Honey I Shrunk Bachelet and Some of Her Cabinet People!

To the dismay of Chileans and the international community, the president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, sufferred a major political setback yesterday when along with key cabinet members she was accidentally shrunk to about 0.03 percent of her original size. The incident ocurred during a coordination meeting, in the president's back yard, reportedly held to prevent further communication lapses such as the recent premature declarations involving the "morning after" pill by the Minister of Health. Eye-witnesses claim to have seen a dorky scientist played by Rick Moranis leaving the president's home shortly after the incident. Government spokesman Ricardo Lagos Weber said in a news conference this morning that the president would now be changing her governing style. In response to a question by a reporter, Lagos said that President Bachelet "is now closer to the ground than she ever was, but is a little afraid of giant insects."

Get Over the Nationalism

Chile is a country to the north of nothing and it has hundreds and hundreds of miles of nothing but coastline. For as far as the eye can see, for as far as I can see, Chile is graced with beautiful beaches. For millions of years, these ends of continent have been punished by the incessant pounding of the ocean. It took them a million years to be born, and in a painful delivery to say the least, but boy was it worth it! To be able to fulfill their divine providence and be handed ceremoniously to the people of Chile (the chosen people), where these Chileans can wiggle their extremities in the sand and bury Nestle ice cream wrappers deep enough to escape scrutiny…we could call that destiny. Chileans have baptized these natural thresholds with names that scream tradition and history, names like “playa amarilla” (yellow beach), “playa negra” (black beach), “playa ancha” (wide beach), and “playa blanca” (white beach). Hours and hours of endless beach and the endless smell of the sea! How beautiful it must be! Chile must be the envy of the world, with so much coastline there must not be a soul who doesn’t wake up every single day contemplating the sweet pacific horizon, there’s just so much of it for everyone.

And Chileans, who have the sea in their hearts, love the coast so much that they all live in Santiago, a smog-trapped city hidden deep in a valley, a hundred miles from the Pacific Ocean. Their passion for the sea is so strong that they break away from their dead-end jobs every chance they get. And boy do they love the coast. For ten days every year, the entire country travels a hundred miles to the same beach, at the same time. It’s quite a sight! The love for the sea is so strong that they must share the experience with thousands of their fellow patriots. From Santiago to the coast, hand in hand, on the highway. Nothing will stop them! Not even the highway authorities who see them coming and try to “dissuade” them by doubling the toll.

But it’s a small price to pay for that first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean blue. It’s true that sitting on the beach, surrounded by millions of people tends to limit your viewing of the sea, but nothing can prevent the orgasmic feeling achieved once inside the ocean. The curious thing is that about two thirds of Chileans are actually afraid of the water; they experience a pure form of terror at the thought of actually going in. For them, it’s enough to stick a foot inside; enough to realize that it’s too cold and that it’s time to head back to Santiago. For those who actually make it inside, they don’t last too long either. It’s too salty, the waves aren’t big enough, and they get sick of having to maneuver around gringos and their local followers who choose to swim around with big slabs of wood under their bodies. The love for the ocean is experienced so strongly by Chileans that they are willing to endure days and days of pointlessly cruel suffering in the form of: screaming children, sand in the face, unexpected toe-trash discovery, back-knee sunburn, ad-banner airplane flyovers, the smell of boiled egg, unqualified swimwear, the parking mafia, the come-out-of-nowhere car shade provider who doubles as the beach paddle salesman, the painful realization that you’re not at the “cool” beach, the “sabotage” ice cream purchase that seals your fate as “sticky hands” for the rest of the day, overtly undersized beach towels, the sudden flatlining of your Discman, etc.

All this, a nightmare! And yet for every Chilean, the thought of visiting the beach brings a smile to their face. Such unconditional love cannot be challenged, it is almost genetic. Not even the Bolivians can get too close.

It turns out, unsurprisingly, that Bolivians also love the sea. The only problem is that they don’t have any. They lost their access to the sea as a result of a 18th century war instigated by the British empire as part of a Pinky and the Brain scheme to gain control of the massive nitrate deposits in the North of what is now Chile. Not only does Bolivia have difficulties trying to export anything, they actually have to carry a passport in order to go to the beach! With a new president, one that actually looks Bolivian, Chile’s neighbor is now in a position to negotiate bilaterally with Chile, and perhaps unilaterally with other Latin American nations, sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean. The plan calls for a corridor running parallel with the Chile-Peru border, just north of Arica.

