greenie

Well I think it is a good habit to be ‘green’ or to have green behaviors, like recycling or stuff like that. But I think that it isn’t so easy to become a green person, most of the time you need to have money to buy products that help the ecosystem, for example. Little things like separating the garbage can help tho, or recycling in general. But is s not too much what we can do to help the world, because the big parte is on the industries. I haven’t incorporated green habits in my life, I live alone so I don’t have a  lot of organization or time to do things like that, is a shame, and I don’t have joined any eco-org, I support their fight but sometimes their politics views are not so compromised. To help the planet I would like to learn to ride a bike, I think is a good thing to reduce contamination using a bike to move around, sadly I don’t know how to ride one, and I’m also a car lover, one of my favorite things in the world are roadtrips, not very eco-friendly. 

Well our society has a lot to learn to help the planet, Santiago has this geographic problem being in a big hole so the contamination is difficult to eradicate, but I think this issue is, once more, a structural issue that tells us how the system has production as a priority above the well-being of the population and where we live.   

                                       

lord save the education

Education is a difficult topic for our country. Since the 2011 (Or even before, with the penguin revolution) there has been a lot of discomfort regarding to this situation. The structural system of Chile supports the neo-liberalism in every sense and aspect in which it can influence our life, even if this means making essentials parts of everyone’s life like health and education a business. In Chile if you want to have good education, you need to have money, is simple like that. If you don’t have the money, if you can’t afford the cost of a decent education, then you have to conform to a mediocre education or you will have to be in debt for the rest of your life, paying a lot more of the money that you were supposed to pay in the first time, because of the interests.

This situation can’t be fixed with scholarships or that kind of flash help, because this is a structural problem that comes from the capitalist system that rules our country.  This is reflected in the very core of education, is not only how it cost, but what are the contents that our children are learning. They are learning to be part of the same twisted system that makes this kind of issues, they aren’t learning to think or to question, they are learning to be tools of capitalism. Tests like SIMCE or PSU are a proof of that.

So this issue isn’t going to be fixed by some superficial reforms, we need structural changes and that is why students march and protest, to show the discomfort regarding how the government is ignoring this issue. 

    

(The students teach us to be brave)

Hi! Last week I was on vacations because of the Fiestas Patrias, 18 of September is the day we commemorate the Chilean independence, even if it wasn’t specifically the day of our independence from Spain, but everyone wants an excuse to party, especially if it is one full week.

The country usually thinks this day as an inherently  Chilean day, as if we can put everything that makes us Chilean in one day full of old traditions. Culture is much more than drinking terremotos and going to the Ramadas, but that is me thinking as an anthropologist, so I don’t think we can take exclusive behaviors and call them what makes us Chilean, is an issue of identity. I think some people who are more strongly connected with that kind of things usually reaffirm their identity in those dates, by doing what they call being Chilean, but that is associated with a strong nationalism that I dislike. Blind nationalism never brings anything good.

I think that every country needs traditions so they can have something to identify with, but those traditions should never harm someone, rodeo is awful because is basically people having fun because of the suffering of an innocent animal; I don’t support activities like that. But things like Rayuela are always good.

Well, in these holidays I went to Viña del Mar with some of my friends, but it wasn’t so good. One of my friends got sick in the barbecue the second day we arrived and she couldn’t keep partying. She wasn’t feeling good at all, so she stayed in bed the whole travel, while the rest of us visited the beach. It was funny because the same 18 of September we were out, without anything to do and with our friend in bed, so we decided to eat sushi outside the apartment, the less traditional thing to do in a day like that.

But thinking in something better, the best Fiestas Patrias that I can remember was one which I spent  with my friends playing videogames, I’m not strongly attached to the national traditions, so it was really good because I was with my friends having fun.

I think I could keep talking about culture, traditions and nationalism forever, but you have had enough of that. Have a good day! 

              

September 11th

A sad day for our country, for our story, and for ourselves. This is a day that can't be forgotten, we can't allow oursleves to bury the past behind and pretend that it didn't happen, that it doesn't matter anymore. How can I forget it? Even if I wasn't born in the dictatorship, how can I forget the horrors, the missing ones, the deep sadness in the ones that are still searching for their families? I don't understand how someone can say that this isn't relevant anymore, when there isn't justice yet, when are still bodies that haven't been buried, something so simple like visiting the grave of someone that you loved is not allowed because it was better to make them dissapear. Because the believed in ideals of love and fraternity, and that was dangerous. Dangerous for a system of hate.

Of course we should complain, we should do more than that. We should scream until our throats are sore, because they can't do it anymore. Becuase the state still protects those who kill, those who hate.

In television they are going to speak about the violence of the barricades, the terrible violence againts the police force. Isn't it more violent that we still have the same system that was created in the dictatorship? Isn't it more violent that there are some people who will never come back? I would burn down this whole city if someone that I loved died in the hands of those who betrayed their people.

This affects us, this will always affect us. Not only because it was our own brothers and sisters who died, who were tortured. Because the same system which did that, still pravails.

We can' forget. Building the future and keeping the past alive are one and the same thing.

                                       

the final frontier

When I think about a place I want to visit, the first thing that comes to my mind is Alaska. Everyone I told about this thinks I'm crazy or something like that, and maybe it is a bit true, but I have a thing for remote places, far away from everyone and everything. Traveling to Alaska is one of my biggest dreams, but I don't want to travel for a few days and take some photos, what I want to do is live there, and make an anthropology career there.

To be more specific, I want to be a visual ethnographer, I want to publish and travel, and isolated places are so interesting, also I'm really into Inuit culture. I think I could do a lot of things there.

Anchorage is the city where I would like to live. When you hear about Alaska you probably think about a place in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by bears and wild animals who could eat you alive, well there are some places like that, but that isn't everything. Anchorage is a big city, like any other, it has the same things that a place like Santiago has, but in contact with the nature. There are the big universities, and of course, the Alaska Association of Anthropology.

I would like to have a home trailer to travel everywhere, from Anchorage to more isolated and rural places, to keep moving is a important part of my life, I would say that I'm something like a modern nomad, because I usually spent little time in one place. For example, I'm from Iquique and came to Santiago to study, but before that I keep moving from house to house, so I'm really used to be on the road, and that's how I like to live.

But Alaska, the final frontier, is the ultimate goal. And now that I'm in my fourth year at university, I'm a little closer.