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.