Monday, June 9, 2014

Barros Luco

Today is National Barros Luco day in Chile.

This Chilean version of a steak and cheese sandwich dates from the early 1900s, when President Ramon Barros Luco lunched regularly at the Confiteria Torres on the Alameda not far from the government buildings where he and his cousin, Minister Ernesto Barros Jarpa worked.  Barros Luco made it a habit to request a sandwich made with sautéed beef strips smothered in melted cheese (probably queso Chanco), and probably on a marrequeta roll. So, as the story goes, in 1910 when he visited the restaurant on the occasion of the nation's Centennial celebration, the sandwich was officially tagged as the Barros Luco, and since then has survived, actually thrived, with that name.

Ernesto also has a sandwich named after him, the cheese and ham version called Barros Jarpa.  While there are probably more Barros Jarpas sold than Barros Lucos, it seems there is no national day for the Barros Jarpa; the difference between being president and simply a Minister.

The Barros Luco is an older cousin to the Philly Cheesesteak, which seems to have been first served as such in 1930, and which is usually served on a hoagie or sub roll, and may be accompanied by onions, peppers, or mushrooms.  Wikipedia suggests that the cheese of choice for a Philly Cheesesteak sandwich is Cheez Whiz, which no self respecting Barros Luco would get close to.

If you want to celebrate National Barros Luco day, and are not in Santiago and can go by the Cafeteria Torres where you might be rewarded with a small Barros Lucito, another way is to do the following:

1.  Sauté some beef strips;  sirloin if you want it to be tender and easy to eat, or top round if you want it to be more similar to the Chilean ones, somewhat tough and chewy.



2.  Put the meat on one half of the roll, cover with cheese, and toast until the cheese melts.


3.  Place the other half of the roll on top, cut in half, grab a bottle of JB aji sauce, and enjoy.




Those in the know will accompany this sandwich with one or more bottles of Escudo beer.

Salud!!!!! 

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Pichi Newen


One night several years ago Luz Celia Lienqueo Castillo had a peuma…a type of dream the Mapuche believe is not just a vision but a type of premonition that must come true.  Luz’s peuma described in great detail the small piece of land she was to obtain and develop into her home on the road between Chol Chol and Nueva Imperial, in the Araucanía region of Chile about 700 kilometers south of Santiago and a bit west of Temuco.  As you can tell by her full name, Luz is part Mapuche and part huinca (non-Mapuche).  Luz’s father, originally from Nueva Imperial, found work and a wife in Valdivia where they had six children.  Forced to move to Talca in 1973, and then Santiago five years later in search of work, the family eventually settled into urban life but suffered a mountain of cultural and socioeconomic challenges and eventually a breakup.

El Peral, Araucania


Luz Lienqueo's home in El Peral
The ruka on Luz's property
During the period the Lienqueos lived in Santiago, Luz studied all types of dance, but developed into an accomplished Mapuche dancer, performing in official and private cultural events in hotels and restaurants in the capital city. Her summers, however, she spent back in the El Peral community near Nueva Imperial, where her uncle, Augusto Lienqueo, has a farm.  When Luz accepted the dictate of her peuma, she moved directly to her uncle’s home, bought a small piece of property on a nearby hillside, and began to establish her new home.  Today Luz has a three-bedroom home, raises pigs and chickens, and has planted a part of her land with eucalyptus trees “for her retirement income”.  She has also built a most attractive ruka, the grass-roofed building in which the Mapuche used to live, but which now serves mostly for important Mapuche family and community events (I separate family and community by huinca habit, but I don’t think Luz and other Mapuche see the separation as clearly as I).  The ruka comes in handy because Luz’s uncle, Augusto, is the Lonko, head of their El Peral community, so many official and social events are held there. One such event was on the occasion of a recent two-day visit my longtime friend Jerry and I made to El Peral and the Lienqueos.

I would not have met Luz Lienqueo and her uncle Augusto if it had not been for a serendipitous meeting with one of Luz’s daughters, Onesima, a student at the Universidad Andres Bello in Temuco.  One evening this past November, Onesima received a social innovation award in a ceremony in the auditorium of the Andres Bello University in Santiago for her project “Pichi Newen; Rescuing the Mapuche Culture”.  That night Onesima, dressed in her colorful Mapuche clothing, gave a moving acceptance speech, in Spanish and her native language Mapudungun, in which she described her project to instill respect, knowledge, and love of Mapuche culture in Mapuche children throughout the Nueva Imperial area.  The other award winners were impressive, to be sure, but Onesima exuded a combination of excitement and commitment for her project which piqued my interest to learn more. I searched her out during the following reception, and in response to my many questions about her project, her life, and the Mapuche culture she invited me to visit her in Nueva Imperial and learn more.  We kept in touch over the next few months, I back in the US and she back in Nueva Imperial where she lives with her two sons, Piero and Salvador, while attending university.

