sorry about the recent silence, by the way. i've been rushing to finish the last of my interviews and finalize any necessary documentation before heading off on my final trip. my grant is coming to an end so i am wrapping up my research...i've also decided that it's going out with a bang. i've managed to coerce my old high school roommates, kristin and mimi, to meet up with sam and me in peru. we are going to hike the inca trail to the legendary ruins of machu picchu!! i haven't seen these girls in several years, so it's really exciting to that this hare-brained idea is actually coming together. we will start off in cusco, spend some time exploring lake titicaca, maybe venture into the amazon for a few days, before getting on to the main event. i'm pretty damn psyched.
it's funny that i'll be heading up to peru at this point, because it seems to be the only thing featured on chilean news nowadays. the organization of american states (or oea as the acronym is in spanish) recently chose a new leader, and by overwhelming majority the candidate elected was chilean jose miguel insulza. the only states to vehemently resist the selection were, of course, peru and bolivia, whose loss of valuable territory to chile during the war of the pacific is something that still stings today. angered by this turn of events, peru cancelled an annual diplomatic meeting between their ministers, and dug up an old controversy over the sale of arms from chile to ecuador while ecuador was at war with peru. the matter was settled ten years ago (the chileans were making good on a deal made before the outbreak of war), but the peruvians revived the sore spot, demanding a belated apology and explanation, which the chileans refuse to give. to add salt to the wound, a recent scandal at lanperu airlines (operated by the chilean-owned lanchile) enraged peruvians after an "adventure tourism" video was shown to passengers, basically selling peru as a run-down, dangerous, and altogether "adventurous" place to visit. add to this the fact that a group of chilean teenagers was recently arrest for vandalizing ancient incan monuments in peru, and you just have strained relations all around. when i first arrived, the only squabble i could detect between the two countries had to do with the long-standing yet benign conflict over the liquor that both countries fervently claim to be their national drink: the pisco sour. (which, by the way, is pretty tasty.) but if you scratch the surface, there are a lot more undercurrents of animosity going around. i don't think this will affect our experience in peru, of course, but the confluence of current events and our long-planned visit is kind of interesting nonetheless.
hmmm...so a fox news anchor lets his true colors show during an interview with trent lott regarding the nuclear option deal. "so, senator," he says, "if we should have done it and if we had the votes to do it...then why did you need a compromise?" i wonder where *his* loyalties lie. watch a video clip of the slip at the media matters site.
in general, i'm pretty bummed about how this whole filbuster matter turned out, and at the ill-fated measures that legislators had to take to prevent a shameless and destructive abuse of power. senator russ feingold has some very appropriate words for the deal.
but thanks to our friends at the fox news network...at least one spark of entertainment can be found in all of this...
last weekend, i attended a concert by inti illimani and sol y lluvia, two groups who became figureheads of the anti-pinochet movement during the dictatorship. the concert took place in the victor jara stadium, named for the famous musician who was tortured and killed there. he was something of a hero to the left-wing coalition that supported allende, having dedicated many concerts to the unidad popular (as the coalition was called). soon after the coup, jara's captors brought him and other prisoners to the stadium, broke both his hands, then taunted him by giving him his guitar and asking him to play his music. he responded by singing a party song of the unidad popular, after which he was beaten, machine gunned, and thrown in a mass grave.
needless to say, the concert took on a fiercely political tone, with jabs at "pinocho" abound. inti-illimani played several of victor jara's songs, the most stirring one being "el pueblo unido jamás sera vencido", which became the anthem of the unidad popular. once inti-illimani broke out into the tune, everyone in the audience went absolutely apeshit.
translated, it's "the people, united, will never be defeated." sound familiar? yeah, it's been adopted by pretty much every social movement since then. (the english version usually replaces "defeated" with "divided" to keep the rhyme...i've heard variations of this chant at every protest i've been to.)
although chants of "juicio a pinochet" also came up often, i was more amused by the lighthearted "él que no salta es pinochet". to get the joke, you must first understand that chileans like to jump. a lot. in unison. i guess it's how they show enthusiasm for a song. the chant translates to "he who doesn't jump is pinochet", which gets everyone in the stadium jumping furiously, because if you don't, you feel awfully bad about it, given the implications.
all of this music forms part of a larger, very exciting tradition. the musicians i've mentioned so far all hail from the nueva cancion (new song) movement, founded in the mid-1960's by revered chilean musician violeta parra. nueva cancion combines traditional latin american folk music (parra collected indigenous aymara and quechua songs from rural payadores throughout chile) with progressive or politicized lyrics. most songs are accompanied by the guitar, and often the quena (andean flute), zampoña (pan pipes), charango (a type of south american lute), or cajón, (box drum).
