Letters from abroad | Student affirms identity in politically-charged Chile

Jen Dixon Staff Writer

On the Thursday afternoon prior to the Universidad de Chile's “fiestas Patrias” celebrations—a week of celebrating the country's independence that could be compared to our spring break—I took a bus across town to get a book out of the library.

Once I finally made it there, however, the campus was abandoned, aside from several guards at the gate. As I approached them to ask if I could be let in to the library, I walked into a cloud of tear gas, apparently left over from a massive protest that afternoon, of which I was not aware. Even several hours after the bombs had been thrown, it required about five minutes for me to recover enough to catch a bus home.

I should have known better than to head the library that afternoon—Friday classes had already been cancelled in anticipation of the demonstrations that inevitably occur as a reaction to Saturday, Sept. 11, the anniversary of the 1973 Golpe de Estado during which General Augusto Pinochet came to power and initiated a 15 year military dictatorship. At the very least several times a month, police respond to demonstrations, using relatively harsh means to break up protesters who are frequently not even students of the university. One recent afternoon, a group of high school-aged boys managed to get past university guards to protest rising university prices.

The difference between the student activism that I have experienced in the United States and the activism at the Universidad de Chile is much more significant than I would have expected. I am not aware of any clubs or organizations dedicated to political concerns here, although there are certainly a good number of events and conferences advertised through the university itself. Protests, however, are commonplace, and other forms of political statements are everywhere.

On my way to get coffee after class, I walk past an enormous mural of Che Guevara and the statement “Hasta la victoria siempre” (Always until victory). To photocopy reading for classes, I wait in line next to a mural of a mapuche warrior stabbing a bald eagle holding an American flag.

When I asked a Chilean friend what the frequent demonstrations were protesting, she answered, “Oh, lots of things. Imperialism?” This is definitely a theme that comes up frequently in my history classes, causing all eyes to turn to me, regardless of whether or not the topic actually is American imperialism.

The same Chilean friend also once jokingly referred to me as “la imperialista,” a label that is funny coming from a friend who knows how I react to the bald eagle mural, and less so when it comes in the form of stares at my obvious “gringa”-ness. With blonde hair and relatively American clothes, I am obviously North American, so much so that my host mother has advised me to avoid certain places when George Bush visits Santiago in November for an APEC conference, an event that will inevitably lead to protests, class cancellations, and mass amounts of tear gas.

This situation has led me to be constantly on the defensive when it comes to my nationality. For a period, I qualified my “I’m American” with “but not that kind of American” whenever meeting someone of my own age, in an attempt to avoid the inevitable raising of eyebrows and barrage of questions concerning our President’s politics.

However, I’ve recently stopped immediately jumping to the conclusion that these questions are accusatory and necessitate a quick defense of myself.

Chilean university students are well informed about politics and have a love for discussing them, so they are certainly capable of separating a citizen from their government. I have instead surprised myself by jumping to the defense of the United States as the place that for better of for worse is a significant part of who I am. It is a shift that I never would have anticipated before my time abroad.

All of the study abroad literature advertises the JYA experience as an opportunity to fall in love with and appreciate an entirely different culture, something that after only two months in Latin America has already occurred. However, my time abroad has also given me a much stronger sense of myself as an American as well as the implications of this categorization in the way others see me and in the way that I see myself.