Chile, Luz de America

In 1809, the Chilean writer, José Camilo Henríquez, responding to South America's first shudders of independence in Quito, christened that city "Luz de America" (the light of America), correctly predicting the forces of self-determination unleashed in Quito would quickly be imitated in other colonies. Two hundred years later, however, it is Chile that is proving a beacon to the rest of Latin America.

This week, the world's eyes were firmly on Chile's stunning rescue of 33 trapped miners. This comes as a welcome break from the world attention usually lavished on Brazil for its economic "miracle" or the near universal opprobrium directed at Mexico or Venezuela. But here in Latin America, Chile has been top of mind for some time now thanks to a string of successes that have gone largely unheralded outside the region. The world did note Chile's construction codes prevented much of the country from being totally flattened by the powe

rful earthquake in February but attention quickly faded; the wonder, however, was not the existence of such building codes--many countries in the region have them on the books--but that the codes were actually followed.

It is this respect for laws and regulations, and the social cohesion evidenced in the way the country rallied behind the rescue of the miners, that fascinates Chile's neighbors. Again and again, I hear phrases like, "Why can't we be more like Chile?" or, "This type of thing doesn't happen in Chile." Here in Ecuador--where last month the country was nearly brought to its knees by striking police--the lamentations are particularly pointed. Comparisons between the two countries are rife these days, particularly in the way the governments responded to their respective crises. For example, in Chile: full media freedom to cover the mine crisis, warts and all; in Ecuador: complete black-out of independent media during the strike and an ongoing state-of-emergency a full two weeks afterwards.

This year--which incidentally is the bicentennial of Chile's independence--has been particularly revealing as the country has racked up one success after another. In January, all Latin America

marveled when Chile became the first country from the region to join the OECD (Organization for Economic Development and Co-operation), the grouping of the world's 31 wealthiest nations. This means Chile can no longer be referred to as a developing nation and grouped among "third-world" states. Chile's economic development has far outstripped its neighbors. As today's Washington Post notes, Chile has grown twice as fast as Brazil and reduced poverty to a much greater extent than even oil-rich Venezuela, with its wealth redistribution programs.

Another example of the country's success that hasn't gone unnoticed in neighboring countries is the relative strength of its financial sector. While much of the world reviles banks and bankers, laying the blame of the economic downturn at their feet, in Chile banks are respected. This is because the bankers have long worked collaboratively with government--Chile, for example, has a fully-privatized national pension program--and conservative lending policies and strong banking regulations meant banks in Chile largely escaped the financial crisis. Even the most liberal locals are grudgingly proud of the performance of their banks in the face of near-global financial collapse elsewhere.

Politically, too, Chile's successes make the rest of Latin America appear lacking. This year, Sebastian Piñera, a wealthy entrepreneur, coasted to victory in Chile's presidential elections (see Piñera below, with a miner). What was remarkable was that Piñera is a member of the right-wing party associated with the military dictatorship of the 70s and 80s while the majority of Chileans self-identify as liberals (more than 60%, according to one source). What is even more remarkable is his election comes only 20 years after the end of General Augusto Pinochet's brutal reign. Before Piñera's election, it was not uncommon to hear Chileans comment they would never vote to allow the right-wing party to return to power. And yet, this year they did just that because in Piñera they saw a technocrat who could continue to manage Chile's growth and bring needed reforms to government. They also saw in him a man whose pragmatism could further the country's internal cohesion and whose extensive international experience would further integrate Chile internationally; both qualities were on display as he led the response (much of it dependent on international firms) to the mine rescue.

Almost all of the countries in Latin America suffered under right-wing, military rule during the later years of the Cold War, but few suffered for as long, and with as much brutality, as Chile which saw Pinochet rule with an iron fist from 1973 until 1990.

The military coup that brought him to power was particularly bloody and left the presidential palace (right) a smoking ruin. Chileans will be the first to say that the scars are numerous and internal divisions within the country remain, but to the outside world they are practically invisible.

Chile isn't paradise, as any Chilean will be quick to point out. Poverty is still a problem and political and economic power is overwhelmingly concentrated in Santiago at the expense of the provinces. But, increasingly, Chile's neighbors are seeing in the country's success an example to follow as they deal with the same, seemingly intractable issues Chile has slowly, persistently begun to surmount.

Of the many vignettes from the miner rescue that has been given large play in the South American media was the reaction of the one non-Chilean to be rescued. Carlos Mamani, a Bolivian citizen, was met upon arriving at the surface by Bolivia's president, Evo Morales, a follower of the Venezuela-model of populist government and state-controlled economy (the opposite of the public-private partnership approach followed by Chile). The Bolivian leader offered to fly the miner home in the presidential jet and to give the man a house. But the miner had other ideas. "Thank you, Mr. President," he replied, "but I'm doing better here."

It's Bicentennial Time, Again

Last summer, on my first visit to Ecuador, I considered myself lucky to be in the country at the

very moment it was celebrating its bicentennial. Quito was full of events and commemorative celebrations last year, and I attended as many as I could, eager to take advantage of the being here at the exact right time. My Ecuadorean friends, on the other hand, seemed rather unmoved by the ruckus. I chalked this up to a lack of patriotism.

August 2009

Fast forward to this month, August 2010, and I find I'm in the midst of a whole new series of bicentennial commemorations. On my desk right now is a guide to events entitled, "Vive el Bicentenario 2010." What's going on, wasn't 2009 the bicentennial year? Can there really be two bicentennials? Well, yes. And given Ecuador's long, labored birth, bicentennial celebrations are likely to last for many years to come, perhaps until 2030.

The tepid reaction of my friends to the events of 2009 was not so much a lack of patriotism as a defense mechanism: they were just settling in for the long haul.

How is it that the first country in Latin America to celebrate its bicentennial could, in reality, have been one of the last to achieve true independence, in 1830? The story is complicated. I'll do my best to be succinct.

The story of Latin American independence from Spain begins with the French, of course. One thing I've learned in my life is that if I dig deep enough into almost any inquiry, there is certain to be a French connection.

In 1808, Napolean invaded Spain, conquered and installed his hapless brother, Joseph, on the throne. In the colonies, this produced the odd situation in which the people, loyal to the deposed King, Ferdinand VII, suddenly found themselves being ruled by officials who were functionaries of a French King, Joseph Bonaparte (see dandy Joe, at right).

For a number of reasons, this was felt more acutely in Quito than elsewhere in South America. First of all, Quito was the intellectual center of the region, perhaps of all Spanish South America. An important and prolonged French scientific expedition (those French again) to the equator in 1736 exposed Quitenians to the ideals of the enlightenment. Meanwhile, Quito was home to three universities and was beginning to produce thinkers who were daring to question the colonial system.

Finally, Quito's political status as a political also-ran added pressure to stand on its own in an apparent new world order. Despite its cultural importance, Quito was always second as a center of power. First, it was under the administration of the Viceroy of Peru, in Lima and then under a new viceroyalty created in the north, Nueva Granada, headquartered in Bogota. Even during the Inca empire, Quito was the northern capital, playing second fiddle to Cuzco.

So, in August of 1809, a group of leading Quito creols, or "criollos" as the native-born whites were called, declared independence. Actually, independence might be too strong a word. What they established was a self-governing entity, loyal to Ferdinand, the true King of Spain, but autonomous from the viceroys in Bogota and Lima as well as the royal representative, count Ruiz de Castilla.

This revolt in Quito marked the first instance in Spanish America of locally born elites seizing power. This despite more than two centuries during which political power in the colonies was exercised exclusively by envoys from Spain. With revolutions in North America, France, and Haiti, it isn't surprising that this spark in Quito lit the fire of independence throughout the Spanish colonies and led to Quito being nicknamed by Latin American patriots, "Luz de America" (The Light of America).

Unfortunately for Quito--but central to understanding her many bicentennials--this spark was extinguished here rather quickly. By December 1809, troops from Bogota and Lima had descended on Quito and imposed martial law. Some forty of the town's leading citizens were thrown into the dungeon beneath the main military barracks in the center of town. Count Ruiz de Castilla, nominally back in power, promised there would be no reprisals. Yet the real power was in the hands of the military and their undisciplined soldiery who not only kept the rebel leaders in jail but became increasingly rowdy with the townspeople, as soldiers tend to do under conditions of extended martial law.

By the summer of 2010, the citizens of Quito had had enough and determined to liberate the rebel leaders from the dungeons. At 1:30 on August 2, 1810, two hundred years ago almost to the minute from when I writing these words, the bells of the main churches in Quito began to peal to signal the revolt. The timing was designed to coincide with the soldiers's midday meal. But the soldiers, perhaps tipped off to the plan, were ready. Not only did they crush the effort to storm the dungeons, they took the opportunity to massacre all the prisoners, forty feeble men exhausted after six months of subterranean confinement. Only two escaped, making their way through the sewers of the dungeon to a nearby river.

Once the soldiers had completed their grisly task in the dungeons they turned on the townspeople in a spree of random reprisal killings that left more than 300 dead in the streets and patios of the city. More than 1% of the population were shot and bayonetted to death before the violence ended around 3pm.

Quito's declaration of "independence" in August 1809, while endorsed by some freedom-minded revolutionaries in other colonies, had been met with only weak support from most of the empire; in fact, only a few minor neighboring cities joined Quito in declaring autonomy. However, the bloodletting the following year solidified opposition not only to the French King, but against Spanish rule of any sort. The Quito massacre caused Simon Bolivar (at right), who had not yet taken up arms against Spain to declare himself to "a war to the death against Spain."

After the events of August 2, 1810, things in Quito settled into an exhausted calm. First, a form of limited self-government was established but by 1812 this had devolved into full reassertion of royal control and the independence movement seemed dead. Elsewhere, however, the revolution was picking up steam.

By 1820 armies led by Bolivar in the north and Jose Marti in the south were advancing towards Quito and Lima, constricting the Royalist forces of Spain who, although now liberated of their French King, were still fighting tooth and nail to maintain their empire. On the 24th of May, 1822, rebel forces led by Bolivar and his deputy, Antonio Jose de Sucre (left), defeated Spanish forces in the Battle of Pichincha, within view of the city of Quito.

Spanish control of Quito and lands that would become Ecuador was over, but the country was not yet independent. Bolivar's dream of a united continent was not be, even he could see that regional rivalries on the continent were too big to overcome as, one by one, Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, and Peru established independent entities.

But Bolivar still hoped to keep intact the lands that had once been the Viceroyalty of New Granada, basically comprising today's states of Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador. Bolivar called the country, Gran Colombia and the great liberator set himself up as its "President for life." Alas, this dream was not to be either. Despite Bolivar's charisma, jealousies prevailed and Gran Colombia slowly began to split apart. Just before his death in December 1830, Bolivar renounced control of his splintering nation. He had lived just long enough to see his dream fall to pieces as Venezuela and then Ecuador, in September, 1380, declared themselves independent states. (Panama would finally be prised away from Colombia in 1903 by Teddy Roosevelt who wanted a to build a canal.)

From 1809 until 1830, Ecuador was fighting, in one way or another, for independence. A group of rebellious, locally-born elites in Quito gave first expression to the desire for self-government in Latin America, but as the seeds of independence sown in Quito slowly bore fruit elsewhere, the city would see its leaders massacred and its lands forcibly reverted to royal control for more than ten years. Later, once the mantle of Spain had been thrown off, Quito and the surrounding country continued to live under dictatorial domination, this time from Bogota in the person of the great Liberator himself, Simon Bolivar.

It's a long, sad story. Today, August 2, 2010, Quito commemorates the bicentennial of the massacre of its revolutionary leaders and hundreds of its citizens, but the bicentennial celebrations of the country's independence will continue for years to come.

The (first) Declaration of Independence, August 10, 1809

¡Achachay! 2

The cold snap I was complaining about in my last posting has apparently been felt even more severely in other countries in the region. Ecuador, it seems, has escaped rather lightly.

In Argentina, snow has fallen in many parts of the country that seldom, if ever, experience it, and the president declared several regions national disaster areas. The cold there has been blamed for more than 40 deaths so far. The hardest hit nation in the region, however, has been Peru where more than 100 people have died of exposure and respiratory infections blamed on the extreme weather over the past few days. In Puno, a city high in the Andes, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, the thermometer plunged to -23 celsius (about -10 fahrenheit), down from a normal temperature of about 8 celsius (46 fahrenheit).

What I find most surprising about the news reports from the nearby countries is that it's not just the high Andes or the coastal regions that are suffering from the cold. The jungle areas of the Amazon basin are also feeling it. The Peruvian city of Puerto Maldonado, for example, in the steamy far east of the country normally registers temperatures this time of year in the area of 30-35 celsius (85-95 fahrenheit) but this past week the city has seen temperatures plunge to as low as 9 celsius (48 fahrenheit).

Here in Quito, the end of the cold snap has already arrived and today skies were sunny. It was the first day without rain since the first of July. There is still a chill in the air but I'm hoping by tomorrow night I'll be able to stow that second comforter.

¡Achachay!

"Achachay!" That's what people in Quito say when it's cold.

It is a Quichua word. Quichua is derived from the old Inca language, Quechua, the lingua franca used in the polyglot Inca empire before the Spanish conquest in the 1530s. Quichua is still spoken by the native inhabitants of the Andean sierra that runs down the center of Ecuador, dividing the steaming Amazon valley in the east from the hot and dry lands of the Pacific coast. There are a number of Quichua words in common use by the Spanish-speaking majority in Ecuador today, but to me, none has the same resonance, the same onomatopoeic ability to capture that bone-chilling feeling when an Andean wind whips down from the summit of a nearby peak. "Achachay!" Or -- as has been my situation these past few weeks -- when you step out of a warm bed into the chill of an unheated Quito apartment. "Achachay!"

For people from temperate climates, the Equator can conjure nasty images of extreme heat, of undulating waves of hot, sticky air, Conrad-esque scenes of languid Europeans driven half mad by the sun and the heat. At best, the Equator can evoke thoughts of a cool drinks sipped under a leafy palms or on the veranda of an exotic hotel with a decadent, imperial sounding name like the Raffles, or maybe the Peninsula.

But here in Ecuador -- a country that takes its name from the Ecuator itself -- it's freezing. That's right, North America and Europe may be suffering through heat waves this July, but here on the Equator I'm wearing two shirts and a sweater and am considering pulling on some long underwear.

I'm not exaggerating. The temperature in Quito hasn't risen above 70-degrees in the past two weeks and every day has brought bone-chilling rain, often buckets of it. At night, temperatures regularly drop into the 40s.

Despite the withering equinoctial sun, the high altitudes of the Andean Cordillera keeps Quito's temperatures mild. Mornings and evenings tend to be cool while the days--warmed by the fierce sun high overhead--are balmy and can even get quite hot for a few hours at mid day. This makes for the ideal climate, not unlike Cape Cod or the coast of Maine in the height of summer where residents swap shorts and bathing suits for long pants and sweaters as evening falls. In

fact, the temperatures in Quito are normally so mild that houses are built with neither air

conditioning nor heating. A friend from New York who spent time in Ecuador calls it, "the best climate on the planet."

The problem with this climactic model, however, is that when it's rainy--as it has been every day this month--the sun's warmth doesn't penetrate the clouds to warm things up and the chill of the high Andes predominates (Quito sits at 2800 meters/9,300 ft). Repeat this day after day, and the ground gets get colder and colder and colder and people suffer more and more. (See a picture of cloudy Quito, at right.)

I'm not the only one bewildered. Quitenians themselves don't know what to make of this weather. It seems as if everyone I know is sniffling and coughing and wearing scarves wrapped tight around their necks. Yesterday, I saw a woman in a knit cap and gloves. A common greeting on the streets these days is the questioning lament, "Why is it so cold?" The response is to blame climate change or of all things, global warming, and the underlying tone betrays a real fear this state of affairs is here to stay.

Last year at around this same time I arrived in Quito and stayed nearly two months during which time I didn't rain once. It seemed like paradise then. I'm starting to have doubts about paradise. ¡Achachay!

This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land...

News this morning the Argentine government has called for restrictions on vessels traveling to the Falkland Islands -- which it insists on calling Las Malvinas -- has renewed fears of another military conflict over those windswept, treeless islands. The Argentine president, Christina Fernandez, stated that from now on, all vessels intending to travel to the Falklands must first obtain permission from Argentina. The British are not amused.

Why the British take seriously anything Fernandez (right) has to say is beyond me. By the way, she is the wife of the former president, Nestor Kirchner; governing Argentina, it seems, is a family affair.

Without getting into the details of the competing Anglo-Argentine sovereignty arguments, it should be pointed out it was the French who established the first settlement on the Falklands, not the British or the Spanish -- from whom Argentina derives its claim.

All this has me thinking about the mess of competing territorial claims and the number of long-simmering border disputes in South America today. We tend not to think about it too much in the United States, but the continent to our south has seen its international boundries fought over for much of the two centuries since the colonies started to break away from Spain. Practically every country in South America has had a border dispute with one or more of its neighbors. Borders there seem to change at a pace that is positively European.

To give you a sense of how tangled are those lines that look so clear on our maps, here is a quick tour of South America's simmering border issues, those that I know of, at least:

• Paraguay has claimed land held today by Brazil and Argentina but, to make up for this sore, they took land from Bolivia after the Chaco War of 1935.
• Bolivia, while upset about losing the Chaco to Peru, is still smarting from the earlier loss of its access to the sea at the hands of Chile in 1879.
• Peru, too, has claims on land taken by Chile in that same war; Chile wanted the rich nitrite and copper mines just beyond its northern border so it went to war with both Peru and Bolivia, defeating them handily.
• But Peru can play the agressor, too, as Ecuador well knows. That country still longs for its lost eastern lands -- nearly half of Ecuador's territory. These were taken by Peru in 1941 (see right) when the rest of the world was preoccupied by land grabs elsewhere. With that territory went access to the Amazon over which Ecuadorans believe they have a cultural claim dating back to 1541 when Francisco Orellana set out from Quito and explored the entire length of that river.
• Colombia also took jungle land from Ecuador but that doesn't stop Colombia from pining for her own lost territory, now called Panama. Panama won its independence from Bogota thanks to the Teddy Roosevelt -- who wanted to build a little canal there.
• Now Venezuela, under Hugo Chavez (right), has been toying around with the biggest land redistribution of them all, an idea that was the dream of his Venzuelan idol and founding father, Simon Bolivar. Under Bolivar's plan, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia (including those pesky Panamanians), would have become one nation called Gran Colombia ruled, no doubt, from Caracas. Chavez thinks this is an idea whose time has come again.
  

All these disputes are shown in the crazy quilt of a map at left.

But don't think this territorial jostling is ancient history. Besides the Falklands War in 1982, Chile and Argentina almost went to war in 1978 over three frigid, uninhabited islands near Cape Horn. Troops were mobilized and on the brink of attack and only the intervention of the Pope -- that's right, the Pope -- brought the two countries back from the brink.

Where does all this territorial discord come from? Not surprisingly, the disfunction has its roots in Spain's colonial empire. During nearly 300 years of rule, Spain never worried too much if one part of its empire merged at its edges with another. After all, what might cause headaches for local magistrates in America was of little concern to the King. It was all Spain, at the end of the day. But, when that day finally did end and Spain was kicked out of America, the independent states it spawned wanted border clarity and clarity usually goes to the one with the stronger military. Latin diplomats since independence have been digging out old, often contradictory, maps to bolster their claims by showing what their former rulers had in mind regarding the Empire's internal boundries. It's interesting to note that while Argentina today bases its right to rule the Falklands on Spain's 18th Century presence there it fails to acknowledge that in those same days all of Patagonia was governed from Santiago, not Buenos Aires, meaning we should all be raving about the quality of Chilean beef, not Argentine.

This territorial angst explains why there is now an arms race in South America, an arms race the United States has inadvertently helped fuel. The US, in its efforts to assist Colombia crush the drug trade, has made Colombia the leading military power in the region. This, in turn, has caused Colombia's neighbors, Venezuela and Peru -- goaded by Chavez's fiery appeals to Andean-Bolivarean solidarity -- to increase their own defense spending. Chile, seeing Peru bulking up, has put its significant finances to work preparing against an attack from the north; and while they are at it, they might as well strengthen their border with Argentina, just for old time's sake. What does this cause Argentina to do? You got it, they start chewing over that old bone, the Falklands, and we've come full circle.

Passions over the Falklands run high in Argentina. Visitors there can't help but be astonished to see a Falklands memorial (see left) in every town. These serve not just to honor the fallen soldiers of the war but as reminders that "the Malvinas are Argentine." That slogan is repeated everywhere in Argentina, from flags and beach towels to bumper stickers and t-shirts.

I was recently made aware of how deeply ingrained is this longing for those inhospitable islands and why the belligerence won't go away any time soon. Last year I met a couple from Austria -- no stranger to the pain of lost territory. They had been living in Argentina for several years but had recently decided to take their elder son out of local kindergarten classes. "We knew we had to do something," said the mother, "when he came home from school one day singing a song about how the Malvinas were Argentine and how they were going to get them back with the blood of their sons. They teach this in kindergarten! That was enough for me."

They have since decided to move back to Europe; they are planning to settle in Spain.

In Praise of Santiago de Chile

Events of the past few days in Chile have compelled me to revisit this post I started a while ago but never finished. (I started writing this in early February and now it is the first day of March.) As I scan the news, I realize with sadness that many of the beaux-arts buildings I mention about below were damaged, some severely. But my post has nothing to do with the earthquake. Instead, it is about my impressions of a city I have recently grown to care for very much, as it appeared to me in happier times.

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If Buenos Aires is the Paris of South America, the austral City of Lights, then I like to think of Santiago as the southern hemispheric Nice or, to stretch a point, Barcelona.

To me Santiago de Chile is a like a Mediterranean city which eclipsed by the boulevards and architectural glories of the capital city in Paris (or Madrid), nevertheless possesses its own, more relaxed charm, benefiting from better weather, brighter light, and a spectacular natural setting. So, while Santiago may be overshadowed by the romance, the reputation, and the sheer size of its sister capital on the other side of the Andes it is well worth a visit by anyone thinking about a trip to South America.

To the first-time visitor, Santiago de Chile seems more European than Latin with wide, tree-lined boulevards and gently curving modernist apartment buildings. Bike-lanes crisscross the city and leafy parks are seemingly everywhere. The confident Santiagoans take ample advantage of both. At rush hour, young women race to work on bicycles, their skirts billowing behind and in the parks, the crisp Mediterranean summer sun is filtered by the leaves and lovers, oblivious to the gawking pedestrians, embrace on shade-darkened lawns.

My favorite of the parks is Bustamante, a wide strip of peace between two boulevards not far from the commercial center of town. Here I first discovered the joys of the cafe literario. A relatively new phenomenon in Santiago, these are city libraries that double as internet cafes. They are extremely popular. In Parque Bustamante, the cafe literario is an airy, two-story glass and concrete structure whose lines are mirrored and elongated by a reflecting pool (see right, in a nice night-time picture). The ground floor -- where eager cafe customers jostle for the rare unoccupied seat -- is entirely open to the breezes. From there, the vista is one of silver water reflecting blue sky and a ring of green all around. The effect is idyllic.

Santiago does not have an old colonial center like many other Latin capitals. What it does have, however, is a wealth of beaux-arts and Modernist buildings. It is as if in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the city tried to make up for its deficit of memorials to the distant past by an enthusiastic embrace of the contemporary. At the end of the 19th century it was the beaux-arts movement that held sway in the city. Chile's leading families and the capitalists, newly rich from the copper and nitrite mines in the north, poured their money into urban palaces. Today, these ornate structures, heavy with cornices and statuary and imposing arches and lintels point to a desire for bourgeois respectibility in a country attempting to show itself and its new wealth to the world.

One of my favorite neighborhoods, downtown, near the Universidad de Chile, is composed entirely of beaux-arts buildings. Narrow cobble-stone streets wind through Paris-Londres, as the neighborhood is called. It is named after the two main streets. Car traffic is rare in Paris-Londres and students and tourists generally stroll down the middle of the streets, the better to admire the stately buildings on either side.

As Modernism was sweeping Europe in the early decades of the last century Santiago, not to be outdone, abandoned the beaux-arts and rushed to embrace the new style of construction. Heavy ornamentation was left behind in favor of Modernism's clean, curving concrete forms and corner-wrapping windows. To the lover of this style of architecture, Santiago is endlessly fascinating. Entire city blocks were built in the 30s and 40s and the mechanicalinear lines of those blocks have been pleasantly softened over the years by rows of stately trees.

Today, Santiago is a bustling, contemporary city of five million people. It is also surprisingly efficient. To the traveler who arrives directly from another South American city it is this efficiency that may be the most striking sign of Santiago's difference, of its non-Latin character. Where other regional cities -- Mexico, Quito, Guatemala -- are terrifying for pedestrians, in Santiago the automobile, at least in the urban core, seems an afterthought. A web of pedestrian malls make strolling downtown a joy. Outdoor cafes fill these streets and compete with ice-cream vendors, newsstands, and shoeshines for attention. And even where there is traffic, the pedestrian reigns supreme. Unlike in many other Latin cities, drivers in Santiago strictly obey the traffic lights and are scrupulous about stopping for pedestrians.

One warm summer day, while sauntering beneath the trees along one of these walking streets I came across a large crowd. About fifty or more people were standing in a rough circle, chattering excitedly, and point their arms upwards. I immediately thought there must be a jumper on a ledge and scanned the rooftops with excitement and dread. I soon realized my gaze had gone too high, however. The crowd was looking not to the buildings, but rather to a tree just in front. There, on a branch halfway up the tree an owl was perched. It was large, tranquil, and seemingly very much in its element, oblivious to the stir it had created in the crowd below. I was amazed. Hours later I passed the spot again. The owl was still there.

Santiago has the most efficient public transit system in Latin America. Its subway is a thing of beauty and the people are justifiably very proud of it. Trains are frequent, clean and crowded. They are so crowded in fact that during rush hour you generally have to let one or two trains pass before one comes along with enough room to squeeze in. But, they come with such frequency that I can't recall ever waiting longer than two or three minutes between trains. The subway was started in the years of the military dictatorship in Chile but its expansion continues today with several new stations opening every year (see left).

Skyscrapers have sprouted up in new neighborhoods that threaten to pull business away from the central core. I met several residents who admitted to seldom visiting the old downtown anymore. Their loss, I thought, but the movement to the taller neighborhoods may, sadly, be inevitable. Paradoxically, it is these new skyscrapers, with their tendency to draw the eye upwards, that serves to remind Santiagoans of the most powerful aspect of their urban environment, the mountains.

Santiago is a city surrounded by the high Andes. And on days when the smog has lifted, the white-topped mountains look so close, so bold as to appear unreal, like a stage set built behind the city as if to remind us that no matter how high we strive, no matter how tall the skyscrapers become, nature can always do better.