Chicha, chucha. Pucha

Last week was Chile's Fiestas Patrias (independence day) - commemorating, not Chilean independence as the name might suggest, but September 18 1810 when Chile thought that it might be rather nice to be independent. Fiestas Patrias is Chile's biggest national holiday aside from Christmas and a chance for me to get to see some real Chilean spirit (and hopefully some cow pushing at the rodeo), which is pitifully absent from Santiago's humdrum polyester-clad working week.

Santiago has plenty of celebrations, or Fondas, in the city - including the tempting Jane Fonda Fonda - but the boy and I wanted to get out into the campo, see what the real yokels get up to. It started innocently enough - we got a bus to San José de Maipo in the Cajón del Maipo (drawer of Maipo), a valley to the south of Santiago. It is verdant and moist and, crucially, it has a medialuna (croissant - or rodeo stadium).

We arrived in the town square and people were setting up jam stalls under the beaming sun. There's nothing that screams bucolia quite like a jar of fig jam, if you ask me. We went straight to the medialuna and had beer and empanadas in the food tent - the best empanada I have eaten so far in Chile. The rodeo was supposed to start at 2 but, of course, by 2.30 nothing was happening so we went back into town, rode around the block on an old nag and had a go on the shooting range.

Eager to get our fair share of the average 7000 calories consumed per Chilean during Dieciocho festivities, we went to a restaurant called the Oveja Negra and had our first parrillada (mixed grill) after ten months in South America, which has to be a record. It was a fine specimen, which included chips, salad, boiled potatoes, two steaks, a pork chop, three sausages, two chicken breasts and lots of bread. Luckily San José has plenty of stray dogs to take up the slack because the boy and I were defeated for once in our face-stuffing lives.

In the medialuna, nothing had changed apart from a slight fuzziness around the edges - maybe the pisco sour we had with lunch. We went to the bar. The rodeo had finished. For about two hours we sat in the auditorium drinking beer watching a couple of huasos (cowboys) trying to lever a pole out of the packed earth of the stadium. Maybe they would have liked some help, but we were too busy taking photos of them and getting heavily involved in some beercan philosophy.

Night set in. Back in the beer tent, some people were dancing the cueca, Chile's traditional dance that mimics the mating dance of a cockerel and hen, including a small child wearing full huaso get-up who I had a quick dance with on the way to the bar. He shamed my interpretative dancing skills with some really nifty handkerchief waving and then went and hid behind his mum's legs. Probably for the best - I was drunk enough by then to be considered a danger to children, especially ones who make me feel inadequate.

We joined some gnarled country-types on their table and had one of those riveting conversations that are the lifeblood of international relations:
- Buena Onda!
- Te gusta Chile?
- Salud!

Everyone downs their drinks, followed by another round of the same subject, with the perving content increasing a little bit in every round. Our amigos got us a two-litre coca cola bottle full of their home-brewed chicha (semi-fermented wine) from backstage - they were with the rodeo - and then we all had to down half-pints of the rough stuff. Their suave-as-fuck friend sat by and watched from under his huaso's hat, sporting a red silk cravat and pencil moustache. He was about eighty but he had it in spades. He just sat there silently, improving the atmosphere immeasurably by being so darned cool.

I had to buy a round and had run out of money, so went up the dark winding road to the cashpoint in town. I had brought my maglite with me, it had run out of battery power but I thought it would make a useful weapon. Outside the cashpoint a stinking man lurched at me with blood dripping from his nose, and I was wondering if I could draw some more blood with my torch before he killed me, when I was saved by the woman inside the bank letting me in.

The time of the last bus was approaching and our new friends said we could stay with them, an idea I found unaccountably attractive.
-C'mon, it'll be funny, was my compelling argument.

The boy unwillingly agreed to my whim, but, as I was taking a piss in the outhouse, I suddenly had a flash of inspiration that it wouldn't really be that funny, in fact it would be horrible. I can only put this down to maturity.

