Havin' a good time in Chile

2010 was expected and announced last years as the time of consolidation of 200 years of the Chilean Republic. In the last years of the Bachelet’s administration, several TV programs, political projects and cultural manifestations tried to reflect about the history of our country, promoting to remember and evaluate the actors that contributed to the construction of the nation. Considering 2010 as a year of culmination of this memory process, I will try to express how the government has been trying to neutralize some political interpretations of our History and our present and to show a “reconciled” (hegemonic) impression of them.

Firstly, this year started with a terrible episode: the 27th February earthquake, which affected to almost all of the central and southern regions. It ended with some towns, where people couldn’t work and live more. At this time, some institutions were acussed of guilt because of the bad diffusion of this fact (the earthquake) to all the territory. Moreover, the mass media and the government put the attention on condemning the people who stole things when it was time of shortage of supplies. The problems with institutions didn’t have the attention that looters won that time. The idea of attacking to these people was (implicitly) legitimized gradually. That time, Michelle Bachelet was finishing her term of office and Sebastián Piñera assumed the conflict giving a message of hope and trying to emphasize on the National Unity. Then, this political strategy arrived and has been a way of ignoring the conflicts that constitutes to all the nations of the world. As an expression of it, the Education Ministry had didn’t know the manifestations of the students and professors because of his intentions of privatize this area. The idea of the Chilean History promoted by the government could also be understood by analyzing their position on some historical dates. In September 11th, Piñera said that this was a date to celebrate to the National Unity. Also, when some mapuche people started a hunger strike against the Antiterrorist Law, the government tried to ignore to their demands and treat them as humans (and not as political actors), carrying about their lives but not on their political requirements.

I think that Piñera’s government had tried to be unaware of the political manifestations and to present an illusory lecture of the History, presenting to the political scenary as one of National Unity. The big problem with that is that this process has been reinforced by the mass media, which (In the case of the mapuche people) didn’t show their situation for a long time. I would like to end saying that this could be dangerous for democracy, because this interpretation ignores that conflicts are the base of this system and denies any possibility of saying publicly a critic discourse.

Big Brother has a place for you

In China some Chinese community party veterans, spread a letter in which they challenged to stop the censorship, and to promote freedom of speech. In their letter they said "This false democracy of formal avowal and concrete denial has become a scandalous mark on the history of world democracy". This was raised in addition to the petition of releasing to Xie Chaoping, who is a writer imprisoned by denouncing corruption. In addition, they expressed their repudiation against the government decision of denying bringing the 2010’s Nobel Prize to Liu Xiaobo, who was arrested after he wrote a document calling for freedom of expression and political reforms.
The Central Propaganda Department removed the letter from the website, and veterans said that tomorrow they will present a more formal letter, with 500 signatures.

Nicholas Bequelin, Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, considered that this action expressed the dissatisfaction towards the party’s hardliner politics. However, he emphasized about that this was not a political dispute between conservatives and reformers, but between some pragmatic positions and hardliners.

Xiao Mo said that promoting the freedom of speech by the government doesn’t represent an expensive policy. He said that China had experienced some changes since Mao Zedong’s times, when nobody could express publicly their disagreement without being at risk of being killed and persecuted. However, he recognized that the censorship was being stricter last years. He criticized the idea of the government of censoring to the dissident's opinions , using the “maintaining stability” idea as an excuse and ignoring some aspects of their own constitution.

"Such dreams I have dreamed"

Well, sincerely I’ve been trying to remember some movies that I really loved, but I forgot some things of them, so I will talk about one of the last films that I have seen and that I liked. It’s “Dreams”, a 1990 film directed by Akira Kurosawa. There appears actors like Akira Terao, Mitsuko Baisho and also the director Martin Scorsese. This film is divided into eight separated short films, which are dreams that Kurosawa had through his life, and that has some overlaps in terms of characters and themes (it raises up the relation between man and the environment and the relation between traditions and the modern age).

The short films are: “Sunshine through the rain”, which tells the story of a child whose mother forbids him to go out because outside there’s a foxes’ wedding ceremony, and If they manage to see it, this would cause problems. “The Peach Orchard”, where the same boy find the spirits of the peach trees that have been cut down by humans. “The Blizzard”, which takes place in a mountain and where some mountaineers fight against the death and are saved from a blizzard by Yuki-Onna, a mythical spirit. “The Tunnel”, where a soldier finds to spirits of their army, and whose deaths he was responsible for. “Crows”, which shows the encounter between an art student and Vincent Van Gogh. “Mount Fuji in Red”, which shows the devastations because of a nuclear shipwreck. “The weeping demon”, which shows the terrible life of some nuclear catastroph’s survivors. Finally it’s “Village of the Watermills”, which shows the peaceful lifestyle of a little town.