Ximena and I returned to Santiago in February this year, and soon after I received a message from Onesima that she was still counting on my visit, had arranged for the children in her project to provide a demonstration of their work, and that her mother, Luz, wanted to provide us lodging at her home in El Peral.  Ximena was not able to join me and my old Peace Corps buddy and erstwhile travelling partner from the US, Flick, was not in Chile, so I coaxed my friend and colleague Gerry, who lives full time with his Chilean wife in Santiago, to accompany me on this visit.  It made sense for Gerry to make this visit to Araucanía with me, because when we worked together as Peace Corps staff in Chile in the late 1970s, we placed many Peace Corps Volunteers in Mapuche communities in the area around Nueva Imperial to work in rural health, agriculture, school garden, and artisan projects.



Sculpture of First Mapuche
Gerry and I met Onesima at midday in the Nueva Imperial central plaza, a beautiful space framed by imposing wooden sculptures in each corner, carved by Mapuche artist Ildefonso Quilempan. At one corner of the plaza sits the first Mapuche Lonko Juan Luishuenul, and at another a sculpture of the Choike Purrun magical-religious dance.  In a third corner is a huge carving of the struggle between the good serpent Tren Tren which protects the land and the Mapuche people, and the bad serpent Kai-Kai filu which represents the fury of the seas when it observes misuse of the land.  Mapuche mythology teaches that “way back in time”, the sea serpent Kai-Kai filu rose up and began to flood the land, threatening the entire population with his fury, to punish the Mapuche for misuse of the land resulting in serious imbalance between the seven elements that together make up the biodiversity (Ixofillmogen) of life.  Tren Tren, in an effort to protect the Mapuche, raised the land high enough for some of the Mapuche to reach higher ground and survive the watery wrath of Kai-Kai filu.  The Mapuche who did not survive became fish and sea animals.  Today these two forces live on, in the form of the earthquake (tren tren) that comes as an early warning of the tsunami that usually follows (wrath of Kai-Kai filu). Having felt the strength of Tren Tren and observed the wrath of Kai-Kai in Concepcion on February 27, 2010, this myth does not seem too unreal to me. (Note: As I write this, Tren Tren and Kai-Kai filu are having their way with the northern coast of Chile, though it seems they may just be playing around for the moment.)
Sculpture of Domo Mapuche Woman
The fourth sculpture in the plaza is of the Domo (first) Mapuche Woman:  “Mediator between the ancestors and nature”; an appropriate starting point for our visit to Onesima’s Pichi Newen project.

Onesima and her two sons live in an apartment in Nueva Imperial, and visit Onesima’s mother, Luz, on the weekends.  Because of our visit, everyone had arranged to be at Luz’s house in El Peral for the rest of the day and evening.  As we drove up the path to Luz’s house, Onesima explained her project.  Based upon her mother's artistic and dance skills, Onesima formed a small group of teachers of dance, art, music, and poetry who visit the primary schools in the region regularly to introduce Mapuche customs to children who, while mostly Mapuche themselves, are not learning their Mapuche language or much about their own culture.  The children Onesima and her team work with are usually very reticent at the outset to even show interest in Mapuche culture; in fact many are ashamed to be Mapuche.  The immediate objective of her project is to reach as many Mapuche children in rural schools as she can, to begin the process of building knowledge of Mapuche culture and pride to be Mapuche.

Eighty percent of the comuna of Nueva Imperial are Mapuche, living in 186 indigenous communities divided into 28 territories.  About half of the communities have also obtained legal status within the overlapping Chilean political structure, resulting in the presence of “Presidents” of these officially recognized political units, who in many ways compete with the traditional role of the community lonko.  Over time, this dual system is diminishing the ancestral, inherited social structure of the Mapuche.  Onesima believes strongly that a comuna such as Nueva Imperial, with this preponderance of Mapuche, should and can reverse the progressive loss of such an important indigenous culture, and she sees her Pichi Newen project as just the first step in a major comuna-wide effort to rescue the Mapuche culture through greater cultural fluency and pride.

