All in a Day

Saturday morning started out with a Dario Salas parade en el centro to celebrate our schools’ (four in all) anniversary — 80 years as a corporation and 25 years in education. When I asked the exact date I was told all of November. And so it is…we’ve been celebrating in one form or another for weeks. CDS takes school spirit to its zenith. Students have been collecting bottles caps since September 25th — chapitas y tapas de bebidas o jugos de Coca Cola — competing between classes for the most caps, between the four colegios, and between other secondary schools in the country. I don’t know our status yet….I just wish I had taken photos of the garbage barrels overflowing with bottle caps accumulated by Cuarto Medio alone, the senior class. Other activities include elections of a king and a queen for each grade level, a poetry and composition contest, art exhibitions, singing contests, dance contests, and sports events. The culminating event, la Fiesta de Coronación, is on November 29th. Life at school might seem rather ho hum after this. Fortunately, the school year ends for students on December 14th.

Well back to the parade, composed of staff and students and cheered on by the community of parents, students who didn’t want to be on duty on a Saturday, and other CDS supporters. I was told to be at the Plaza de Armas at 11 am, so I showed up at 11:45 (finally getting the hang of Chilean time) with plenty of time to socialize, laugh, and set a lighthearted tone. Our school was first in the line up that extended five blocks behind us, which we were all grateful for because the sun was brutal. Once the parade commenced our practice session in precision marching was forgotten by all as we slipped into an easy stroll, barely able to keep our horizontal rows intact. We marched for 100 meters before we reached the end of our route. The parade coincided beautifully with an aerial show performance that began minutes earlier. It looked made to order.

Afterwards Dan and I went home to change and go on to the Victor Jara Arts Festival which promised poetry readings, a photography exhibit, and lots of great music. Victor Jara is a Chilean folksinger and left-wing political activist who was tortured and murdered in the Stadium days after the September 11, 1973 military coup. We count ourselves among his fans. When we mentioned to our colleagues that we were going to the festival, one in particular said that we’d encounter the Partido Comunista there. The prospects for meeting some of Chillán’s lefties really appealed to us. Alas, when we arrived we found ourselves surrounded by hoards of youth dressed in black. First we felt old, then redeemed when we spotted grey hair among the crowd gathering in front of the stage. We were just too early - a common refrain - so we left for a while, but not before some of the same CDS students who were marching in uniform earlier that day flagged us down. They too went home to change and were wearing drab clothes and sporting their Fidel Castro caps. We exchanged polite greetings and all of us tried (unsuccessfully) to hide our surprise at the encounter.

When we returned a few hours later the music was just about to begin. Fortunately a friend saved us seats because there were none to be had otherwise. And yeah, the crowd was multi-generational, from the elderly in wheel chairs to the pre-kinder set. We learned that the guest of honor was the Cuban Ambassador. He and his party were ushered into the VIP area with lots of fanfare. Soon we were grooving with the music, which, like the audience, was the full spectrum of diversity. When one of my students came on stage with the energy of a jet engine I almost fell off my chair. He appeared to be levitating while singing a rap version of Victor Jara’s Manifesto. Wow! In that moment I saw him in a new light. In school he’s the poster boy for disaffected youth…usually late for class, sneering when his face is visible, otherwise presenting the top of his head with spiked and gnarly hair, down on his desk. Everything about him screams I don’t want to be here. We videoed his performance and I gave him the CD on Monday at school...he was grateful and pleased that we appreciated his talent. He explained that he’s not doing a practicum or going on to college after he graduates in December; he’s moving to Santiago to find his way there. I wish him luck.

Additional highlights included students from other classes who sought us out to say hello and informed us that they would be playing later on in the evening. We stayed until 11 pm and missed them — the festival went on until 3 am. Here’s an excerpt from Manifesto:

Yo no canto por cantar
ni por tener buena voz
canto porque la guitarra
tiene sentido y razón
tiene corazón de tierra

I don't sing for love of singing
or to show off my voice
but for the statements
made by my honest guitar
for its heart is of earth

Hola, vecino

We have been living here in Villa Naval, a neighborhood in Chillán, for about four months now. During that time the neighbors have been, well, a bit cautious. Not unfriendly but not overly friendly either. There have been a few exceptions, like the next-door neighbor and the woman across the street, who have always said hello and engaged in some small talk, but in general we felt like outsiders, which we were. A big part of this is obviously due to our limited (but improving) Spanish language skills but another part may be the cultural norms in Chile when it comes to strangers in the neighborhood. Add in a bunch of really cold and rainy weather during our first few months here and you have a recipe for isolation.