Meanwhile, Chileans, who are now safely back in their homes in Santiago, their two-week nightmare experience at the beach already forgotten, suddenly go ape-shit nationalistic. Why should we give them a centimeter of our beaches? Those beaches belong to Chile! The national anthem is bellowing in the background as every conceivable racist and classist remark is uttered. Bolivians shouldn’t get shit! Bolivians are trying to blame us for their poverty! Bolivians are backward monkeys! Bolivians should go fuck themselves! It’s OUR territory, WE’RE not gonna give them shit! These are people, mind you, who’ve never even been to Arica, and they don’t have the faintest idea what Chile even looks like further up north. And here is where Chilean mediocrity shines through. These Chileans who turn to the worst kind of slander in order to express a confused nationalism, one that doesn’t square with the reality of their country, are the same Chileans whose only option in this world is to sell their labor for miserable wages directly or indirectly to companies that if not completely foreign are controlled by foreign interests.

These foreign interests, expressed euphemistically by economists as “foreign investment” coupled with “economic stability”, control a large majority of all the economic activity in Chile; increasingly so, this translates into the control of all human activity here. Where they shop, what they buy, how they pay, who they work for, how much they get paid, in what model subway train they will travel, in what style of elevator they will elevate in, what to think about, what to exercise in, at what to laugh at, at what to cry about, at what appliance to gawk at, what to fill their tanks with, etc. What this means, essentially, is that Chile, besides being the economic model cited by the Wall Street Journal, is also a country that has sold its people, their labor, their minds and all the other natural and cultural wonders, much like a supermarket sells its entrails; in other words, to whomever will pay. So the question that follows is: What Chile are you trying to save from falling into the hands of the Bolivians? What is there left to hand over? Will anyone object when they remove the star on the Chilean flag and replace it with the Shell logo?

Do you think History will judge those Chileans who would want to help a brother in need and at the same time discover that they themselves are also in need, before it’s too late? How exactly are Chileans going to see the latest foreign movie, or shop for those modern foreign products, or eat at the scientifically designed foreign fast-food chains if people at home don’t have the electricity to turn on the television, or if the box stores can’t turn the lights on inside, or if the franchise owners can’t keep the microwaves going. The truth is that, much sooner than later, Chile won’t be able to turn the Christmas lights on because it doesn’t have any natural gas, or any other reliable source of energy. Guess who has plenty of it?

Chileans need a reality check. The confusion could be seen when the President of Chile awarded Bono a charango as a symbol of Chilean culture. The charango is much more Bolivian than it is Chilean. If it weren’t for Horacio Duran, Chileans wouldn’t have the slightest idea as to what a charango was, and most of them don’t have the slightest idea who Horacio Durango is. I think it would be better for Chileans to get over the nationalism and focus on recovering their country from foreign capital. But the way they’re going, it would be better to hand over that beach to the Bolivians as quickly as possible before foreign investors decide to build some monstrous vacation resort there or turn it into a toxic waste disposal site.

A Mapuche Radio Program in Santiago

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Summary of the Project

Wixage Anai (working title) is a documentary project, of which the above video is only a glimpse, which examines the future of indigenous media in Latin America, specifically in the urban metropolis of Santiago, Chile. Centered around the everyday existence of a Mapuche radio production, this audiovisual poject attempts to shed light on some of the experiences and challenges Mapuches face in their important struggle to reaffirm both their culture and their political rights in a culturally and politically difficult environment. This struggle takes place in the capital city of a country famous for its adoption of a neoliberal economic model where the mass media, which is concentrated in the hands of a few economic holdings, plays an important role in reproducing an apolitical society fixated on economic growth. The project sets out to answer how alternative media, representing different visions and cosmovisions, can help broaden the horizons of such a rigid paradigm of economic development and help create a true democracy not only in Chile, but throughout the world.

Project Goals

1. Promote awareness about Mapuche experiences in the city.
2. Address and dispel popular misconceptions about Mapuches.
3. Generate a critical perspective on the mass media.
4. Show some of the production's technical and cultural difficulties.
5. Show how the two cosmovisions (Mapuche and Occidental) clash in a city landscape.
6. Raise funds for the continuation of the program Wixae Anai.
7. Generate enthusiasm for alternative media in young people.
8. Show positive images of Mapuches in Chilean media.