Luz, Dave, Onesima
The award Onesima’s project received at the ceremony late last year was sponsored by the ACCIONJOVEN program, a partnership between the Universidad Andres Bello and the International Youth Foundation’s YouthActionNet, a program helping form young leaders throughout the world.  This was the third year a group of young Chileans received awards through this program, so Onesima joins a growing network of two dozen young Chileans and close to a thousand young men and women from eighty countries who are linked together virtually through this very successful international program.  Besides a financial award to help Onesima build her program, she received instruction on creating a business plan for her project and other business management skills.  And she stays in touch with other members of the YouthActionNet who have similar projects and are experiencing some of the same problems, so she continues to grow and expand her ability to manage a program she hopes to expand in area and over time.

Luz and Onesima
Luz's home
We spent a lovely afternoon sitting around the kitchen table next to a crackling wood burning cook stove, talking with Luz about her life and Onesima about her Pichi Newen project.  Later Onesima’s two boys, and Mauricio, a friend of the family who is studying in the university to be a civil engineer, took Gerry and me for a walk along a path into the woods that surround Luz’s property.  We picked some bittersweet murta berries, gathered a couple of branches of culeo to take home for herb tea, and learned something about the spirits that reside in the Mapuche forest, the nehuenes, who must be consulted before entering the forest and especially before removing any vegetation.  Onesima joined us on this walk, and as we passed by a swampy area, she explained that wetlands, the menoco (humedales in Spanish), are critical natural areas for the Mapuche; it is here where the machi, the spiritual leaders of the communities, find the different herbs needed for special ceremonies and cures.  The progressive disappearance of these wetlands in Chile is a big problem.  I couldn’t help but reflect that the loss of wetlands in the US is also a problem, but not exactly for the same reason.  
Onesima, Piero, Salvador, Ayelen, Gerry & Mauricio
Gerry, Onesima, and Piero
  







We had been told that in the evening a group of important people would be arriving for a happening in the ruka, and sure enough by the time the sun went down the ruka was filled with about fifteen or so visitors.  We were introduced first to Augusto Lienqueo, Luz’s uncle and lonko of El Peral, and his wife Carolina Chihuahuan. 
Augusto and Carolina
Dave meeting Augusto Lienqueo
Augusto offered a drink of delicious chicha, fresh apple cider, from a cup passed around to each person who entered.  One of the oldest members of the community, Rosalva, came and accompanied Carolina most of the evening, as did another friend and neighbor, Nimia, who is a volunteer in the Hogar de Cristo’s home for elder members of the community. 
Salvador


Piero, Dave, Salvador, Luz
Rosalva and Carolina
Carla Santos, the huinca wife of Luz’s brother Alberto (who was not there) had been helping set up the ruka while her energetic daughter, Ayelen Lienqueo, played with but mostly teased the older boys, Piero and Salvador, all three dressed with colorful Mapuche clothing.  The last to arrive were Juan Constanza, local politician who has been concejal of the comuna for 12 years, and Virginia Garrido, Director of the Hogar de Cristo in Nueva Imperial.  Carmen Gloria Toro Chavez, a close friend of Onesima, accomplished guitar player and singer, and also a student in the University, had been with us all day helping to set up the evening’s event.

Onesima clearly has innate leadership qualities, and she is serious about taking advantage of the opportunity the ACCIONJOVEN award has given her to obtain more support and resources for her Pichi Newen project.  While all the invitees were sitting at a long wooden table along one side of the ruka, waiting for what was obviously going to be a delicious meal of pork, potatoes, and vegetables still being prepared over the wood coals at the center of the ruka, Onesima explained her dream (written up in great detail in a proposal she made available to everyone present) to create a cultural center in or around Nueva Imperial, based on her Pichi Newen project, in which she wants to set up the base for the series of workshops she will make available to all the children in the comuna; dance, painting, theatre, artisan products, and music.  Onesima’s pitch was fabulous, and in the smoky din of the center of their most important and spiritual meeting place, you could not help feeling a deep commitment to help her carry out her dream.  Never shy about making a speech, but even less so in this precise moment, I expounded on how attractive Onesima’s project had been when I first heard her describe it in Santiago in November, and how much more attractive it becomes the more Onesima develops it, how the simplicity of the approach, the utilization of mostly local talent and materials, all help to bode well for her success.  But the most important dimension, I emphasized, is that this project goes straight to the solution to the problems that abound in the World: the children.