My favorite part of the movie was “Village of the Watermills”, because it shows a particular way of thinking. People in that town decided to live far from the modern cities, and seem to be freer than them. I liked a scene of a funeral, where people laughs, celebrates and recognize death as a natural fact and as “the right final for a good life”.

I liked it because it’s way of criticizing the modern life and showing the fragility of human condition in opposition to the omnipotence that man seeks through the modern life and that affects to their own living and nature.

Mapuches didn't accept the government's proposition

Today the hunger strike that 34 mapuche citizen started 80 days ago, hasn’t found any solution. Mapuche prisoner’s spokesperson Rodrigo Curipán, said yesterday that they rejected the government’s offer, because of the Public Ministry position on that theme (the Public Ministry ruled out the idea of closing the lawsuit over the mapuche’s prisoners). This institution also had the intention of keeping applying the Antiterrorist Law. That’s why mapuche’s demanded to the Public Ministry and the Judiciary to become part of the negotiation committee. The Concepcion’s Monsignor Ricardo Ezzati, who had been the mediator between the strikers and the government, said that he had carried out his cycle in the negotiation and called to the other state powers to help in the solution. On the other hand, the Secretary of the Interior, Rodrigo Hinzpeter, pointed out that the government had done all that was in their hands, and that the mapuche’s petitions were going too far.
In my point of view, the meaningful thing is that the government hadn’t been capable of making a global proposition of reform in the Antiterrorist Law, ignoring the structural problem and assuming it as a particular decision of people that tries to attempt to their own lives. For example, Ena Von Baer said that if some mapuche citizen would die now, it would be caused by their own intransigent position.
The people involved in this news were those who were in the negotiation committee: Ricardo Ezzati, the prisoner’s spokesperson, and Claudio Alvarado, who is the sub secretary of the General Secretary of the Presidency.
I think that this piece of news will affect in my community, firstly by the position that this hunger strike had shown from the part of government, which has practically ignored the theme and the political issue beyond the fact. It’s worrying that legitimate demands in a democracy have kept invisible and ignored from part of the mass media too.

Places in Santiago

I think that a foreigner tourist should visit Plaza de Armas. Many people like painting sellers, chess players, religious and immigrants meet there every day and there are a lot of cheap restaurants and bars where you can eat typical food. He could also go to the Parque Forestal. It is a very large park, with a huge variety of types of trees where friends and couples meet. It’s parallel from the Mapocho River. At night it is enjoyable to go there and the streetlamps look nice. If he go there, it would be nice that he could visit to the Museo de Bellas Artes. It is a museum from the 19th century, and it has a lot of paintings from Chilean painters and sculptors. In the permanent exposition, he could find some paintings of Roberto Matta, for example. He could also visit to the Biblioteca Nacional, where you can find almost all of the Chilean publicated books. You can read in the library all of the books that they’ve got there. It’s also a loan’s section, and they lend you books for two weeks. Another special place in Santiago is the Parque Quinta Normal, which is a park where families share with their children.

Some asian countries

I would like to travel to Japan or China some day. They are very old countries and have some thousand-year-old traditions, which (specially in Japan) coexist with some aspects of the Western way to live and have experienced the globalization process in a particular way. For example, in China they live with a dynastic regime from 2100 BC to the beginning of the 20th century. They have a peculiar alphabet and philosophical expressions as the Confucianism and Taoism. I would like to go there because I feel interested in their culture and their thoughts. When I have read some Japanese writers or directors I think that they express some particular way to see the world and I like to know how these people can experience their traditions now.

What I made last semester

Last semester was funny. I started studying Sociology, so I had subjects as Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, and Contemporary World History. I think that Sociology and History were the ones that I liked the most, because professors were really stimulating and clear. A meaningful thing was that subjects had to deal with similar problems, so we had to study to the same or similar theories and authors in almost all of them. For example, in the Sociology subject, we studied to the classical authors of that discipline, but they were also included in the methodological course.

Honestly, I didn’t practice any sport constantly last semester and in general I was very lazy about doing exercises. It wasn’t because of the academic demand: I guess that I become accustomed to be sedentary, and after all, my family and friends were very comprehensive about time, and they possibly thought that I was really stressed of “studying at the university”. Anyway, I spent my free time playing the bass with my friends and sharing with my classmates.

The principal challenges that I had to face were to become more responsible and studious, because I think that I still don’t get studying habits. After all I could be relaxed and lazy at school and I get used to don’t make so much effort.

Finally, I feel really happy about being at the university: I like my career very much, my parents have been supporting me since I choose it and I have met so many friends and special people here.