When I first came to South America I wasn’t sure what to expect. Heat, Spanish speakers, poverty, crime; those were some of the thoughts I had. I had already visited Cuba and I expected that there would be some similarities.
As a citizen of the ‘first world’ I remember wondering whether there would be internet, running water and electricity. I thought that even if these things existed in this part of the world the quality might be sub-standard. Later, I was to find out that ignorance can be a humiliating thing.
The other problem was that my Spanish was decidedly sub-standard. Ok, I could manage “hola, gracias, uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis,.. but that was about it.
I had come to South America because I wanted to see the world; the truth was, however, I didn’t know where to start. I had not made my selection of places to visit based on facts. I had decided to follow the rumours that I had heard. I didn’t have much money and I had heard that it was cheap to be in South America. More than that, I had become tired of Canada’s winters. The climate had been the other factor. Still, I was a little nervous to be leaving on my own though I felt sure that the culture shock in this part of the world was likely to be less severe than if I had gone to Asia or Africa.
Still I knew little about South America. I had heard of Colombia – mostly about drugs and guerillas – about Venezuela’s fabulous supermodels and about Argentina. I couldn’t place them on a map, however. I knew that Guyana was a country, but I had thought that it might have been in Africa, wasn’t it in Africa somewhere?
What I eventually found was both like and unlike anything I had imagined. In some ways it was exactly what I expected, but fuller; with more detail and more colour. In other ways I was completely shocked.
My first shock occurred in Santiago de Chile. The place was completely like Europe. In fact, it was wealthier and cleaner than most places in Europe that I had seen. Its homes were also more modern than those in Halifax. Apart from a ‘top notch’ subway system Santiago de Chile has modern highways that run under the city, tall glass buildings and modernist statues.
Restaurants are trendy and expensive. I remember being extremely hungry one Sunday and everything was closed except for a small sidewalk cafe. The menu was a lot more expensive than I was usually willing to pay for food, but I was desperate and ordered something that looked filling: a guacamole sandwich. I was served two slices of snow white bread with a thin layer of avocado paste between them. The crusts were cut off and I came close to telling the waiter to let me have them.
I was sitting on a bus when I had my first glimpse of poverty, It was a small shantytown outside Santiago de Chile.
I was to encounter even more acute extremes of poverty in Bolivia. Bolivia is a predominantly native country; Spanish, for the most part, a ‘second language. Bolivians grow up speaking Quechua or Aymara. Their culture is a peculiar blend of Catholicism and traditional beliefs. The Pachamama, the earth mother, is identified with the Virgin Mary. Bolivians pray and make sacrifices to her. They pray mostly for good harvests. Tio (which means Uncle) is perceived as the devil. He owns everything that is under the ground. Miners pour alcohol on his statue as a sacrifice before they enter the mine. People would sacrifice a llama to Tio on Saturday and go to church on Sunday.
Bolivia is unique; unlike any other country I have seen. La Paz, the capital, where I lived for six months, is built in a steep valley. At the top is a flat plain called the Altiplano. Overlooking La Paz, is the city of El Alto. That was where I first encountered real poverty, first hand. I saw dirty, naked children playing in the streets; limited electricity, no running water; homes made of sheet metal and cheap brick.
I remember that the commercials shown on television in Canada by NGOs raising money for the poor depicted poor people as having been afflicted by an absence of hope and, passive. The people of El Alto are anything but passive. Twice a week El Alto hosts one of the biggest, busiest, craziest street markets in the world. Picture Stabroek Market spread across all of Georgetown and that’s El Alto.The market is divided into sections the size of neighbourhoods; a section car parts, one for clothes, one for toys, one for pets, and so on. Whatever might have been on sale anywhere in the Americas during the last 50 years can be found in the market in El Alto.
Once might well ask why there is so much evidence of poverty in a town that boasts so much economic activity. The answer can be found a bus ride away.
From the lip of the Altiplano, down the steep twisting streets on the slopes of the valley, the affluence becomes apparent. The lower you go the greater the evidence of wealth. At the bottom of the valley is a flat space called Zona Sur. It could easily be mistaken for the Mediterranean coast.
Zona Sur is a district of palm trees, movie theatres, shopping malls, sports cars, and huge mansions behind high walls; a community of security cameras and barbed wire. In Zona Sur I learnt an important lesson about the world… the poorer a country usually, the richer its elite.
Nowhere is the rich/poor divide more apparent than in Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay. In the centre of downtown Paraguay, in the midst of the night clubs, restaurants, and shopping, close to the presidential palace, there is a slum.
I was told that this slum was built when the former dictator, Alfredo Stroessner, brought a group of his supporters from the countryside and installed them in front of his palace as a deterrent to his adversaries. For the most part these were poor agricultural workers, and he didn’t build anything for them to live in, so they set up shacks of their own. Over the decades they grew more settled, constructing densely packed unpainted wooden houses. The streets were never paved and electricity and water were never installed. When the government finally decided they had had enough and started trying to get them to leave, the people refused. The slum was now their home. When the police tried to force them out, they fought back and eventually the government forces gave up. What was left was a group of a few hundred well armed poor people living in downtown Asuncion.
Today it’s the centre of organized crime in Paraguay; a little village of strength and poverty located in the shadow of the presidential palace.
Before I arrived in Buenos Aires, every person who had been there and whom I had met told me it was their favourite city in the world. If Santiago is the bright modern wealthy version of Europe, Buenos Aires symbolizes the old Europe. The city full of old stone buildings with pillars and statues, huge parks, and wide streets. Buenos Aires may have fallen on hard time of late but it still clings to a culture that is old and developed. There are still bars where people dance the Tango every evening and streets where Gauchos (cowboys) race horses. On weekends people go to the parks and share jugs of mate, a traditional leafy drink.
Crime is an issue in South America. In every country the locals warn you about the neighboring country so that Chileans warned me about Bolivia, and Bolivians warned me about Peru. In Paraguay I was told to be wary of Brazil.
I found that everywhere there were ‘no go’ areas dark. But then this applies to very city in the world.
In South America poverty informs attitudes. Among the poor there is mind set that says that because there isn’t much to go around you hold on to what you have. Perhaps oddly enough wealthier people appear to have a similar mind set.
South America is alive. There is feverish activity all over the continent. No one is sitting around waiting to be saved or to die. People are taking whatever they can get… by fair means or foul.
Colombia, I am told, is a land rich in biodiversity. It has coasts on the Caribbean and the Pacific. To the east is the Amazon Basin. At the centre are the Andes. Colombia is also a land of cultural concoction.
The town of San Cipriano, for example, is connected to civilization by single railway line. There are no trains. There is an invention called a Bruja, a wooden platform with seats and wheels that sits on the tracks. It is powered by a motor cycle. The front is fixed to the platform and the back wheel sits on the track and pushes the whole contraption along. When two Brujas meet on the single track going in opposite directions, passengers on one of the two disembark, move their Bruja off the track to allow the other one to go by. Afterwards, the ‘derailed’ Bruja is returned to the track and continues on its way.
The FARC is still active in Colombia. I recall having to to put off a visit to San Cipriano because of what a friend told me was “guerrilla activity.” Incredibly, and for all the media reports you get about clashes with the military, drug deals and kidnappings, the FARC appears to impact only minimally on people’s day to day lives. I never felt at risk but my parents in Canada worried continually about the likelihood of me being kidnapped.
I sense that the people of this continent are poised on an edge. They are smart and innovative and hard-working. Corruption is the bane of their existence; that’s what they have been telling me. I have no solutions to the problem of corruption but I believe that there are people on this continent who are searching for solutions.