When I was finished, Juan and Carmen Gloria each exclaimed how interesting the Pichi Newen concept is, and how much assistance they will give Onesima in the future, depending, of course, and the availability of “very scarce resources” in their respective institutions.  Onesima claims she has knocked on these doors before, and come up pretty much dry, but the timing for her to obtain significant support now may be right.  The incoming Bachelet government is certainly desirous of setting a new tone of dialogue and mutual respect between the Chilean government at all levels, and the Mapuche (and other indigenous communities, groups, and nations throughout Chile).   Only time will tell, but certainly there will be opportunities in the future, probably even the near term, where Juan in his official capacity, and Carmen Gloria from the relative moral high ground where her institution sits, may very well have a chance to call attention to and support Onesima’s Pichi Newen program.
Luz beginning her dance
Ayelen, Rosalva and Carolina
The speeches were finally over, the wine bottle and mate were being shared, and the music was starting.  The boys began tapping wooden staffs on the floor, Ayelen began slowly beating a small drum, the kultrun, and someone passed the circular horn, the trutruka to Augusto, and the group grew quiet and expectant.  In a crescendo of Mapuche rhythm, Luz began to move around the ruka, long skirts flying behind her, hands held high over her head at times and then again down by her side.  Urged on by the increasingly louder and severe blasts of the trutruka, she seemed to fly a bit, and then slink a bit; the combination was a beautiful and enchanting dance, which she continued for a lot longer than one would think possible.  No one else danced, and when she was done, I was exhausted.  While I can imagine Luz dancing like this in the elegant restaurant of the W Hotel in Santiago to the enjoyment of international tourists and business travelers, this night, in moonlit El Peral, her dance melded so seamlessly with the interior of her ruka that she and the place, as she danced, became one.  Any more description would do injustice to Luz’s dance, so I leave it at that.  Spiritual.

After a good night’s sleep, breakfast in the ruka of warm homemade bread, scrambled fresh eggs gathered from under the hens just minutes before, and steaming coffee heated up over the dwindling coals of last night’s fire, we drove to the nearby municipal school in Catrianche where all twelve students were anxiously awaiting our visit.  It was here where we were able to appreciate all Onesima had been explaining to me since our first meeting last November.  The students, all neatly dressed and sitting quietly at their desks in their one-room school house, greeted us first in Mapuche and then in Spanish.  Gerry and I were introduced, and then the children were told to get ready for their performance.  They cleared the room of the desks, set up a row of chairs at the back, and went to another room where they quickly changed into the appropriate Mapuche clothing. 
 
They were soon lined up outside the door, and when the music started, they began a fantastic show of dancing, singing, and poetry reading, sometimes in Mapudungun and other times in Spanish.  They were clearly happy to be performing, and proud to be Mapuche.  The show, which lasted about a half hour, culminated with a group song, alternating between Mapudungun and Spanish, which went like this:

Yo no quiero que el Mapuche se arrincone en su ruuukaaa..

Y que al son de la trutruca por el mundo vaya el!
 

Nuestra raza de valientes no puede morir ahorrrraaaa……..

Nuestra raza de valientes no puede morir ahorra !

Que el mapuche y sus mujeres se liberen de su arraaaiiiigoooo……

Proyectandose mas allá de sus lugares!


These kids, who not too long ago were not interested in projecting their Mapuche heritage or culture, with the patient and caring guidance of Onesima, her mother Luz, their friend Carmen Gloria, and volunteer teachers and artisans were standing in front of a group of visitors happily and with gusto proclaiming through song that they did not want the Mapuche to be cornered in their rukas, but instead that their story be heard throughout the world. 
Through this song they insist, with double emphasis that their valiant race must not die, must not die. 
Appropriately, their song ends with a challenge, mostly to themselves, that Mapuche men and women must free themselves of their constraining roots, and reach beyond their present domain.

As we were preparing to leave, the kids changed back to their regular street clothes and were beginning to return to their studies. Luz took me aside and introduced me to one of the youngest girls in the group, who was beautifully dressed in full Mapuche regalia.  During the songs and dances, she had been one of the most vociferous and active, and I had noticed that the other children seemed to always keep her in the middle of the action.  Luz explained that this girl's two grandmothers were machi, very respected spiritual leaders of their communities, and that this girl is destined to become a machi when her time comes.  Since that day, I have not been able to get the picture of that little girl, nor the words of their song, out of my mind.

