* Above, a view of Avenida 9 de Julio, central Buenos Aires, arriving.
I just spent eight hectic but exciting days in South America. The L.A. Times, where I just started a news assistant and blogging job in the Mexico City bureau, needed another reporter on the ground in the aftermath of the one the largest earthquakes in history. I raised my hand, and got sent.
How was it? Because I believe in transparency, and because all of this was new to me, here's a reporter's diary:
Day 1: The scramble to the South. After an unsuccessful Sunday trying to get a flight to South America, I ended up catching a March 1 morning Mexicana flight direct to Ezeiza, the airport in Buenos Aires. We arrived at 9 p.m. local time and myself and a fellow journalist friend from Reuters who was on my flight decided to share a cab into the center. I'd have one night of rest before trying to get over the border into Chile the following morning. Still no flights direct to Santiago.
Before arriving, a friend from Argentina recommended a neighborhood to check out if I had one night in her city, San Telmo. So me and my Reuters friend did a bit of work then went hunting for dinner at almost 1 a.m. We found an old-school cafe still open, and wolfed down fresh lomo, a salad, and two Argentine beers a piece.
* Above, the terrifying Andes, in late summer.
Day 2: Over the Andes. In the morning I got on a Aerolineas Argentinas flight to Córdoba, for one hour, didn't get off the plane, and got back up into the sky for another hour till landing in Mendoza, far into Argentina's wine country. There were other foreign journalists on my flight and I could sense a slight competitive edge with all these strangers as we grew anxious to collect our bags and rush to the Mendoza bus terminal. Supposedly buses left for Santiago until the early afternoon, then don't start up again until the evening. I had to get across the Andes, right away.
At the terminal, I got on the first bus I saw, which was something of a mistake. It wasn't the most comfortable ride available, and this was a winding, leaning, nearly vertical eight-hour trip over one of the most imposing mountain ranges in the world. The Andes were terrifying. Enormous, unforgiving cliff-sides of nothing but rock, soaring up into the sky, all around you. It looked like Mars.
The customs checkpoint between Argentina and Chile high among the craggy peaks was an intense experience; everyone de-boards their bus, goes through two agents, and has to run their luggage through scanners. Chile is extremely vigilant about possible contamination of their isolated geography with new fruits or meats. Eight hours later, in Santiago, I found the hotel that veteran L.A. Times reporter Patrick McDonnell had checked into. Patrick had arrived in Santiago via Los Angeles, Lima, and Tacna, a day earlier.
But by then, he was already further south, in the earthquake zone.
* Above, aging political posters beneath a pedestrian bridge in outer Santiago.
Day 3: On deadline in Santiago. Up early, I quickly got some supplies, ordered up a radio taxi, and went out to Santiago's working-class suburbs. Contacts in Los Angeles had suggested I check out the areas of the city that are often forgotten by the "modern and stable" face of contemporary Chile. It was difficult to try to capture the profile of an entire segment of a big city and contextualize it with the earthquake, on deadline in a day, but I went, reported, and wrote like the wind.
Here is what I came up with.
Some comments on the piece took offense at my characterization of Santiago's outer hoods as "dusty, unattractive" places, but that's just what I saw. Perhaps in editing and in hindsight the wording rubs wrongly, but I was trying to point out that some parts of "modern and stable" Chile are still left in the shadows, like a lot of parts of Mexico, and the United States.
Quilicura, where I focused my story, didn't have water or electricity for three days. Residents ended up organizing demonstrations to protest the lack of services.
* Above, Xavier, Jose, and Job, high school fans of Piñera.
Day 4: Profile of a president-elect. With Patrick McDonnell and L.A. Times photographer Michael Robinson Chavez already on the ground in quake-affected areas several hours south of Santiago, the paper's foreign desk decided I should stay in the capital. The desk ordered up another daily, this time on president-elect Sebastian Piñera, a billionaire conservative who would be taking office in a week, under suddenly altered circumstances. I thought, 'For young kids, this will be the first non-leftist government they'll see in their lives, the first non-Concertación president in Chile since the end of the dictatorship twenty years ago.'
That was the angle I went after. Downtown near the universities and high schools, I found a bunch of kids at one campus collecting and boxing up donations. They were around 17 and 18, and all fans of Piñera, whom they saw as a symbol of change. A few blocks away, a group of older university students were a bit more skeptical, seeing Piñera as a frightening right-winger with ideological ties to Pinochet.
After edits, here's how that story turned out.
* Above, towers in downtown Santiago.
Day 5, 6, 7: Exploring, and standing by. By Friday, almost a week after the quake hit, things were getting fully back to normal in Santiago, and international interest in the quake story was clearly waning. The LAT guys in the quake zone were filing harrowing reports and images about the devastation, the lack of basic services, the looting. As badly as I wanted go to south or to the tsunami-hit coasts, I was told I should stay put, stand by, and start exploring Santiago -- still shaking with two or three aftershocks a day -- for other stories.
It reminded me that when you're working on a big breaking story, for a big daily news operation, you're part of a huge, complex team effort. You go where you're needed, and that's just that. And I quickly found out that I wasn't the only foreign journalist who scrambled into town only to find him or herself in a holding pattern in the capital.
I decided to make the best of it. I wanted to get a sense from people about how they deal with life in such a seismically active part of the world, and how the big earthquake had affected the psychology of regular Chileans. Everyone I talked to said they had become used to earthquakes, but the 8.8 quake of February 27 was unlike any other. Just about everyone said that while riding out the quake they genuinely thought the world was coming to an end.
It was that strong. "I thought I was going to die, this was it," said David, a young DJ I met.
* Above, a metro train arriving at Manquehue station.
I started taking the metro around, checking out major sites, such as the presidential palace La Moneda, site of the 1973 military coup. I checked out the 'bohemian' neighborhoods of Bellavista, Bellas Artes, Barrio Lastarria, and Barrio Brasil. With its reputation for good wine, Chile also impressed me with its fine beers. Facing a monumental tragedy in their country, and with the constant aftershocks, people were certainly doing their drinking.
I met up with curators, aid workers, local journalists, gallerists, and students. Everyone was still talking about the "moment it hit." I started catching local slang, cachai?
Santiago was growing on me. Once the weekend peaked, flags and messages of "Fuerza Chile!" began appearing on balconies, in windows, on cars and buses, on T-shirts, all over the place. Chile was coming together in solidarity for the victims. I came across a big benefit concert in a park that was crowded with thousands of hollering college kids. The surge of comaraderie and community was remarkable.
By Monday I had come up with this article, and this post at La Plaza.
* Above, cheering on Chile.
Day 8: Last chances. Other news was happening in other parts of the world, and while I kept pitching ideas, especially story pitches that might take me outside Santiago, by March 8, it was clear my time in Chile was reaching its finish. Patrick and Michael were back in Santiago, resting up. By 5 p.m., as I was looking around Lastarria and making appointments to meet people for Tuesday, I got on the phone with Mexico City bureau chief Tracy Wilkinson, who was managing the coverage.
Yup. I was on a Copa flight the next day, Santiago to Panama City, Panama City to Mexico, D.F. News shifts, resources are precious, so the assignment was over.
Tuesday morning, travel day, I said 'Adios, Chile' and hopped in a cab and headed to the Santiago airport ...