Introduction

The Mapuche people of Chile are seen by the majority of Chileans in Santiago as relics of the past, as statues erected out of clay and summoned for this month’s museum exhibit. Their images are unmoving, frozen in time for citizens of the modern state to consume as art or entertainment. They represent a discarded way of life labeled “traditional”, and although many of their cultural artifacts, especially their silver jewelry work, are cherished for their undisputed value, the Mapuche people, as a rule, are discriminated against in all sectors of contemporary society, and even by themselves. But even as we read about this harsh reality, the Mapuche are regaining their voice and are teaching each other many of the cultural elements that have been lost to the often violent process of colonization, modernization and economization. Especially in Santiago, this phenomenon represents a struggle of enormous magnitude, a cultural movement that, among other things, pretends to teach young generations how to stand up in the world, how to resist the self-degradation encouraged by the market system, and how to simply be proud of themselves along with their communities. It is unfortunate that the public opinion in Chile simply discards this cultural struggle and is stubborn in its adopted market rationality, which prevents interpreting the Mapuche as anything other than poor Chileans who are underdeveloped and in need of technical assistance, or sometimes as violent terrorists who represent an unclear threat to the elusive development of the country.

One explanation for this unwillingness to respect or lend credibility to this movement is that it has the potential to call into question something that, for better or worse, has been tacitly adopted by the Chilean economic and political establishment. The post-pinochet “flowering” of the modern market system in Chile has facilitated the importation of a “disposable” culture of production and consumption into the country. Along with its key cultural elements (individuation, indifference, excess consumption of resources by a minority, the tacit acceptance of a watered-down electoral democracy, privatization, the adoption of the discourse of economic “growth” as substitute for social justice, a stubborn insistence on the word “development” even though the idea behind it is dead, labor mistreatment as competition, greed, the adoption of American culture, etc), is almost by definition the antithesis of mapuche culture. It is true that in Santiago, people who define themselves as mapuche, share and practice many, if not most, of the same values and habits that every other Chilean does (almost out of shear necessity); but this cultural movement is beginning to tilt the boat in another direction. While the neoliberal economic model sponsored by the Chilean government is being elevated to the status of a religion and questioned only by a few heretics, the Chilean state is losing a considerable portion of the population to an idea, to a way of seeing the world, that is incompatible with the homogeneity that it requires for the continued implementation of the economic model. Exploring the different ways in which the mapuche culture, and its “re-awakening”, represents a big question mark for the dominant market culture is essential. How does the mapuche culture problematize the modern industrial way of life here in Chile?

Representation

In the late 1990’s and early 2000, images of masked Mapuches with slings dominated the mainstream press and rarely were they accompanied by representations of the extensive repression exercised by the Chilean carabineros and local paramilitaries (associated with land-owners) in response to what many important scholars and human rights authorities consider to be legitimate land claims made by various Mapuche organizations. As is usual in the dominant commercial media, real context is discarded in favor of simplistic and sensational appeals for ratings (“viewership”), usually constructed on the basis of fear. The Mapuche activists, the organizations they represented, and the communities represented by their organizations were lumped together into a nutshell labeled something like “disgruntled”, “pissed-off”, or “highly upset”. About what? Who knew? The context, the complicated history of the land issue, including the political and legal maneuverings (and decrees) associated with the transfer of land from families to private conglomerates, are not as easy to edit down into a headliner or a sound byte. Neither are the long history of intervention by distinct authorities into ancestral lands and the violent expropriation of the same. In those tense moments, public opinion about the Mapuche, needless to say, went from indifferent to contemptuous. This “intifada”, as one major newspaper headline read, brings up the unavoidable link that exists within this movement between the cultural and the political. That is to say, territory is an integral part of the traditional Mapuche culture, historically defined, administered and even granted legitimacy by the Spanish crown, the ancestral territory, and now its recuperation, form an important part of the Mapuche movement. Obviously, this troubles the Chilean government, who is forced to juggle interests of varying dimensions, including hydroelectric projects, massive tree farming, and agricultural development, all key ingredients in the neoliberal export-model.

The “historical warrior” Mapuche forms part of the Chilean foundation of pride and strength taught in schools across the nation. The Mapuche, lead by mythical figures representing stamina and cunning wit, managed to halt the southern advance of the Spanish conquistadores. Mapuches of today, however, are nevertheless expected to cede the way for the great industrial machine of progress and civilization. Any continued resistance to “invaders” is not only inappropriate, but it is also illogical from the point of view of the dominant culture, whose economic cosmovision of “growth” and “development” is considered to be more universal and natural than gravity itself.

The Media

What role does the media play? At the risk of sounding dramatic, the media is one of the key players in all of this because it is the media who determines what is real and what isn't. It is clear that the Mapuches exist little, and perhaps this media indifference echoes the government’s inability to grant the Mapuche constitutional recognition, or perhaps its inability to sign the International Labor Organization’s convention 169 on indigenous rights. When the Mapuches do appear from the dark recesses of oblivion, it is only to fill the role of the disgruntled citizen who represents a clear and present danger to the march of development towards progress. The conflict between Mapuche activists, the Chilean state, and transnational business firms is characterized not as a government problem, or an economic problem, but rather as “the mapuche problem”. Partly because the loss of land and territory is buried in the past and rendered invisible by the nature of incremental change, the media is simply unable to present the issue as anything other than a temporary imbalance that must be dealt with criminally, inviting viewers to, in the meantime, think little and do nothing until the storm passes. How is this level of indifference cultivated and maintained?

Societies have become so big and complex, and people/families have become so individuated and isolated (ironically), that their perception of the world beyond their doorstep, or beyond their physical and immediate reach is determined solely on the benevolent service of the mass media. This is alarmingly so in Chile where the majority of people perceive their country and the world through the eyes and ears of a handful of media conglomerates which represent the beliefs of the economic establishment and their obsessive interest in economic stability, depoliticization, and potential for economic “growth” pegged to the globalization model. The centralization of the media system helps to manufacture a narrow representation of reality, a reality which leaves little room for alternative or conflicting visions. Is it too outrageous to suggest that the reality constructed by a handful of media conglomerates, who depend on the success of their sponsors for their own survival, might be a little biased towards the interests of the economic establishment? The enormous development investments that are present in the south, all of which represent a unified gamble on the stability of those key regions where the largest percentage of Mapuches live, constitute a huge lobby; it is disingenuous to deny that there is a fundamental correlation between the media construction, or outright dismissal of the Mapuche land issue and the economic interests that might be affected by indigenous claims to ancestral territory. Hence what we see is a flagrant misrepresentation, or non-representation of, not only the Mapuche movement, but of any social movement representing legitimate claims and worries associated with the neoliberal economic model. The environment, inequality, violence, indifference, employment security, poverty, intolerance, and even the status of democracy are just a few issues that trouble, on a day to day level, a substantial portion of the population in Chile.

Wixage Anai

The Wixage Anai documentary project, still in its early stages, is an attempt to shake the foundations of such a rigid and limited structure of representations constructed by the dominant system of media and representation. Mapuches are not warriors of the past, frozen in time, holding on to the last vestiges of “the old ways” with the help of anthropologists and museum archivists. They are very much part of a living, dynamic transformation that is occurring in the capital city of Santiago. They are creating their own representations of themselves and of the dominant Winka (occidental) cultural discourse. Embedded in an economic model that seeks to integrate Chilean resources (both human and natural) into the global economy under the banner of linear, short-term growth, perhaps this Mapuche “awakening” can also be an awakening for all Chileans, before it’s too late, before everything is lost to the all-consuming marketplace.

Wixage Anai focuses on a Mapuche radio program of the same name that is breaking the barriers of radial communication. As a primer for Mapuche culture in Santiago, the program is a precise example of a counter-discourse aimed at rescuing listeners from the representations monopolized by large media conglomerates that communicate solely commercial values and reinforce the corporate vision for Chile. The project centers on both the physical and abstract space of the radio program, which broadcasts primarily from a community-sponsored AM radio station (radiotierra.cl) in Bella Vista, Santiago. The radio program is produced by a Mapuche organization called Jvken Mapu, which is a communications center located in a neighborhood called Cerro Navia. The documentary project sets out to answer three fundamental questions. The first one has to do with the potential for alternative, listener-sponsored, media to play an important role in indigenous movements (in both cultural and political aspects) that are taking place in the urban centers of Latin America. In other words, what role might they play in the development of indigenous movements? The second question can be posited as follows: to what extent can alternative “discourses” representing indigenous value-systems call into question the tacit assumptions inherent in the dominant market culture? Lastly, and within the framework of alternative media, to what extent does the mass media manufacture consent in Chile and could alternative media outlets like Wixage Anai challenge this level of consent?

