Metro Mini-Stories

The metro stations have an annual competion -- write a short story in less than 100 words, and the winners get money as well as their stories posted all over the metro, read by millions of people. In my Spanish class today we read one of these stories as a lead-up into the situation of the indigenous Mapuche. I think it's a very impactful story, so I'm going to translate it for all of you!

"Passenger Intimacy"

She is called Juana Catrilqueo Peña. Sixty-three years ago she was born in Mantilhue, a rural location situated seventy kilometers from Osorno. At 15 she came to Santiago to work as a nana (housekeeper). She had a son who died, run over in the Alameda in the year 86. Since then she lives in a room she rents in Quilicura. She is silent, reserved, and often pases unnoticed. She travels every day to her patrons house and taking advantage of the tumult and squeezing of an obligatory intimacy, huddles her head on the shoulder of another passenger with out anyone realizing.

It's just such a touching account of one stranger shown to be an individual person, with her own loneliness and pains.

A quick recount of my weekend:
Friday we had a "Memory Tour" of Santiago. Our guide was kidnapped by the dictatorship and tortured for months, then exiled to the US upon his release. After he gave us an overview of human rights abuses in Chile at that time, we went to the Peace Park. Originally owned by a wealthy family, Villa Grimaldi became the headquarters of the DINA, which was Chile's version of the Gestapo. Political prisoners, men and women, teenagers and older, were brought there to be tortured. Almost none of the buildings remain since the government tried to remove any evidence of their activities, but there are markers where each of the torture rooms and cells were, describing what happened there. The stables, the garage, the pool, even the well tower were all turned into "creative" methods of inflicting pain.

Afterwards, we went to the General Cemetery, which was definitely the highlight of the day. It was absolutely beautiful, especially the first section. The cemetery is effectively divided into four sections based on economic class. The first, which has Chile's rich and powerful, is full of elaborate family tombs and monuments. Chile's civil war heroes are buried there, as well as President Allende-- who was overthrown in the coup in 1973. Our guide had maintained his composure at Villa Grimaldi and while talking about his own experience, but he started to cry here while recounting how only three students in his university came from working class or farming families. The second section -upper middle class- has large but rather boring tombs. Lower middle class looked like an apartment complex of graves, with lots of colorful flowers and ribbons. The fourth area, lower class, is graves in the ground, but looked liked a garden there were so many tents and flags and flowers (real and fake), etc. Because of earthquake damage we didn't see the lowest section, where people rent graves. It's there that Victor Jara, a folk singer whose hands were cut off and then he was killed in the early days of the dictatorship, is buried.

I know this is getting long, but we're almost to the pictures! Friday evening I saw two movies (for the price of one! yay movie hopping!). Then Saturday we drove into the Andes a bit and spent the day on horseback, with a shish-kabob barbecue in the middle. Pictures below :)

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Err, pictures not loading now. Either later, or check out facebook. Sorry.