Then on Monday this week I came home in the afternoon to find that there was no power in the house. No lights, no internet, no nothing. I went outside and asked a couple of neighbors, "do you have power?"

"Yes," they said, "did you pay your bill?"

"I think I paid the bill..."

Well, actually, I don't pay the electric bill directly. We pay the rent, which includes a fixed amount for utilities, to Rodrigo and he pays the electric bill automatically through his bank. Or so we all thought. It turns out that there was a misunderstanding, un malentendido. Due to an error somewhere in the chain (no finger pointing here) no one has been paying the bill for the last four months. So on Monday, the power company came out in their little truck, climbed up the pole, and disconnected our power line. This public display of humiliation was witnessed by all the neighbors and they all knew that it meant we were delinquent.

Oddly enough, this episode has broken the ice. Neighbors that have never even said hello to me before now stop me in the street and ask me if I got the power turned back on (which I did, later on that same afternoon, after a few confusing phone calls. I met Luz Maria down at the power company office and paid off the bill, which caused the same truck to show up a couple of hours later, and the guy climbed up the pole and reconnected our line). Somehow, we aren't outsiders anymore, or at least less so.

This all crystallized for me yesterday when I was walking back to the house and passed a woman and her young child with whom I had exchanged polite holas, but nothing more, for months, and she said to me, "hola, vecino." Howdy, neighbor. I feel like we have arrived.

For the Love of Music

I have had several musical experiences this week that I'd like to recount. The first one came about because I am using music quite a bit in my duties as a part-time English teacher here in Chillán. Last week I was using the Hammer Song, written by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays in 1949. At the time it was written it was considered quite radical and controversial because the Hammer was a thinly-veiled reference to the hammer and sickle of the USSR's flag. In class, I was comparing the original song to the translation made by the Chilean Victor Jara in 1969, talking about the differences in the situations within the US in 1949 and Chile in 1969. I thought it was a pretty successful lesson, so I started looking for another song to use for the next week. I have been wanting to use Bob Dylan's The Times They are a Changin', so I began to look for a Spanish language version of that song. I eventually found one by a group called Los Young Beats, a Columbian garage band from 1966. Their one CD has been re-issued on a German label, Break-a-way Records. I wrote to the email address on the web site and asked if they could make an MP3 of that one song available to me, telling them of my planned use and saying that I'd gladly pay for it. Within an hour, I heard back from Wolgang, who said he couldn't do the MP3, but he would send me the disk, airmail, for free. He said it would be a pleasure to help out. Wolgang, you rock!

A second thing happened today. Yesterday Mauricio was working on our roof to fix a leak. We were gone most of the day, so he came back today to collect his pay. While we were talking, he noticed my guitar and asked if I played. Sure, I said, how about you. Yeah. So I asked him to play something, and he launched into several beautiful songs, playing quite well and singing with a wonderful soulful voice. Then I played my one Chilean song, Te Recuerdo Amanda, and he sang right along, an impromptu duet in the living room, connecting across country and language differences.

Finally, all day long today our neighbors next door, with whom we share a thin duplex wall, have been playing one song over and over and over again at high volume. At first I kind of enjoyed it. It is a song I vaguely know from the radio and it is kinda catchy, plus it was fun to hear the kids next door singing along with it. But, after 4 or 5 hours and many, many repetitions, Catherine and I began looking at each other and saying, "for the love of god, give it a REST!"

And just now at 9:00 pm on a Sunday night as I write this, right on cue, that song just started up again next door for the umpteenth time. What the...oh well, for the love of music...

You can listen to Pete Seeger singing the Hammer Song here:



And you can listen to Victor Jara singing his version here: