Chilean Chronicles, Part XXVII: Striking Workers and Santiago's Central Markets

When Dunreith and I read about Santiago’s fabled trio of markets of Mercado Central, Tirso de Molina, and La Vega Central, one consistent message stood out: watch your wallets closely as pickpockets are everywhere and they’ll take your money. It turns out that the warning was far too limited.

We discovered this today after walking from our apartment to the market.

Along the way we passed a lively postal workers’ strike in which red-shirted and red-jacketed employees were blowing high-pitched whistles, chanting and hanging signs near Pio Nono, a major Santiago bridge.

Some of the more adventurous strikers had used a rope to propel themselves down to the edge of the Mapocho River, where they danced, sang and held up more signs.

One worker had a sign on the end of a fishing pole that explained he was fishing for a decent salary.

Unlike in the United States, where the Chicago Public Schools’ teacher strike makes national news, organized labor is more than willing here to employ the tool of striking on local and national levels with high levels of frequency. In addition to the postal workers, garbage workers, miners, workers at the world’s largest ground-based telescope and the entire city of Tocopilla, a city in the northern region of Antofagosta, all have gone on strike just since we landed here in mid-July.

We passed by a trio of workers in a nearby park huddling around a tree and counting donations they had received and, a little while later, arrived at Mercado Central.

Once there and in the other two markets, we learned that you actually have to watch out for all manner of hazards while you’re in all three places.

Dangers like a massive side of beef being toted on a worker’s back as he hustles toward a nearby butchery.

Like cardboard packages flying from one end of a truck to another as you walk past it.

Like being sandwiched by dozen of boxes being pulled along by a pair of workers, one of whom is talking on a cell phone, going in opposite directions.

Like the startling image of a pig’s head with skin and an even more arresting cow’s skull without, eyes protruding and the tongue hanging out to one side.

Like a bicycle that can run over your Achille’s heel and a car that can run over your foot, if not your entire body.

Like waiters in restaurants bustling by with arms full of clean or empty plates.

This of course says nothing about the sea of people who walk, jostle and bump you as you make your way through and around the stalls, rows and exterior of the three buildings that take up a few city blocks.

Yet navigating these obstacles is not only an integral part of the market experience, doing so allows you to enter a fantastic zone with a ferocious variety of smells and a seemingly limitless range of fish, meat, fowl, produce, potatoes, and household items carefully arrayed in a delicious splash of precision and color.

Each market has its specialty.

Mercado Central is the fish market.

Tirso de Molina has absolutely scrumptious natural juices made right in front of you and to which you can add sugar, vitamins, milk, or nothing at all.

La Vega has a certain swagger-a mural stated emphatically that after gods there is La Vega-and has an endless supply of fruit stands to complete the beef, pork and poultry sections.

I got a raspberry fruit juice with milk at Tirso, and will definitely be back to head up to the second floor to sample a cazuela, a typical Chilean dish with beef or chicken, a potato, rice and vegetables in a piping hot broth, for 1500 pesos, or three dollars.

Meanwhile, Dunreith got a kilogram of clementines for 300 pesos, a total of 60 cents.

Reading the charges for food and meals at the markets was a bit like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, in which my realized that the prices I had been extolling in our Providencia Market were not quite as inexpensive as I had thought was parallel to thinking that the shadows in the cave were actually light.

For instance, a mushroom and cheese that costs 1200 peso, or $2.40, in Mercado Providencia around the corner from our house, goes for just 780, or about $1.60 at the central markets.

The lower prices are just one part of the place’s appeal.

I asked the woman who owned the stand, who was short and had striking black hair and piercing eyes, where the meal that she stopped eating to serve us had come from.

They come from the fields in buses that stop outside the building, she told me.

Your meal? I repeated.

Oh, no, that’s from upstairs, she chuckled. I thought you were asking about the fruit.

So the fruit comes from the trucks, the meal comes from upstairs and you come from Santiago? I asked.

Of course, she replied. I’m Santiaguina.

Pura Santiaguina, I said. One hundred percent.

One hundred percent, she affirmed.

Another fruit stand we walked by was playing a scene from Destilando Amor, the Mexican telenovela that starred future Mexican First Lady Angelica Rivera and Eduardo Yanez as Gaviota and Rodrigo, a tequila worker and scion who fall in love with each other.

In 2007 I learned how to speak Spanish by watching the novela with Dunreith.

I told the owner of this stand, another woman, the story, then pointed to Dunreith and said, “This is my Gaviota.”

“This is my Rodrigo,” Dunreith replied, pointing her thumb at me.

We all laughed.

After a couple of hours, Dunreith and I began the walk back to our apartment.

We were crossing the street in the Baquedano neighborhood when a striking postal worker stepped in front of us and implored us to support their cause.

Dunreith obliged, reaching into her pocket and dropping a coin that clinked as it landed in the tin can.

We had managed to not get pickpocketed at the markets, but hadn’t avoided paying a price, albeit willingly, along the way home.

Chilean Chronicles, Part XXVI: Sebastian Lelio's Gloria

Of the many concerns that crop when one is divorced in late middle age, one of the most basic is how to fill the day and nights previously occupied by children and spouse. Simply put, you’ve got an awful lot of time, and need to figure out what to do with it.

How Gloria Cumplido, the protagonist of Sebastian Lelio’s movie Gloria, manages this challenge provides the narrative spine of this charming film. It took Dunreith and me two times to find the Centro Arte Alameda near Baquedano, and the movie was well worth the effort for reasons that include and go beyond my learning that Umberto Tozzi, not Laura Branigan, was the first artist to sing the internationally popular.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhypcER3fnQ&w=420&h=315]

The movie, which debuted to considerable acclaim at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, tells the story of Gloria, a vivacious 58-year-old divorcee who lives in Santiago and who is coming to terms with the emptiness in her life caused by her husband leaving her, seemingly for a younger woman, and her son and daughter moving onto the next stage of their lives.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ag48eJQkVk&w=560&h=315]

Her son, who has sired Gloria’s sole grandchild, acts utterly disinterested in her, while her daughter is leaving the country for Sweden to bear the child of her mountain-climbing boyfriend.

Neither has as much contact with Gloria as she would like (In one early scene, she calls both of her children from her work, urging them both to call her and ending by reminding them, “Yo soy tu madre.”

I am your mother.

The gap left by the change in these relationships constitutes just one part of Gloria’s angst.

Her job appears to bore her.

Her upstairs neighbor regularly stays up late, doling out verbal and physical abuse to his wife.

Perhaps most troubling, Gloria's body is starting to register some of the effects of age. She dies her hair a dark chestnut and is told by her opthamologist that her failing eyesight requires her to put in eye drops every day going forward.

Her response to fill the void is to go to singles clubs, where she dances to 80s era tunes and seeks comfort in men’s arms. This generally leads to disappointment, even as her pleasure in music is evident from the beginning of the film. (Some of my favorite moments in the movie occurred as Gloria sings along to the pop songs she is listening to on her car radio while driving by herself. The film's soundtrack is consistently entertaining.)

The liaisons generally lead to disappointment until Gloria meets Rodolfo, a 65-year-old former naval officer turned entertainment park owner. Beyond the physical fireworks, she finds herself grateful for the attention he showers on her-she starts crying when he reads a poem declaring his passion for her- and by the emotional intimacy they begin to share with each other.

She starts to envision their having a more serious relationship, and, perhaps, a lasting commitment to each other.

This is where things get complicated.

The reality of Rodolfo’s separation from his wife, and particularly his daughters, who, like Gloria’s children, are 27 and 31, is murky. The daughters call him constantly, taking him away from time with Gloria. Yet he refuses to introduce Gloria to them, saying he does not want to subject her to them .

