French Dancing

19/8/08
This morning we went out to Viña to play some soccer. On the walk down to the micro, we (my Chilean brother, another student, and myself) were semi-accosted by a rambling, old man with a Dumbledore style beard. He gave us fliers to watch his video on youtube and then continued to wander around in the street. My brother said to me, “I know this guy, he is a very famous marathon runner in the area. I’ve seen him on TV several times.” I didn’t believe him, though, for several reasons. First, he likes to make stuff up to tell me for fun. Second, that guy looked like he was far from the best shape of his life and had to have been at least 60 or 70 years old. Third, he looked semi-crazed. By chance, we ended up on the same micro and we struck up a conversation about his running (I was still incredulous). It turns out, he is a famous marathon runner who just happened to be wandering the streets of the cerro I live in passing out fliers for his video on youtube. Not very out of the ordinary. We chatted with him for a good 20 minutes on the micro, and he gave me training advice for running marathons. He told me I have to beat his time of 3 hours 30 minutes. We also heard Can’t Touch This by M.C. Hammer.
In the evening, Catherine, another girl, and I went exploring on Cerro Alegre (the cerro Catherine lives on and is right next to mine). There are a lot of really cool corridors covered in graffiti that I need to take pictures of. They were also pretty sketchy at night, so we didn’t dawdle too long. Catherine then left us cause she is going skiing tomorrow, and we walked over and met up with some other students at a bar. After staying there for a bit, somehow, we ended up at some random house party that one of the student’s brother knew about. We showed up and at first it was pretty awkward. A lot of the people there were pretty drunk and attempting to dance but really just running into bikes and knocking them over. We started talking with the people there and learned that 10 people live in the house: 5 French exchange students, 4 Chileans, and 1 Spaniard who just tagged along. I ended up talking a lot with some of the exchange students. It was a lot of fun to share a common language that wasn’t either of our natural languages. They played some French music, and at some point a song came on that required everyone to dance around in a circle locking arms and kicking wildly into the center. I honestly don’t know what I would’ve told you if earlier in the day someone had told me that later I would be dancing in a circle with a bunch of French students and Chileans on the patio of a house overlooking the city of Valpo. The dance was briefly interrupted when the circle went spinning wildly out of control and knocked over a motorcycle. We left the party early (early being almost 3), and headed home, but not before buying some street food.

21/9/08
To end my dias patrias festivities, I went with a group of students to Santiago. Inti Illimani (the same group that I saw before in concert), was performing in front of La Moneda (their White House), to commemorate Salvador Allende’s 100th birthday. In honor of his 100th, they played 100 songs (roughly 7 or 8 hours). We showed up a little bit before 2 and walked around the plaza. It is very different from the United States in that there is way less security. For one, there would never be a concert in front of the White House nowadays. The concert started roughly around 2, so we found a spot in the (wet) grass and sat down. It wasn’t long before my butt was sufficiently soaked and I had an excuse to walk around and people watch/buy some empanaditas. The crowd attending a concert celebrating an assassinated communist leader was about as left leaning as one would expect. Vendors were selling Che, Allende, and Communist party flags. Many people brought their own communist flags/apparel. There was one adorable girl running around waving a Che flag.

The crowd was a mix of the older generation who most likely were in Chile during the time of the communist party and younger hippies smoking copious amounts of marijuana. The concert was pretty low key for the beginning of the day, but around sunset things started to pick up. Inti started playing their more popular songs, the plaza was at that point completely packed with people, and everybody began to dance. A few of us worked our way up to the front of the crowd and enjoyed the fanatical atmosphere closer to the band. Every few songs, the entire crowd would burst out into communist/pro-Allende chants. It was a very impressive display that would never be seen in America, although, make no mistake, the current government and policy of Chile is extremely far right (the country hasn’t changed much of its economic model/social policies since the days of the dictatorship). We stayed until almost the end, but had to get back to Valpo before it got too late.



The stage with La Moneda in the background.