Chile

The Chilean miners and that wonderful Spanish word ‘hábil’

 

The unconfined joy rightly generated by the rescue of the Chilean miners focuses attention on one of the less heralded aspects of Latin America.  Europeans sometimes make tedious jokes about a ‘mañana culture’,  usually when they have forgotten quite how inefficient European services can be.  In fact for me the people of that continent are often distinguished by what can best be described by that wonderful Spanish word ‘hábil’, a word that means ‘clever, skilful, adroit, expert, handy, deft, accomplished’ and the ability to make the best of slender resources.  

From Cuba to Chile I have always been impressed by the ability of mechanics, muleteers, stall-holders and just about anyone you meet to make things work if they possibly can.  Nowhere is this more evident than Chile [see my earlier post when I went there just after the earthquake] ,  and the patience with which they have managed to get the miners to the surface  – and with which the miners have endured unbearable conditions – puts most other countries to shame.  Which is not to say that the collapse in the mine was not due to casual safety standards in the first place, as Mario Sepulveda, one of their leaders and a union activist, had pointed out before the disaster occurred.  As the struggle for the earth’s resources intensifies, mines and oil rigs will have to dig deeper, with all the attendant risks and necessary vigilance that brings. 

But in a crisis situation, when what is needed is both pragmatic ‘habilidad’ and faith, then give me the South Americans every time.  Not least because they also manage to keep a sense both of humour and the surreal:  one of the miners, Edison Pena, apparently ‘kept up the spirits of the other miners by singing Elvis songs underground’.  He has now received an invitation to  Graceland.  You couldn’t make it up, boyo.

In Chile after the Earthquake

I flew into Santiago airport with some trepidation – arriving just days after one of the world’s largest recorded earthquakes, at 8.8 – but it takes a while to spot any sign of damage at all.  Given that most taxi drivers can never resist a moan, mine was more concerned that the 2005 Skoda he’d just acquired had been installed with a tape rather than cd player.  ‘What is the point of that,’ he complained and apologised.  He’d wanted to play me some Iron Maiden to celebrate my common British heritage with the group.

Heading into town, we cross a few bridge-sections of road which have had to be plated together, but Santiago itself seems unmarked.  The Zócalo, the central square, is the usual picture of shoe-shine boys, old men sitting on benches and a religious nut preaching the end of the world to a disinterested audience.

In the shopping streets nearby, the atmosphere is rather as if a fire alarm had gone off in John Lewis and now everyone was back in the building and shopping.  But then the Chileans are different from the rest of South America.  As one tells me:     ‘Everyone here is middle-class –  except for the new president, Pinero, and his friends, who are filthy rich!’  Many of the more menial jobs – the maids, the cleaners, the security guards – are taken by Peruvian and Bolivian immigrants these days.

The rest of the continent make jokes about the Chileans being a nation of bland shop-keepers, from their less spicy food to the mild, more temperate climate they enjoy.  I was impressed by the resilience and pragmatism they showed in the face of the earthquake – and by the foresight with which buildings had been constructed, in the main, to withstand such huge force.  But then they have had a long time to get used to such attacks.  175 years ago, almost exactly, Charles Darwin witnessed the Chilean town of Concepción, then, as now damaged by a ferocious earthquake:  ‘the most awful yet interesting spectacle I ever beheld.’

Eating a caldillo of conger eel in the Central Market, a magnificent iron-framed building erected by British investors in the past, I found the food was not so much bland as a balance of interesting flavours – perhaps why the Chileans have always been such natural and loyal allies of the British, from the 19th century War in the Pacific to that other 20th century War in the Atlantic, the Falklands.  We too have been accused of being a nation of shopkeepers;  though quite how we’d deal with a 8.8 earthquake, given our incapacity to handle a few wet leaves on a railway track, I’m not so sure.

written March 8 (posted late due to technical issues in posting from Pacific, as several of following posts will be as well!)

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