Gloria has difficulties of her own.

She brings Rodolfo to her son’s birthday party, but scarcely pays attention to him. Instead, she spends much more time drinking and looking at old family photos, including wedding pictures with her increasingly drunker husband. Rodolfo leaves without telling her or anyone else, then starts calling her obsessively to try to explain his actions to her.

The relationship between the two lovers plays out in this turbulent and fitful manner, and the larger journey within the film is Gloria’s quest to find sufficiency within herself as well as a greater acceptance of the new stage in which she finds herself.

Chilean actress Paulina Garcia delivers a bravura performance as Gloria. Her ability to convey her character’s longing, desire, impishness, joy, pain and desperation with equal dexterity both sustain the viewer’s interest throughout the film and lends the somewhat predictably upbeat ending a measure of satisfaction.

Garcia reveals Gloria’s character in small moments such as how Gloria continues to look toward the terminal her daughter forbids her to enter when the daughter is flying to Sweden, how she zestfully rips off the girdle that Rodolfo wears even after his fat-reduction surgery , how she hugs her son extra long at the front door of his apartment while Rodolfo stands there, a bottle of wine in hand, or how she dances tentatively at the beginning of the film’s final scene.

These gestures combine with Gloria’s many activities-among other things, she tries yoga, does a bungee jump, smokes a stash of marijuana the abusive neighbor accidentally left on her front doorstep, and, in one of the film’s most painful moments, calls her maid to fetch her after Rodolfo abandons her again-to give her sense of hard-earned awareness and greater level of inner peace a realistic and heartwarming feeling.

A film of modest scope, Gloria does not ask big questions.

But it does show, in an engaging way, that while Gloria may not have figured out by the film's end what to do with all the time she has at her disposal, she has stopped looking exclusively for the answer in spending time with others.

Chilean Chronicles, Part XXV: On Travel Plans and Spirit Blessings

There is a special pleasure that comes when you take a long-held desire and start to make it real in the world, when you truly start to steer the boat of your life and, move, in a combination of conscious choice and following the deepest part of your gut, in the direction of your dreams. These visions need not be of specific activities, of destinations to visit, of foods to eat, or mountains to climb. Rather they can be of a life lived deliberately and momentarily, animated by the layers and memories of past experiences, inspired by future directions, yet all the while sitting deliciously in the present.

At moments like this, and they are often, if not always, fleeting, you have flashes of perspective and wisdom, and find yourself filled with an almost delirious joy in which your body can scarcely contain what is bursting inside of you.

The spark for me was making plans to travel to Rio de Janeiro in October for a global investigative journalism conference, and, about 10 days later, to travel to Buenos Aires in Argentina to spend time with Dad and Lee, see journalist friend Jenny Manrique and visit with colleagues from La Nacion.

Every day that we’re in Chile, a country Dunreith and I hungered to visit for more than a decade, I feel at different points that we are living out a dream.

Going to other countries within the continent, meeting colleagues and friends and making new connections there, gathering around the venerable task of bringing the truth to light, will be fulfilling another.

Today’s thrill came from many sources.

It came from anticipating the adventures we will have.

It came from realizing anew what we can create when we dip out of routines, think hard about what we will want to have done, and move in that direction.

And it came from from a deepening, solidifying feeling that we can trust ourselves to live from that place.

At times like this, I almost cannot believe my great and good fortune in being alive, on the planet, in good health, in sharing a life and a son with a woman I love deeply, powerfully connected to family and friends and people of good will, engaged in work that matters and that is a source of challenge, satisfaction, wonder and meaning, participating in a program I applied for four times over the course of more than a dozen years, speaking another language with increasing comfort and dexterity, without a home address, free and full in the world.

Indeed, at these moments, I am grateful beyond expression that I am even around to write these very words.

In the late 1930s, in Germany, the country of his birth, my father was slated for death at the hands of genocidal government that defined Dad and all others like him by our religion.

Yet, thanks to the initiative and courage of his parents, the generosity of an unknown Gentile doctor who agreed to remove Dad’s appendix on his grandfather’s kitchen table after many others in the town where our family had lived for more than 150 years had refused, and the kindness of an eccentric Jewish headmistress who cared for Dad as if he were her own boy, he survived.

Last year, we returned as a family to Essen, the town that Dad had not set foot in since fleeing to join his brother in England just weeks after the emergency surgery.

Leaders, children, and adults of all ages showered him with gifts and gratitude for making the journey and providing an answer to the story of what happened to the children who left on trains, numbers around their neck.

In the former synagogue that was destroyed in the pogrom that sparked the creation of the program that saved him, Dad rose and spoke and told the crowd of hundreds that Germany was both the country that was the site of some of the worst atrocities in human history and one of the countries that had done more than any other to face and seek to atone for its wrongdoing.

He also said that, rather than accept the honorarium he had been offered, we as a family were creating an award in our family’s name to honor young people who act for tolerance and justice.

This June, shortly before leaving for Chile, Dad, Lee and I returned so that he could, for the first time, present the awards to the children who had earned that recognition.

On a snowy President’s Day in 1986, the car Mom was in skidded over the center line and swerved into the path of an oncoming car with a snow plough attached to the front.

The seat belt saved her life.

The only reason the paramedics who found Mom gave her even a 1 percent chance of living was that they were already out on the road because of other accidents, heard the crash and arrived almost instantly.

At the time, I couldn’t allow myself to fully face the possibility that Mom might die.

In many ways, it was a miracle that she did not.

That she did not is because of the people who did not know Mom, but were doing their duty and brought her to safety, and because of a dedicated team of doctors, nurses, assistants, attendants, therapists and others helped her body back to health.

Our family visited her daily.

Mom’s formidable will to heal propelled her, too.

The process was achingly slow, and sometimes moved backward.

But Mom never gave up.

About two weeks, she celebrated her 76th birthday, aided by Jon, who traveled out to meet and help her, holding Mike’s son Matthew as he squirmed, enveloped by the love of Mike and Annie and her parents in person, and from Dunreith, Aidan and me at a distance.

This morning, after looking into and booking flights and hotels and conference, sitting next to Dunreith, our adventures advanced, the day ahead, the son of a father who was not supposed to live and a mother who nearly died, both of whom have survived to experience inconceivable and unexpected joy, I felt deep-down blessed in a way that I rarely have before.

Not religious blessed.

But spirit blessed.

I hope you have moments where you feel it, too.

Peace.

Chilean Chronicles, Part XXIV: On My Own and My Students’ Names

On September 4, 2000, standing underneath a tree with three branches that came together at the base, Dunreith and I held hands with Aidan in a circle and, guided by Justice of the Peace Bruce Zeitler, said the marriage vows we had written to each other.

This marked the end of a Labor Day weekend in which I had moved, left a teaching career, and become both a husband and father.

Shortly thereafter, Dunreith and I began the process to legally change our names.

It was a negotiated settlement.

I initially broached the topic by suggesting that, rather than having different last names, we all have the same surname.

My choice: Lowenstein.

This idea didn’t sit particularly well with my wife, who barely needed to hear the proposal before firing back that she had had her name longer, so that I should be the one, if anyone, to change. She made the additional point that Aidan also was a Kelly, so there were in effect two of them and one of me.

Despite this decidedly unpromising beginning to the conversation, we eventually came to agree on, and embrace, the name Kelly Lowenstein.

We liked the flow of Dunreith’s name going before mine over the reverse, agreed that we didn’t like the idea of a hyphen and felt more comfortable using both of our names rather than coming up with a hybrid like “Kellstein” or “Lowelly.”

We made the change official by having our Social Security cards reflect the combination name we had chosen.

This ushered in the beginning of countless discussions with administrators, school officials, receptionists at doctor's offices, people in payroll and billing departments, and pharmacists, just to name a few.

The conversation usually involves the following steps.

We are asked our last name.

We give it, explaining that there are two words, Kelly and Lowenstein, with no hyphen in between them.

The person in front of us or on the other end of the phone line concludes that our last name is either Kelly or Lowenstein.

We repeat our original statement.

I often add that I took Dunreith’s name, which was Kelly, while she took Lowenstein, so that together our last name is Kelly Lowenstein.

The person appears to understand, and then asks if we have a hypen in our name.

We say again that we do not.

Although this may seem like an enormously tedious and time-consuming experience, it can have certain advantages in journalism.

In my experience, the vast majority of administrative assistants have been women.

I’ve found that telling them about having taken Dunreith's name elicits one of two reactions.

“That’s interesting” or “That’s different” is the first.

The emotion behind this response can range from intrigued to skeptical.

The second response happens more frequently.

Much more enthusiastic, it includes statements like “That’s sweet” or “I’ve got to talk to my husband about that.”

The point for me as a journalist is my hope that the goodwill indicated by the second response will lead to my message being passed along with more alacrity.

I don’t have any data to prove this actually happens, and it certainly feels that way.

In this context, then, an additional reason for my being excited to travel to Chile was the fact that folks go by two unhyphenated last names here.

For those who don’t know, people generally have their father’s last name in the place where the Kelly is for us, while their mother’s surname goes where the Lowenstein does.

I will say that the attendance sheet I received from the University of Diego Portales for the Data Journalism course I'm offering gave me pause as the majority of the students were listed as having four names.

For example, what would you think a student named “Doren Jara Lowry Sebastián” would be called?

If you said, “Lowry Doren,” with Lowry being his first name, you were ahead of me.

By at least two, if not three, steps.

My confusion was not aided by the fact of our having two Oscars-the first one on the sheet is “Delbene Peñaloza Oscar Felipe”, while the second is “Pacheco Castillo Oscar Walter”-or that several of the students have three names.

Then there's Rafael.

He was not on the sheet at all, but wrote down that his name was “Rafael Martinez.”

But when he sent me his email, it said that his name is “Rafael Martinez Carvallo.”

Throw in the additional factor that just three of the students have attended of the classes, and I don’t mind say that it’s been a bit of a struggle for me to get my head around the whole issue.

Over time, though, a pattern emerged.

If there are four names on the register, the first of the four is the father’s last name and the one that the student uses.

The third name is typically the student’s first name, while the fourth name is the student’s middle name.

In other words, “Aburto Miranda Katherinee Alejandra” is “Katherinee Aburto.”

“Araya Marambio Hernán Felipe” goes by “Hernán Araya.”

And so on.

My understanding of my students’ names has had an accompanying revelation.

Even though most of them have a pair of unhyphenated names, they and other folks at the university don’t look at my last name and think that it is Kelly Lowenstein.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

On professional invitations, name tags for presentations and students greeting me in the hallways, a consistent name rings out.

Jeff Kelly.

Dunreith loves it.

I don’t mind, either, even if I do feel a twinge of disappointment at the knowledge that the end of explaining our name choice is not as imminent as I had first hoped after arriving.

Chilean Chronicles, Part XXIII: Latin American Journalism Conference

I’ve been sending the students in my Data Journalism class at the University of Diego Portales a lot of emails. Over the weekend I let them know about a year-long fellowship sponsored by the Open Society Institute.

I sent them a notice about the Massive Online Open Course about Data Journalism offered by the Knight Center.

And, on Thursday night, I forwarded them an email saying that I had gained admission to the final day of to the second Cumbre Latinoamericana de Periodismo, or Latin American Journalism conference that was organized by the Colegio Latinoamericano de Periodistas, or Colaper. A host of organizations, including the University of Chile, Reporters without Borders, and professional journalism organizations from Chile, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru, among others.