We took our leave at great length and were given handfuls of kebabs and what was left of the chicha for our bus ride back into town. At the bus stop a boy was swinging his pet poodle round and round by its lead. The evening had taken on a sinister air. The last bus was packed. I'm not sure if everyone was drunk, because we were by far the drunkest and most obnoxious. We were just getting into the spirit of singing along to PJ Harvey on the boy's Ipod when I realised I was soloing. The boy had projectiled grilled meat and home brew all over himself and the bus.

I stopped being obnoxious for a few minutes and when the bus reached the outskirts of Santiago I decided we should make a dash for it before the driver smelled something amiss. The boy wasn't in any state to monitor my ill-formed plan. Ejected on a motorway somewhere near the city, we sat on the hard shoulder and I drank some more chicha.

Drunk and in charge of a drunk, I tried to flag down every passing car, and eventually a collectivo (group taxi) stopped. I was so pleased that when they let us out in front of the boy's flat I gave our fellow-passenger the remnants of our chicha and tried to embrace the taxi driver, who evidently was not feeling the national spirit.

Mission accomplished - cow-taunting missed, in our irrepressible crap tourist style, traditional foods eaten, and puked, locals befriended and alienated. Next year I'm going to the rodeo in Las Condes where there will be safe, organised games and a reassuring police presence.

REVOLVER: MADICH: Intelligent Design and Alien Combat Gear

Incongruous amongst the cripplingly expensive fashion outlets of La Dehesa mall in Las Condes was the MADICH design exhibition. The first installment of an annual competition for young designers, the exhibition included 36 works vying for the CP$400,000 prize with their original textile, graphic and industrial designs.

MADICH has been advertised as "design with intention, conscience and a theme," and the theme of the competition this year, eco-design, dictated that designers use recycled or eco-friendly materials in their entries.

One of the first designs in the exhibition was a delightful cardboard playhouse, Casagrande by Adriana and Camila Moraga and Paula Soto. The playhouse was foldable and received an Honorable Mention in the competition, judged by professional architects, designers and academics.

Another Honorable Mention entry was a fun and relevant display of colorful lampshades named ADNpet. The work was made out of the bases of soft-drink bottles riveted together by designer Sofía Montero M.

Running down the center of the space was a platform exhibiting fashion entries lined up on mannequins. To the right of the catwalk was a series of swagged and draped neutral-toned clothes, in an uninspiring representation of what "eco-friendly" conjured up to these young designers — dull, futuristic clothes with too many pockets, resembling something akin to alien combat gear.

The first prize winner, Protección by Sebastian Rios, was among these designs — a jacket made out of recycled pale denim with American footballer-style silicon-reinforced shoulders, teamed with a pair of exaggerated harem pants (the bloomeresque leggings so beloved of Chilean youths) in the same fabric and sporting enormous poufs on the thigh. The description accompanying the design explained that it was inspired by “the shell of an armadillo, representing how humans in the urban jungle have become anonymous and solitary.”

Some of the fashion was a tad more lively though. Reutilizaciòn Pin-UP, by Arnaldo Vargas Pino, is a 50's-style dress made out of woven dark and pale-blue recycled denim strips with a pink tulle underskirt, and on the same wavelength, Nostalgia by Carolina Perez L — a padded polyester 70's-style blue and yellow mini-dress and housecoat combo, which was inspired by memories of her Grandmother’s dancing and the perfumes and outfits of her aunts at family Sunday lunches. Sounds like more fun than lunch with a solitary armadillo.

The last Honorable Mention went to DD by Javiera Quesney, whose designs included a woven and knotted red fleece shoulder bag with an over-sized wooden button. Her neon printed t-shirts also featured in the exhibition, with simple designs reminiscent of kindergarten collages.

Other entries included a considerable, and nearly indistinguishable, number of wicker creations, including some attractive giant plant-like lamps, entitled Garden/Flamme, by Paola Silvestre. My particular favorite in the exhibition was a sinister ring containing a hairy caterpillar, included in a selection of beautiful jewelry created from insects trapped in resin in copper settings, by Daniela Jatz — although it exhibited a contradictory interpretation of the eco-friendly theme.

Held in an open white space divided with curtains of white muslin, this is one of the best-presented exhibitions I have seen in Santiago and a fantastic way to enjoy Las Condes fashion without having to spend your rent money on designer shoes.