 
Whether the animist-based culture of the Mapuche, with their belief that you should not take more from the land than you need, that the seven elements of forests, animals, volcanos, oceans, weather, wetlands, and humans must always be in balance with no one overpowering any other, can live side-by-side, or even within a Chilean society bent on more and more “maximization-based” development. Most non-Mapuche are indifferent, or even antagonistic, to the distinct nature and cultures of the Mapuche and other original native populations in the country.  Today’s conflicts over land, rights, services, political representation, and respect are based in yesterday’s policies and development programs, yesterday’s teachings and ignorance.  What happens tomorrow will depend on what people learn today.   One can only hope that the seed of cultural pride being planted with the Pichi Newen project in Nueva Imperial will grow strong and spread throughout the Chilean Araucanía.  Onesima, Luz, and her team of concerned and talented women are certainly doing their part to create a more peaceful Araucanía, through culturally fluent and proud Mapuche children.

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Dichato and Jessica's Mussels






Dichato, as seen from Pingueral
About a year ago Pilar, the social worker I met in Dichato where she is involved in community recovery programs with the most affected of the 2010 tsunami victims, told me “In ten years Dichato will be reinvented, more attractive than ever and with better services for visitors and townspeople alike."  So to coincide with the fourth anniversary of the earthquake, I made a visit to this lovely coastal town in south central Chile, this time with Ximena and my friend Ned, the Director of Harvard’s program in Chile that includes an interesting initiative to help very small businesses in Dichato get back on their feet.

I was looking for some evidence that Pilar’s optimistic prediction might eventually prove true, so we arranged first to spend some time with Martín, our host the last time we were in Dichato, to get his view of Dichato’s recovery.  Like so much of this part of Chile that was destroyed by the quake and tsunami in 2010, cursory observation and the statistics produced by the outgoing Piñera government suggest impressive accomplishments in the rebuilding of basic infrastructure. 


Martin
Martín confirmed that new communities of subsidized housing in and around Dichato now accommodate over 90% of those who lost their homes in the disaster.  The monumental seawall covered with a very attractive pedestrian walkway we saw being built a year ago along the entire beach area in front of town is almost finished.

The waterway that winds its way through the north end of town is
Extension of waterway
being fortified and redirected so its outlet is further away from where it originally emptied into the bay too near to the town’s beach, and a new bridge will soon link Dichato with the road north to Pingueral and up the coast. 
New coastal pedestrian walkway





Main Street
New bakery
New restaurant
 The four-block commercial area hosts new stores of all kinds of services and goods, restaurants have sprung up throughout the town, and the hotel on the main street looks invitingly comfortable.  Had this been the case four years ago when I passed through on the evening of February 26 looking, unsuccessfully, for a place to stay, I would surely be telling a different story.  All in all, you would have to say Dichato looks pretty good, maybe even vibrant for this time of year.
Meat market and other stores on Main Street
Main shopping area


 
New community for disaster victims
New community
 
 
 
 
 

 
Martín also confirmed what I had thought before the recent presidential election, that Bachelet’s unremarkable leadership of the immediate response to the 2010 earthquake and tsunami, although drawing considerable criticism at the time, did not seem to result in any significant residual electoral damage to her; she and her coalition won pretty broadly in this part of Chile.  Even though seven of the main officers in the disaster response organizations working for her at the time are still facing drawn out legal proceedings, some with criminal charges, she has clearly survived this event legally and politically.

Four years ago, these seven civil servants and many more of their colleagues were faced with making life or death decisions based on a myriad of data sources from Chilean institutions and from the US on the strength and location of the earthquake, and had to determine whether or not to warn the public of impending tsunamis and to order evacuations of the most vulnerable coastal areas.  The disaster response institutions within which they worked were poorly organized and equipped to deal with the enormity of the situation, and possibly worse still, they and their personnel were not well trained to analyze the incoming information and respond appropriately.  In spite of decades of prior disasters, including earthquakes, floods, and volcanic eruptions, and professional advice provided over the years from disaster relief specialists such as those working in USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, modernization of Chile’s disaster response mechanisms had been delayed repeatedly by successive governments.  So what happened is what had to happen; lives were lost due to slow and incorrect warnings and response was hampered by lack of good communications, data, and means to enter immediately and provide security and relief in the affected areas.

