody was talking about the predicted earthquake that was supposed to hit the next day, with its epicenter at Pichilemu, the exact town they were taking us.

But that didn’t happen.

That night, we made a huge bonfire on the beach, and my drunken friends decided to swim in the (freezing) ocean for kicks. Yeah, I’m a square; I just baby-sat.

Then yesterday, those of us who were not hung-over or still drunk enjoyed a tour of the region.

Actually I was in neither condition, and I tried to enjoy the tour, but it mostly made me melancholy. The area around Pichilemu bears a remarkable geographic resemblance to northern California, and it just made me homesick. We passed through groves of eucalyptus trees that emit a smell that can only ever remind me of my first semester at Mills. And there was the small organic nursery we visited, with the big compost bin with worms, which reminded me of a certain worm farmer I love. And it was a magical day, complete with a trip to a flour mill that looked straight out of a fairy tale (all hydro-powered and old-fashioned; you would never think that flour is still made this way), a lunch prepared in outdoor ovens, and lounging at a small lake, where my friends commandeered a small row-boat and again swam (only thankfully, the water was at least tepid this time).

And now, by the time I am finishing this (now pathetic, by my judgment) story, it is Thursday night the 7th. It’s funny how my life was so sad there for awhile that I didn’t feel it fit to share with you, and then I just got busy. Can I tell you how excited I was to get to go away for the weekend—not the least of the excitement was that I’d have something to tell you.

But I spent all this week sweating over school-work. Huge psycholinguistics research project I had to design, a paper for my Chile class (which just ended for the semester!), and an oral presentation on T.S. Eliot’s Family Reunion and the myth of Orestes (an hour and 1/2 long, in Spanish, of course). That presentation’s this Wednesday—I’ll let you know if I make it out alive.

Oh, and in the midst of all this, I’ve gained about four pounds. The boobs and ghetto booty are back.

And tomorrow night, I get to let off some steam by putting together another fabulous dinner party. That’ll probably have passed by the time you read this, but you were invited. Well, come next time, anyway.