Published here

Transatlantic Bake-Off August 2009

The Waz and I were communicating via the internet when we discovered that we'd both seen a Nigel Slater courgette cake recipe in the Guardian that we'd wanted to try. So, naturally, we decided to have a transatlantic baking competition.

Strictly Amateur:
I couldn't find a blasted bread tin so had to buy a spring-base cake tin instead. As it was so expensive I didn't have enough cash for the pecans and raisins, and wasn't really that concerned about them anyway.

I love to bake but I don't own scales or a measuring jug, and my oven only has two temperatures - lukewarm and fires of hell. Consequently it is only through luck that anything I bake doesn't have something wrong with it, and this was no different.

When I made the mix I thought it was rather heavy on the courgette and light on flour but had already poured it into the tin so didn't bother to rectify it. Also, after an hour in the oven the top was still slightly liquidy, so I had to ask my housemate to keep an eye on it for me as I was going to work. When I came back it had not all been eaten by my housemates (definitely a bad sign) and was still a bit anaemic looking so I turned the oven back on and gave it another go - which I'm sure is absolute sacrilege to seasoned bakers.

Results:
I took it round to the boy's house for some independent judging as he had made us dinner - pizza and home-made bread, aren't we East Dulwich. He was slightly freaked out by the very idea of courgette cake, having never experienced it before, but came to the conclusion "What's wrong with this is not the courgettes". Thanks, boy. I expressed the opinion that it smelt a bit funny and he replied "It smells fried. It tastes like lardy cake with courgettes in it". So there we have it; too much butter, not enough flour. It was much nicer the next day though and I managed to finish it off, AND my housemates stole some, so it turned out okay in the end.

I'm still waiting for the Waz's results to come in, but if anyone else would like to indulge in some transatlantic baking let me know... and I'll buy myself a measuring jug.

*I must give credit to Vintage Cookbook Trials, which inspired this bake-off (see links)

10 Things

Apologies to my fan for having been absent for a while. So you can feel that you haven't missed anything, I have compiled a list of ten things that have happened to me since my last post, in no particular order of importance:

1. I finished my internship. Not in a blaze of glory but after a series of petty attacks by the Publisher, who had seemigly taken a dislike to my Britishness and femaleness. Don't trouble yourself, Mr Goat, I will happily "park myself elsewhere." I have parked myself at Santiago's English-language magazine instead, and it is much more accommodating.

2. My sister came to visit. I met her in beautiful Buenos Aires where we ate some significant steaks and she looked on as I vomited in the Botanic Gardens. Not recommended.

3. We went to the Elqui Valley together. Famous for its observatories and its pisco, it was cloudy every night we were there, so we didn't see any stars and went on a tour of every piscillery in the valley. Egh. We also climbed up the 93-metre tall crucifix, which was built in a slum in the unappealing city of Coquimbo to celebrate the millenium, but couldn't see anything from the platform (inside the arms of the crucifix) because it was so misty. Yay!

4. I bought a really nice umbrella. From Persa Bio Bio. It has a perspex handle.

5. I have become a full-time English teacher, which means a couple of hours a day, which are always cancelled. So I'm effectively unemployed. Yep.

6. Most of my fellow interns have left Chile - back to their real lives.

7. Summer is slowly creeping forth out of the shadows

8. I have a rotten tooth

9. Casa Malaquias has adopted a street puppy, which we have confused by giving it about five different names, and are giving it psychological problems that may never be cured even if it spends thousands of pounds on therapy. It, in revenge, found a decomposing rat in our garden and took the rat into its kennel to play with.

10. My Ipod deleted years of carefully compiled britpop and out-of-date electro, along with some very important Barbra Streisand. Damn you, Apple.

So. Now you're all up to date, I can leave it another couple of months before writing another list. Don't stay tuned.

REVOLVER: Eighteen years on – the gay rights movement in Chile

Celebrations of the 2009 Gay Pride event in Santiago came to their peak in Plaza de Armas on Saturday June 27 as around 10,000 attendees enjoyed six hours of spectacular entertainment including live music, dance acts and comedy routines.

