It is late summer-early fall in Chile, not late winter-early spring like in Mexico, on the other side of the world from here.
I've been in the Chilean capital of Santiago for three nights now and I'm barely realizing how far this country is from home. Just a couple of hours to the west, it's nothing blue ocean all the way to Australia or Antartica -- which is much closer from here than from the southern tip of Africa.
Chile is Latin America, hence connected in some way to Mexico, but the sheer distance makes it so different. The Spanish is different, for example, a sort of reserved sing-song. The social rules and historical anxieties are different. What does it mean for a people that just twenty years ago speaking out against the government could get you killed? The words for things, way different -- it's feria, not mercado; plata, not baro or lana; halo, not bueno to answer the phone ...
Above, that's me before the Teatro Municipal in downtown Santiago, near the Santa Lucia metro station. Santiago has not been hit as hard by the quake and tsunami as regions to the south and along the coast, so the stories in the quake's aftermath are different here, too. Tonight I finally had a chance to go out and follow my nose. That led me to the artsy gay boho rasta graffiti neighborhood, of course. But more on that later.
* New in the L.A. Times: "Chile's Piñera takes reins, though he's not in charge yet."
** And yes, we are still getting considerable aftershocks -- and a totally new quake to the north earlier tonight. The earth won't stop.
