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.