Gay Pride events occur all over the world on the last weekend of June in commemoration of the Stonewall Riots in New York City on June 27, 1969. On that day police raided the Stonewall Inn gay bar in Greenwich Village, provoking the gay and lesbian community to fight back and resulting in five days of protests and riots. From those violent beginnings grew the gay rights movement as we know it today.

Chile’s leading gay rights group, the Movement for Homosexual Liberation and Integration (MOVILH), wasn't launched until 1991 when they began their work for the recognition of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) rights. MOVILH centralized the movement in Chile and it is only since then that the gay rights movement has made itself heard, but there is still a long way to go before the LGBT community achieves legal and social equality.

According to Juan Hernández, secretary general of MOVILH, the group began by promoting knowledge about LGBT issues and denouncing prejudice. "Over the years, the objectives were extended towards the equality of rights on all planes; social, legal, cultural, economic and political; within this framework the fight for equality goes on," he told Revolver. Homosexual acts were decriminalized in 1998 by a modification to Chile's penal code article 365. However, the age of consent for homosexuals remains higher at 18 than the heterosexual age of consent - 14 with some restrictions.

Traditionally a conservative Christian country, Chile's advances towards equality under the law are balanced by indications of an institutional homophobia that remains a long way from being erased. One example is the high-profile case in 2004 of mother and judge Karen Atala Riffo who was denied custody of her children by the Supreme Court of Chile because of her sexual orientation. The State ruled that the "conduct of the mother, who opted to cohabit with a partner of the same sex, with whom she proposed to raise her daughters, was deemed inadvisable for the girls’ upbringing and a risk to their development in the current context of Chilean society." Her case, which she brought to the attention of international human rights organizations, is pending before the Inter-American Human Rights Commission.

Hernández stated that "religious influence, especially of the Catholic Church and Opus Dei, is historical in our country and persists even now in perceptions of many areas of sexuality - one of those being homosexuality. It is this religion that accuses the LGTB population of being sinful; maintaining that the only way to be "saved" is by remaining celibate." He also attributes to religious pressure the delay in passing the Anti-Discrimination Law that has been in Congress since 2005.

However, MOVILH believes that the negative influence of religious groups on social beliefs is diminishing. "The Catholic Church and Opus Dei are becoming less influential on society in regards to views about sexual minorities. According to diverse surveys the majority of Chileans do not think that homosexuality is a sin," said Hernández.

A recent Ipsos poll told a different story – 65.2 percent of the 1008 Chilean adults interviewed between March and April 2009 for the report said that they are against same-sex marriage, and 72.5 percent would not allow same-sex couples to adopt. All possible candidates for Chile's upcoming presidential election have been open to discussion on LGBT issues. "All have been in favor of civil unions but the three possible candidates who lead the polls, Frei, Piñera and Enríquez-Ominami, all reject adoption by LGBT couples," said Hernández. "They are only meeting us half-way."

"It is the State that are getting left behind. It is the same as in the case of divorce laws (divorce was only made legal in Chile in 2004) – all the country wanted it to be legalized, but the State did not listen to national feeling. Of course we have had important legal and political victories such as legalization of homosexual relations between adults as well as guarantees of equality in education, health, work and housing, to mention a few of our campaigns, but it is still true that the best advances have occurred in society."

The future of LGBT rights in Chile is hopeful, explained Hernández. "[The discrepancy in age of consent] is a violation of human rights and it is in that sense that we have hope that it will change in the future. We are working with much force towards change thanks to the endorsement of the Embassy of Holland."

"We will continue to fight legally to correct cases of discrimination that affect the LGBT population. We will continue working so that the law against discrimination is approved. We will do the same with the civil union law that we have already drawn up. Education plays a crucial role, because we are convinced that when more is said about sexuality and human rights in the classrooms it will reduce discrimination. To this end we have created an educative manual on sexuality and gender that we have distributed in schools of the Metropolitan Region."