Farandula In Viña

We had a variety of interesting things go down here in the month of February. A few bridges collapsed due to neglect, a disco ball fell on an unsuspecting woman in a high-end night club (imagine the hangover), the ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet was left off the face of an official museum postcard showing Chilean presidents from 1970-2006 (eliciting outrage from a few confused Chileans and forcing the museum to retract the postcards!), and U2 played to a sold out national stadium causing a dozen women to faint. Most of the country is on vacation in February, including the government (who puts the country on auto-pilot); left at home are the “summer widows”. These are the men whose wives and children have hit the beach and have left them all alone to punch their clocks at work while their bosses are hitting more exotic foreign beaches. But this week, everyone squeezed back into Santiago to start working and studying again. Through the rear view mirror we see the beach, and over is the great Festival de Viña!

This event, which stretches for what seems like an eternity during the last week of the month, is a media intense and heavily scripted “explosion” of excitement. Various competitions are held in different music categories where international unknowns display their talents to a hopelessly bored audience of many thousands (this audience is referred to as “the beast”, supposedly for their total lack of mercy). Sprinkled in between the competition acts are various “big name” acts with small names who are invited to perform on stage. This is what makes the festival watchable…for many. All of this takes place in Viña del Mar, a city only a few miles from Valparaiso, historical port town in Chile’s fifth region. Local television is literally colonized by anything having to do with the event. Who’s coming, who’s not, who’s wearing the thing, who’s not wearing much, who’s showing more of their left breast, whose ass is firmer, and of course, who’s saying what about the others who also said some stuff earlier. It’s very much like what you’d get if you mixed the hoopla of the Oscars and the Grammy’s with a live multi-act concert and then removed anything that might be of interest.

Of course, for Chileans, the festival is where their own "celebrities" come out and stroll onto the red carpet, and therefore the actual event is permeated with a special dreamy aura of glamour, fashion, idolatry, and showmanship, at least that's the impression one gets watching it on TV. On the ground, it's clear that the hype surrounding the event is just an elaborate farce created to hypnotize and sell as much bullshit as humanly possible and as quickly as possible, an environment ripe for making lots of money; from the power-soft drinks, the nescafe instant iced coffee, the instant tooth whitening kit, the newest hair-styling products, the latest digital music gadget, and the next modern shaving appliance…to the designer labels, entertainment acts, music records, films, silicone breasts, and television time slots. Because the cameras are always on during the "Viña party" and the entire country is watching and sucking in every last detail, the marketeers descend with their fresh marketing claws and flock to the “show” like flies on shit.

But for the multitude of "fans" sitting outside the "star-packed" O'Higgins Hotel, the festival hype must appear to be something real. The excitement is genuine, the fans are physically present just outside the carefully designed media cage, the place where these consumers of dreams converge with the illusory products displayed by the farandula industry. “Farandula” literally means “a gang of homeless comedians”. Here in Chile, when you say the word “farandula” you’re probably referring to anything having to do with celebrities. The farandula industry is a relatively new phenomenon in Chile, but it is a rapidly growing industry that capitalizes on the curiosity of home viewers in relation to the rich and famous. The foot soldiers in the farandula industry are the “journalists” who make a living spewing whatever “information” their producers or editors deem marketable, or whatever information might be of interest to an imagined viewer. For example, an actress in a soap opera is dating the producer but doesn’t want to admit it, or the conductor of a program was seen holding hands with an Argentinean model at a closed party. The consumers of the farandula industry are always imagined by its producers to be desperate hoards in need of whatever gossip is available about famous people. Although it may be true that television viewers will suck on anything that’s put in front of them, this is strictly a one-way highway of information where the industry decides what it is that they should suck on. The curious thing, of course, is that the farandula “reporting” just happens to increase ratings as well as the overall success rates of the productions associated with the celebrity subjects. It goes without saying that most of the content that is “reported’ is elaborately planned ahead of time with this in mind.

