Just going to make a note: I am starting another volunteer post teaching English for Un Techo para Chile, a prominent org that has won awards for it's work throughout Chile and Latin America. I went with a friend on Saturday for the first time. The Org doesn't actually have anything to do with it other than they found the space; the three volunteers, who are all students at the Catolica and none of whom speak English as maternal language, do everything else. They teach in an empty room that sits on the toes of the Andes (it really is right in the mountains, at the end of Peñalolen, east Santiago) and in a communal living space (funded by the gov? the org? trying to get this straight). It's almost an hour and a half from my house and noticeably colder up there.
It was amazing! The people were so kind, incredible smiles, even though only 3 came. It's unpredictable and up to you to organize, but with real potential to make personal impact. It was two parents and their 12 year old daughter (the parents doing it for their daughter, of course). It's not the poorest part of Santiago for sure, but it's not where I live either.
Anyway, all the Europeans have to leave in December so I think I'm going to take it over by myself, unless we find someone to help. It's 6 o'clock on Saturdays, which puts a lump in things, but I'm really excited. I'm going to learn a lot.
I also applied for a paying job teaching English at an organization that assists immigrants (I don't know their status, if they are immigrants, refugees, etc.) from Africa moving to Chile. The org needs their workers to speak English to communicate with an international community. My fantastic lit teacher recommended me the job because his wife works at the org. We'll see....
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Poverty from the outside
Sound byte of an ideology-to-practice interior dialogue/conflict I've been tracing and retracing during the last couple months: Basically because I'm living in an affluent neighborhood in central Santiago that reminds me distressingly much of a globalized US-modeled (that's probably arrogance - better a city that coincides with the US model) city anywhere in the world, with parents who are both basically economics/business people (their ideological world runs on statistics) from wealthy families and privileged social standing, who are politically and socially conservative, I'm curious. I'm curious about other perspectives, neighborhoods, and have been considering moving to a poorer neighborhood farther south in Santiago. I want to live with a family with an opposing ideology, because they tend to be fairly polarized in certain aspects. It's a very complex and sensitive and important issue for me that touches on my idealization of poverty and noble intellectualism - theory made flesh... to challenge myself, put myself in an odd role of having money, being from the US, so of course being a sort of anthropologist observer not because I want to but because that is the only way for to integrate at all (to recognize my role. and just by changing neighborhoods of course doesn't make me that observer: I am that observer now also, although economics difference me from my surroundings less right now and money is an especially important differentiator here in a fairly economically determined class conscious society).
ANYWAY, I had a sort of interesting insight (I've always heard about them, but it's nice to finally have one) a couple of days ago about possible subconscious motives for my wanting to move: a need to find my idealized fantasy image of Latin America here that I have not yet encountered.
I read Mala Onda by Alberto Fuguet a chilean writer yesterday. He is a contemporary writer and started a movement of latin american writers who reject magical realism and this sort of stereotypical/ idealized Marquez image of Latin america with flying grandmothers and sexual chocolate sauce... This book is told from inside the head of a 17 year old who lives in super affluent united statesy neighborhood in santiago and has too much money from his dad and spends it all on alcohol and cocaine and spends all his time in bars, moping, skipping class, dreaming about this girl, car wrecks.... but he wants to be reflective or profound and he's frustrated with everything but his reflections don't go existentially deeper than Pink Floyd and Catcher in the Rye, which to him are incredibly profound. Actually this book is very much like Catcher in the Rye and a bit like Y tu mamá también in some aspects.
Anyway, the first half infuriated me. I got involved and angry. And something i realized - this is a possibility - is that i didn't get angry because the characters actions in themselves frustrate me, but because this image didn't fit with my image of LATIN AMERICA. That I have this stereotype that consciously I don't want to support but that has been planted in me deeply and so i still act upon it. AL as the backyard of the US or the pueblo al sur de los EEUU. So when I read this Orange County version of Santiago, it clashed with my image. There is one part where the protag goes south in the city to the super poor parts in the middle of the night, but only by accident and he completely freaks out and gets scared. He says that he has left civilization and goes running until finally he finds a cab and begs it to take him out of here. It is not even a part of the reality of his city. That however is more my image of LA, or the leftist intellectual or dancing or bananas or tropics (sickeningly political propaganda, gracias EEUU).
So my theory is that probably part or most of wanting to move to a poorer area is a genuine compassion ?? , curiosity... desire... i don't know my mind isn't working wonderfully in english right now... but I think part also could be this background stereotype of LA driving to find something that matches and supports it....
I wrote one of my professor's about this and told me that he has had similar experiences with the US. Exoticism I suppose, creating some sort of other or body onto which I can project fantasy or create fictions. I don't want to make it too much of a psychological isomorphism because I think in this case a lot of my fantasy is not extrapolated/projected desire etc but purposefully generated political/ international corporation imagery.
No photos on this theme as the ones I tend to shoot are aesthetic over ideological, though poverty is certainly an idealized aesthetic in pop counter-culture (counter culture pop?).
ANYWAY, I had a sort of interesting insight (I've always heard about them, but it's nice to finally have one) a couple of days ago about possible subconscious motives for my wanting to move: a need to find my idealized fantasy image of Latin America here that I have not yet encountered.
I read Mala Onda by Alberto Fuguet a chilean writer yesterday. He is a contemporary writer and started a movement of latin american writers who reject magical realism and this sort of stereotypical/ idealized Marquez image of Latin america with flying grandmothers and sexual chocolate sauce... This book is told from inside the head of a 17 year old who lives in super affluent united statesy neighborhood in santiago and has too much money from his dad and spends it all on alcohol and cocaine and spends all his time in bars, moping, skipping class, dreaming about this girl, car wrecks.... but he wants to be reflective or profound and he's frustrated with everything but his reflections don't go existentially deeper than Pink Floyd and Catcher in the Rye, which to him are incredibly profound. Actually this book is very much like Catcher in the Rye and a bit like Y tu mamá también in some aspects.
Anyway, the first half infuriated me. I got involved and angry. And something i realized - this is a possibility - is that i didn't get angry because the characters actions in themselves frustrate me, but because this image didn't fit with my image of LATIN AMERICA. That I have this stereotype that consciously I don't want to support but that has been planted in me deeply and so i still act upon it. AL as the backyard of the US or the pueblo al sur de los EEUU. So when I read this Orange County version of Santiago, it clashed with my image. There is one part where the protag goes south in the city to the super poor parts in the middle of the night, but only by accident and he completely freaks out and gets scared. He says that he has left civilization and goes running until finally he finds a cab and begs it to take him out of here. It is not even a part of the reality of his city. That however is more my image of LA, or the leftist intellectual or dancing or bananas or tropics (sickeningly political propaganda, gracias EEUU).
So my theory is that probably part or most of wanting to move to a poorer area is a genuine compassion ?? , curiosity... desire... i don't know my mind isn't working wonderfully in english right now... but I think part also could be this background stereotype of LA driving to find something that matches and supports it....
I wrote one of my professor's about this and told me that he has had similar experiences with the US. Exoticism I suppose, creating some sort of other or body onto which I can project fantasy or create fictions. I don't want to make it too much of a psychological isomorphism because I think in this case a lot of my fantasy is not extrapolated/projected desire etc but purposefully generated political/ international corporation imagery.
No photos on this theme as the ones I tend to shoot are aesthetic over ideological, though poverty is certainly an idealized aesthetic in pop counter-culture (counter culture pop?).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)