Coffee, markets and machismo

Before coming to Santiago, I had thought that Argentina was a more interesting country than Chile. After spending more time on The end of the world (the translation of Chile in a native American tongue), and after reading Mi Pais Inventado by Isabelle Allende, I have come to the conlusion that Chile is itself a fascinating mix of reserve and brutality, passion and machismo, superstition and piety.

In Santiago, I stayed in Bellavista, an arty district in the north-east of the city that is full of cafes, bars, artists´ workshops and baroque buildings painted in psychedelic colours. The hostel was called the Bellavista Hostel, and before I discovered the patio upstairs where everyone congregated for drinks, I reverted to watching British TV like Lewis (It was strange how good Lewis seemed after being subjected to nothing but Telenovelas) and the amazing football match between Liverpool and Arsenal. It is worth watching, or rather listening, to a football match in a Spanish speaking country just for the commentators. Whenever the ball hits the back of the net, the commentator gulps in some air, expands his lungs and releases a cry of "gooooool" that lasts for a good ten seconds. They also scorn impartiality. When Torres scored his second goal, the chorus of Fernando by Abba suddenly blared out of the television, the word Fernando being replaced by El Nino. Could you imagine Mottie doing something similar?

That itself is strange given the close link between Chileans and Englishmen...according to Allende anyway. They share numerous virtues and vices. One is a certain reserve, solemnity and lack of exuberance;life is not to be enjoyed, but to be endured. She finds an explanation for this in the huge efforts that the conquisadores made to reach The end of the world, crossing the Andes, fighting hordes of Indians and battling against cold and hunger, before they could root themselves in the unfertile soil of Chile. But while the Chileans may not be the most demonstrative of Latin Americans, Santiago is still an interesting, bustling city.

Santiago is cleaner than almost any city I have ever seen, even Leeds or London. There is no chewing gum on the pavements, armies of state employees can be seen in the parks sweeping up leaves and even shopkeepers clean the pavement adjacent to their shops. Like the British, Chileans are very proud of their country. The huge market, La Vega, was one of the most interesting places that I went in Santiago. It lies across the river from the central market which is orientated towards tourists, the Mercado Central, where I enjoyed a typical Chilean dish, Reineta con salsa de Mariscos. La Vega is for the ordinary people of Santiago. As I crossed the bridge, clasping my camera ever tighter, I saw little old women hauling huge trolleys laden with fresh fruit and vegetables and paper pasted to lamposts advertising Viagra. La Vega is a market of dark, labyerinthine alleyways, harbouring thousands of stalls selling everything from Shitaki mushrooms and pigs trotters to Casio calculators and chicken feet (What are these used for. Soup?). Never have I seen so much fruit accumulated in one place. Tomatoes and potatoes are piled like bricks, seven foot high, and the air is laden with the tangy odour of coriander and spices that are kept in huge, bulging sacks. It is like a giant´s storecupboard. And everything is dirt cheap. The first time I went there, I bought a kg of plums for 350 pesos, around 40 pence.

As you move back towards the centre, everything becomes notably more expensive. As I approached the plaza de Armas, I was confronted with rows of tarrot stalls where Santiguenos sit with grave faces as their fate is revealed to them. This betrays another facet of the Chilean character. Though Chile may be the most developed country in Latin America, people are mystical and deeply superstitious, distrustful of doctors. Every home brewed remedy will be tried before dragging oneself along to a doctor, that most dubious of professions. Allende claims that one of her relations was a saint. Small wings began to grow from her shoulderblades, incorrectly diagnosed as a bone deformity by the doctors, and in the correct light, Allende could see a halo around her head. She also states that her grandmother could move objects with her mind and that she once saw the devil on the bus in Santiago, a green being with goatish hooves . Allende incorporated elements of Buddhism into her beliefs, and knows who she was in a previous life. This reminds me of the instruments that I saw in the Museo de Arte Precolumbiano, which were use to ingest hallucinatory substances. A wooden spatula would be forced down the throat in order to cleanse the stomach, and a special type of dust would be taken through the nose.

All this sits comfortably with devotion to the Catholic church, but despite religion, Chileans are as unfaithful as any other nation. Fifty eight percent of spouses cheat on their other half. Allende tells the story of a male friend who, in a sudden spur of lucid thought, tried to escape his tyrannical lover one morning. As he was walking down the road, he felt someone push him to the ground and start pummeling him in the back; it was the lover who had found the bed empty, run out of the house and down the street stark naked to take revenge.

Machismo is also deeply ingrained in Chilean culture, as demonstrated by the national hero, Pablo Neruda, who had numerous lovers. In the centre of Santiago, there is a chain of cafes labelled as cafe con piernas (coffee with legs). Young women in red uniforms, complete with mini-skirt, high heels and slap serve coffee and alcohol from an upraised bar to middle-aged, vegetating businessmen in sunglasses and crumpled suits. Presumably the bar is upraised so that the legs can be appreciated in all their glory. I was going to try the coffee there in the name of research, but managed to contain myself.

Many of these men wear blazers, which leads me on to another national trait. Chileans seem to assume that foreign goods are superior to their own. Heineken is a case in point. An average, insipid European beer, Heineken is drunk in greater quantaties than far better Chilean and Argentinian beer. The Chilean upper class have a fetish for upper-class Enlish dress, perhaps to cement their noble status in a country where everyone is a mestizo, and a descendent of humble, hard working conquistadores. Walking around the centre of Santiago, I saw a picture of an English aristocrat standing in a field, lank, blonde hair swept across his forehead, riding whip clutched in his hand, finely cut blazer and trousers complementing dark brown leather riding boots, pulled up to the knees. What a calumny. I could barely repress my chuckle...