The next morning, I ventured to the Room of Honor at the former Chilean Congress to attend the final morning of the three-day summit that brought together about 80 journalists from 17 countries, according to Claudia Castro, who helped organize the conference.

The focus was on press freedoms, and, overall, the news was not positive.

While Ecuador, Venezuela and Colombia were the major countries of concern, several presenters voiced their distress about the current media environment here.

Maria Pia Matta, who heads the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters, was one of them.

Sitting in front of portraits of two mustachioed politicians whose portraits hung underneath classical design ringing the room and between golden colored flowers that flowed into lamps, the diminutive Matta took direct aim at Chilean media.

“We are not neutral,” she said at one point, her hands gesturing animatedly, her voice rising in volume and intensity. “We have a position.”

Matta was referring to fellow community radio providers across the world. Her comment struck at the doctrine of objectivity to which she said too many journalists erroneously cling.

She also spoke at length about the difficult conditions to which many Mapuche, members of Chile’s largest indigenous group, seeking to do community radio work are subjected. Matta explained that the Mapuche had a legal license to operate a community radio station, but had it taken away after they tried to use it.

In general, resources for community radio workers around the planet are scarce, according to Matta. About 95 percent of people who work in the field are volunteers.

In response to a student's question, Matta said that she was open to community radio receiving governmental support provided that they could retain editorial autonomy.

The imbalance between the geography and range of coverage was another element of Matta’s critique. We only learn about what is going on in Santiago, she said. People don't know what's happening in their communities. We need more diversity of coverage.

But if the content offerings are not sufficiently diverse, the people attending the event certainly were.

There was Irene Helmke, a Chilean with German roots who studied at Columbia Journalism School, lived in the United States for a decade and speaks fluent Spanish, German and English.

As is quite common here, people hear me speak Spanish and, after hearing my accent, respond in English.

I kept going with the Castilian, which meant that Irene would say something in English to which I would respond in Spanish.

With Alejandra Izarra, who recently arrived in Chile from her native Venezuela, the conversation was puro espanol.

Izarra, who earned a Master’s degree in Marketing from Rafael Belloso Chacín University, is looking for work.

Aurelio Henriquez, who flew in from the Dominican Republic, has plenty of it.

In addition to being the chief of communications for the state-sponsored lotteries in his home country of the Dominican Republic, he also heads an online outfit called Diariodom.com.

Henriquez explained that he has a team of 12 people, including reporters in the capital and most, but not all, of the country’s provinces. (That’s a goal he’s working to achieve.)

There also were students from Ecuador, journalists from Colombia, another presenter from Peru, and, when Castro was going through the list of represented nations, an audience member called out repeatedly that Mexico was present. Participants were treated to a full slate of topics during the days.

Other sessions included looks at ethics, human rights, investigative Journalism and political journalism

At the end of Matta’s presentation I identified my Fulbright and Hoy affiliations, explained that Hoy wanted to hear Matta’s voice and that of other participants, and extended an open offer to print opinion pieces of about 800 words.

About a dozen participants seemed interested and passed me their cards.

Others wanted to take a picture with me.

This included a Peruvian journalist and a Chilean colleague.

We put our arms around each other, smiled for the camera, and, after we saw the results, jokingly complimented each other on our good looks. (Que caballeros! We exclaimed.)

One month from yesterday marks 40 years since the United States-backed coup that overthrew democratically-elected Salvador Allende.

Chile and Peru have had diplomatic disputes and wars that go back to the 19th century, and that continue until today.

But in that room, for that moment, there was unity and camaraderie animated by a common goal and professional creed.

It certainly wasn’t enough to change the absence of press protections in Venezuela and other nations, but it was a moment of unity and camaraderie animated by common goals, values and a shared professional creed.

My students will hear about that tomorrow when we meet in person.

After class, I'll probably send them some more emails.