MOVILH are currently involved in talks with each of the possible presidential candidates before they give their full support to one of their campaigns, and their decision may turn out to make a considerable difference to the outcome of the election. A majority of the 10,000 attendees at Gay Pride were young people, a group that has been targeted by campaigners as possible floating voters and, if they follow MOVILH to the ballot box, could potentially decide Chile's next president.

http://www.movilh.cl/

Published here

REVOLVER: Individual Spirit Lives On In Café Central

After spending the day sightseeing or trawling through the endless and indistinguishable department stores in Santiago's teeming shopping area you may need a cup of coffee, or perhaps something harder, before attempting the metro home – and just across the Alameda is the perfect remedy to shopping rage.

In the early evening, lit with the warm sulphur glow of the streetlamps, tree-lined Calle Londres is only disturbed by the chatter of patrons sitting on pavement tables outside Café Central. The atmospheric area of cobbled streets seems like a different continent – and a different age – from the proliferation of fast food and mobile phone shops in central Santiago.

Cafe owner Rodrigo Flores started the business in 2001 when he and his brother were running their graphic design company from an office on the second floor of the building. "We noticed a lot of backpackers walking up and down the street," he said. "As there wasn't even an internet cafe in the area at the time we decided to inquire with the landlord about the ground floor rooms." Since then, the café has grown to include most of the ground floor of the historic building along with the outside seating.

Everything in the rock-chic cafe was designed and made by Rodrigo apart from the original artworks on the walls: from the signature red star lights to the wrought-iron furniture. The café has an eclectic style held together by dark wood furniture and red walls, giving a bohemian air of a Parisian-Moroccan hideaway. Their distinctive playlist ranges from blues classics to electropop.

The menu is strong on simple, yet fresh bar snacks such as mini-pizzas and sandwiches, the most popular of which is the Fugassa - delicious herb bread with gouda cheese, rucula, lettuce, tomato, onion and fresh basil. You can buy a whole one for CP$6,600 which feeds four or a quarter for yourself at CP$2,100.

Another specialty sandwich is the Italiano – fresh cheese, spinach, sweet pepper, mushrooms and mayo on a ciabatta for CP$2,100. There are a lot of vegetarian items on the menu including the delicious pancake – cheese, tomato, avocado, and alfafa sprouts with a yogurt-chive dressing for CP$1,500.

Café Central has a great selection of wine and beer to wash it all down, along with a variety of real coffees from espressos to indulgent bean-infused cocktails. Artisan ales come in at CP$1,800 but the very acceptable house wine is a more economic CP$1,300 a glass. They also have a sumptuous breakfast if you’re in before noon, which includes coffee, juice and a sandwich or pancake.

Rodrigo grew up in a village 900km to the south of Santiago where his grandmother ran Pension Central and his father Bar L'Estrella just three blocks apart - the name and the logo of the bar were created in homage to them. "The pension was always full of people – eating, drinking, listening to music – enjoying themselves," said Rodrigo. Café Central is a perfect place to do just that.

Published here.

Taking The Tour

Since being Abroad, because it is absolutely bloody no matter what the natives say, I have become less ashamed of my Englishness and even rather fond of the old homeland, whilst becoming more ashamed of the fellow Brits that I meet and worrying about the kind of impression they might be making on the rest of the world. Though I guess we really fucked that already, what with the Empire and everything.

It seems to still be the case that the kind of Brits who go abroad are hideously overprivileged or sex tourists or both. I don't have much to do with the latter as I am not working in a cafe con piernas (yet), but the former. Oh, the former. South America is crawling with the kind of girls who were very much on the other side of the silver-spoon fence during my school years and whose parties I got too drunk at with friends from UCL. I didn't know Miffy and Bof and Twinkie, I wasn't in the drama club and I most certainly was Not Quite. Oh yes, I know them well - but they are not always able to place me. I had this converation with an Oxford Girl at a bar a few weeks ago:

OG: Oh! You're from Oxford too? Marvellous! I was at Teddy's - where did you go?
SA: Gosford.
OG: Ah... were you a boarder?
SA: Gosford is a comprehensive.
OG: ...Oh. You sound quite posh though... how did that happen?

The purity of that question takes one's breath away. This is what the poor, though bloody, foreigners are subjected to whilst students from the Russell Group come here on their year abroad. The Empire didn't fall - it just put on some Thai fisherman trousers and got a meaningful tattoo.