nueva cancion usually deals with issues of poverty, empowerment, imperialism, and democracy. in the chilean case, it became tied to the unidad popular, and later, by necessity, to anti-pinochet sentiment. it's a fascinating musical movement that has since spread to the rest of latin america, most notably argentina, where mercedes sosa was instrumental in promoting it. in my opinion, nueva cancion (and its cuban equivalent nueva trova) has produced some of the most moving, innovative, and skillful contemporary latin american songs to date. other notable artists of the movement include silvio rodriguez, pablo milanés, and quilapayún.
i just wasted a ludicrous amount of time today playing with the "satellite" feature in google maps. the tool displays satellite photos of any street address you enter. you can also move around and amplify the images as you wish. zoom in enough to see your own house! the bushes in your backyard! footpaths on your school campus! famous landmarks! the only thing you're not able to see close-up appears to be the capitol building and the senate/house offices. i wonder why.
so my plan to diversify my parents' stay failed miserably. unsurprisingly, the dominating theme of their trip remained food. our tour of santiago took us to open markets, restaurants, and even the pacific coast. of course, this was not altogether a bad thing. our experience actually serves as a nice educational primer on chilean cuisine.
the most notable aspect our diet would have to be the approximately 17 bushels of avocados my parents consumed during their week in santiago. chile's culinary highlight, aside from its shellfish, is probably its fresh and abundant produce. my mother was a big fan of the traditional marketplaces, where vast amounts of fruits and vegetables could be purchased for hardly anything.
corn cobs, which chileans have somehow cultivated to gargantuan sizes, are big players in their diet. corn is featured in humitas (tamales), pastel de choclo (a baked corn and meat pie), and cazuela (a hearty soup). the chunk of orange squash to the left, called "zapallo", also appears in a lot in dishes. it is often mixed with meat or beans (the latter under the name "porotos," popular in their own right), or incorporated into a fried bread known as "sopaipilla".
the markets are the place to find sauces, spices, herbs, and roots. this photo was taken at one of the traveling street markets, known as "ferias", which establish themselves on different streets of the city according to the day of the week. this feria sets itself up in my neighborhood on sundays.
my parents also had their share of typical chilean seafood. for our first meal, we ordered a paila marina, a soup piled high with shellfish, including barnacles and sea urchins. as adventurous as my parents's palates are (hey, they're chinese, they'll eat pretty much anything), my dad couldn't bring himself to try the barnacles, or "picorocos". he did later try typical dishes featuring "congrio", a.k.a. conger eel, and "jaivas", a type of local crab. we even went out on a limb and bought an enormous strip of giant squid at the behest of an eager vendor at the central market, who pushed its medicinal qualities. we took it home and whipped it into an improvised stir-fry.
an enthusiastic vendor wins us over and we take home a strip of curious looking giant squid.
the crowning culinary moment, however, was during our trip to the port city of valparaiso. we parked ourselves in a restaurant along the pacific coast and feasted on abalone ("locos" in spanish) until we could feast no more. i don't know what thrilled my parents more...how succulent the locos turned out to be, or how much of a deal they were getting. abalone in chile is sold for a fraction of its price abroad...and rather than being served in paper-thin shavings, as is the custom elsewhere, they throw the whole thing at you.
a mere bite of the piles of abalone we enjoyed at caleta portales, a fun restaurant built to resemble a ship on the inside. we found the locos to be such a bargain, we didn't bother to order anything else.
but you ask: what about the chilis in chile? to the surprise of many a non-native, chileans do not call chili by the name one might assume. here, chili is called "aji." not only that, but aji isn't really used that much in chilean food! (especially in comparison to, say, mexican cuisine.) it is most commonly chopped up for "pebre", a tomato-based dip for bread. an indigenous spice known as "merquen", made of dried crushed aji, is also sometimes thrown into soups or empanadas (typical meat or cheese-filled pastries, found everywhere). beyond that, however, the uses of aji are limited.
a decieving photo, but irresistable. chilis in chile.
upon leaving, each of my parents brought home a taste of santiago. my dad packed a few bottles of chilean carmenere wine (carmenere is a grape that only grows in chile, after it was wiped out by disease in europe. chile's natural borders---the atacama desert to the north, the andes and the pacific to the east and west, and antarctica to the south---protect the country from many of the plagues that affect livestock and agriculture elsewhere). my mother, who fell in love with a popular summertime treat called "mote con huesillos"---a cold glass of barley kernels and re-dehydrated peaches floating in peach nectar---took home a couple bags of mote along with some canned locos. as for me, i'll be spending the next few months trying to eat my way through the enormous suitcase of preserved chinese food my parents brought down with them. mmmmmm...
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