Sitting at home, waiting for the opportunity to catch a glimpse of their favorite hero or god-like personality, are the hopelessly hypnotized public. Without them, none of this elaborate marketing frenzy would be possible. The festival, in the end, is just a multi-act show with awards and full of artists of no importance, but what elevates it to a higher plane is the Chilean farandula machine. Indeed, perhaps the people who get the most excited about this Festival De Viña are the self-proclaimed “periodistas del espectaculo” who mindlessly regurgitate any and all information about “famous” people. It would be an understatement to say that Chileans are obsessed with famous people, and this hypnotization is fed by the farandula industry. This multi-million dollar industry is a relatively new thing here in Chile and perhaps this is why those soldiers of the industry, those “periodistas”, get so darn excited and even froth at the mouth as they keep glued television viewers up to speed on the whereabouts, movements, confrontations, remarks, hairstyle choices, successes, and failures of those who are presented on television as important people or even artists. Who they meet, when they divorce, how they kiss, how they cheat each other, if they reproduce naturally or artificially, how their liposuction went, whether they had their breasts enlarged or reduced, who they cheated with and how they feel about it.

Not only does this industry make future generations of Chileans increasingly dumber by decree and susceptible to the disposable values it transmits, it also has a dangerous tendency to distract people from the real world, from our families and friends, from real problems that as a society we need to address together and which require our full attention. And perhaps the most alarming thing about the farandula machine is its no shame commercialization of everything, that it manages to convey, knowingly or not, the idea that the products they push every five minutes on the air during the programming are somehow part of this great world of success and “glamour” that supposedly everyone wants to be a part of. These products that are presented to us as our friends; they are part of the everyday fantastic world of the famous and if the public wants to be a bit more like their idols, then they better start buying shit immediately, and in installments.

Obviously, it’s not a secret that the corporations behind the products that are pushed every five seconds on these programs pay a hefty sum so that their products are aired. Less obvious, however, is the fact that more than the products, it is actually the viewers who are being sold. The channel that airs the program is actually selling our attention span to the corporations who want to sell other products. It’s outrageous to think that these corporations pay so much money for what is essentially exclusive space in our consciousness for hours at a time. I suspect that these captains of consciousness are seldom interested in educating the general public. In fact, the last thing they want is for people to think. They only want people to watch and to buy, that’s how the money is made. What better way to induce people to buy things they don’t need than to convince them that they are hopelessly inadequate. The farandula industry fulfills this role almost to perfection by fabricating and cultivating an entire self-referential network of celebrities, semi-celebrities, and quasi-celebrities who are on a daily basis paid to bring attention to themselves, generate controversy and project an image of material success. In essence, it is the industry of the cool, and the celebrities are the products that are put on the stage to dance, smile, look pretty, seem intelligent (and fight) in order to attract viewers who, in turn, become themselves the products sold to other corporations by the media conglomerates. Millions are invested in pumping up the lives of these “celebrities” so that they can seem appealing to the viewers who, after a while, begin to feel that their own lives are boring or unfulfilling in comparison. The farandula is the spectacle on the west side of the Berlin wall intended to impress those on the east side just enough to climb over the wall and join the market.

But West Germany wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be, and neither was the “free world”. In the end, behind all the hype, after the party, when everybody goes home, when the make-up comes off, when the limo is returned to the lot, when the buzz dies down, when the coke wears off, when the gel starts to flake, when the cameras are switched off, what you have left is a decadent, alcoholic, and shallow bunch of clowns who in the end begin to realize (they have to realize) that they’re prostitutes and that they’re being sold by the pimps of the industry in return for a false sense of superiority and a few pesos. Dirt cheap. And what is sold as success on the screens of Korean televisions, which you can buy in installments at the neighborhood megamarket, is really an elaborate puppet show of payasos vagabundos intended to milk you of your consciousness. Because success has little to do with misery, anorexia, lies, suicides, intimate secrets told in detail, jealousy, bulimia, plastic breasts, botox, ridicule, envy, women who look like they have the bubonic plague, laughing at the expense of others, or with money for that matter.