Chile, I Like You but You Sure Confuse Me

While it is impossible to assign a single description to an entire country and silly to attempt to simplify and categorize all of the peoples of one nation, I have found that each country we stop in seems to at least have several defining features. Peruvians, from both the North and South are proud of their Incan history, and have no qualms with being identified by their biggest tourist draw – Machu Picchu. Costa Ricans are laid-back and peaceful – to the extent that they even lack a government, and they are happy to be defined by the phrase “Pura Vida” or Pure Life, for hey man surfs up. Nicaraguans are still recovering from their recent civil war and are proud of the strides they've made towards what the developed world deems as “progress.” Ecuadorians as a whole are calm, friendly, and – though to a less extent than their neighbors in Peru – still cling to their Indigenous culture.

But then there's Chile. How to define a country that stretches for over half the length of all South America, stringing length-wise for 4300km from the driest desert in the world to as far south as Antarctica? Perhaps travel writer Sara Wheeler puts it best in her book on Chile "Travels in a Thin Country": The Chileans “always wanted to know what we of the west thought of the country, and it was hard to tell them that the majority of the west never thought of them at all. I often thought that I noticed a kind of national insecurity and identity crisis. Relentless foreign influence in almost all sectors of society presumably contributed to it.”

Europeans swept into Chile in the 16th century and never left, making it the country with the most blondes and blue-eyed people that we've encountered thus far. The women are always dressed to the nines, with high heels clacking and earrings jangling, carrying shopping bags stamped with brand names from New York and Paris. And while the capitals of Ecuador and Peru have bus systems that could contend easily with those in the States, neither come close to what Chile has to brag about. The subway system of Santiago is almost identical to that of Boston, and cabs are metered. I must admit, I actually miss haggling a cab fare down to half the asking price as horns honk and weave about along unmarked Central American streets.

Speaking of, Chile even has driving regulations and stoplights! And not just in the big cities, throughout the whole country. There are malls, and for the first time in 5 months our conversations with locals have been interrupted by cell phones ringing and the habitual, imperative need to answer every call. Chile is more developed than I had ever imagined it to be. Although here I must admit, like Sara Wheeler said of most people in the west, I honestly hadn't given it much thought before arriving. But that aside, coming from Ecuador and Peru I was not prepared for this degree of capitalism, consumerism, and “development.”

So with all of this then, is Chile's identity actually confusing or is it just that I am experiencing Culture Shock while still in Latin America that is causing my inability to understand this pencil-thin country? Perhaps a little bit of both.

After struggling the first couple of days after crossing the border into Chile to get the image of my dwindling bank account out of my head every two seconds as I contended with the undeniable fact that Chile is expensive and is going to eat a chunk of change, and after realizing that – like the States – Chile's political and sociological problems lie largely behind closed walls and in matters of policy paperwork, rather than in blatantly visible poverty and crumbling infrastructure, I redefined what I wanted to take away from the country. Instead of attempting to understand the sociological problems, I decided to view Chile as an opportunity to discover its diverse natural beauty.

They say that if you take the 4300km of Chile, flip it upside down, and then lay it on a map of North America you have a mirror image. The northern region boasts of intense desert, like that of Mexico or Arizona. The middle is farmland, with rolling green hills and pastures. And the south is glaciers, snow-covered mountains and ice – perhaps similar to Alaska and Canada.

To pull from Sara Wheeler's book again, a drunk told her: “When God created the world he had a handful of everything left – mountains, deserts, lakes, glaciers – and he put it all in his pocket you see, and as God walked across heaven it all trickled out, and the long trail it made on earth was Chile.”

After 5 weeks of being in Chile, I will say that I am thoroughly impressed. Chile's environmental wonders are indeed something to brag about. And the fact that all of it can exist in one country is truly remarkable.

Yet perhaps the fact that Chile is so diverse is its virtue, but also its crutch. The country has so much to offer, yet the north barely knows the south and the same goes the other direction. Chile has a population of 17 million (U.S. = 310 million) and is collectively twice the size of California. But when everything is all so stretched out, how could there be a national identity? And because of this “identity crisis,” it is somehow much harder to see past the consumerism and capitalism that seems to plague the nation. Thus, Chile's identity seems to fall less in step with it's fellow Latin American countries and more in step with that of the States – the presence of money and the intrinsically linked constant dissatisfaction. For once you see what you can have with just a little bit more cash, how can you be happy with the old and the used you already have?

Does development then come with a price of unhappiness? If a nation progresses does it consequently follow that people will become more disgruntled? Striving for more certainly cannot be seen as a downfall or a negative. Yet how then does one contend with the sense that wealth is some tangled up with cultural dissatisfaction...