It is the morning of my fifth day in Chile. I have been trying to find an apartment and understand the capital city. In Barrio Brasil, the western neighborhood that is my crashpad, there is the typical mix of Art Nouveau mansions, concrete high-rises and vacant lots. Santiago seems officious —for the past decade Chile has been one of the most stable and prosperous economies in South America and it shows. Compared to Mendoza, Argentina across the mountains, there are newer, shinier buildings (or at least more glass curtain walls). Chileans drive newer cars, have more international capitalist brands and seem to have their fair share of downtown malls (in other words, all the trappings of international business and capitalism).
For two days I went out to Valparaiso, the now mostly obsolete port city that has been named a World Heritage Site and apparently is increasingly one of the centers of the Chilean arts scene. Crumbling buildings and paseos are central — the city is a labyrinth of steep hills (cerros), stray dogs and overgrowth of oversized and exotic plants flowering from every crack in the streets, sidewalks and buildings. Since the Panama Canal, the city has largely outlived its purpose. It still is a major center for Chilean exports (fruit, wood, copper, steel) but doesn’t have the a fraction of the activity it did when Pacific-Atlantic trade traveled around Tierra del Fuego. It seems that about a third of the buildings are abandoned (both the downtown plano buildings and the wood houses perched above in the cerros). Pablo Neruda lived atop one of the hills in a home designed to look like a ship.
The afternoon we arrived the hills were shrouded in fog, but the morning of the second day the haze lifted and the height of the cerros became clear. At the top of the tallest, the homes peter out and jungley forest begins. Behind the city the mountains begin.
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we need more posts please.