Over the past four years the Chilean government has made major efforts to upgrade their disaster response capacity.  The Navy’s oceanographic and hydrographic service (SHOA) has made what the director of that institution claims is a "technological leap, tripling the capabilities and drastically shortening data transmission times from their maritime stations".  They report to have spent over two million dollars a year for the past four years on this project, increasing the number of monitoring stations from 17 to 40, decreasing the transmission time of data from one hour to five minutes, and creating a new emergency shelter in the SHOA center where before there was none.

In Santiago, the new headquarters for the National Emergency Office of the Interior and Public Security Ministry (ONEMI) are about 75% finished.  This is the first step in a multi-year plan to strengthen the national capacity to respond to disasters.  The new building, totally antiseismic is being built to withstand an earthquake as large as the largest Chile has experienced, the 9.4 quake centered in Valdivia in 1960; the 2010 one was “only” 8.8! The new ONEMI headquarters boasts a high tech communications tower equivalent to 30 stories high capable of providing communications necessary for response institutions and the media throughout Chile to have valid information on a timely basis in times of disasters.  Lack of communications between important officers and institutions, including the president, ONEMI and the military officers in charge of SHOA, was one of the most flagrant weaknesses in the 2010 event. 

To instill better civil awareness and preparedness, communities throughout the country have been carrying out more disaster drills than before, and tsunami escape route signs have been put up throughout all coastal villages and towns to indicate the quickest way to higher ground.

So, as Piñera departs his four year presidency that was dominated by relief and reconstruction after the 2010 earthquake and tsunami (his initial economic program was pretty much derailed as a result), he proudly presents publicly and in his travels throughout the world a series of statistics that to him and his team prove a high level of success to bring Chile back from the devastation caused by this natural event right at the start of his term.  And the numbers bear out his claims:  of the 220,000 families left homeless, over 200,000 have been moved from temporary “aldeas” into permanent housing; the number of roads, bridges, schools, and health clinics built in this short period of time is truly impressive.  Most fair minded, non-partisan observers will agree the reconstruction effort to rebuild the basic infrastructure destroyed in 2010 has been successful, and in fact, the country is at a point where most people have seemed to move on, and are looking ahead rather than back at the event four years ago.

But turnabout is fair play, especially in Chile.  Just as Piñera was critical of Bachelet’s performance in the face of the disaster, Bachelet is preparing the grounds to diminish Piñera’s laudatory description of his performance over the past four years.  And right she is to do so.  She has named a special delegate to review the entire reconstruction effort, and report back to her so she can present the country with her analysis of how successful the rebuilding effort has been, what are the “real” costs to Chile, who profited from the selection of huge construction contracts, who is still waiting for some level of relief, and so on.  Bachelet has set the tenor for this report by suggesting publicly that “…without doubt the houses and infrastructure are important, but true reconstruction goes much further than the physical works…” done by the Piñera administration.   And of course she is right.  After all, it was a major disaster.  Many individuals, especially children, are experiencing post traumatic syndrome(s) and need therapy on a continual basis.  So much more has to be done at the community level where there are still people rebuilding their material and psychological lives.  The job is not done, so Piñera's claim of "Mission Accomplished", while understandable, leave much unsaid.

But much of what Bachelet’s report will say is needed was also needed before the disaster.  More and better hospitals, rural roads, churches, libraries, and police and fire fighting facilities are needed almost everywhere, not just because of damage from the earthquake, but also because Chile is still in need of basic socioeconomic development, especially in the regions distant from Santiago like that where Dichato is located, and in areas where poverty is still a daily reality.  A good inventory of these needs is a great place for Bachelet to start if she really plans to bring more geographical and economic class balance to the distribution of investment of public resources.  And what her report will most likely (hopefully) state is that the social fabric, the tejido social, of towns and villages, so key to prepare for, survive, and recover from natural disasters, and for the country to grow and develop in a more balanced way, is still sorely lacking since being essentially destroyed in the 1970s.  This is the dimension of the reconstruction program that has been missing over the past four years, and without a doubt Bachelet’s interlocutors will find overwhelming sentiment that social organization and more serious local participation in all levels of decision making needs her attention.  This of course she already knows; she has shown that she feels deeply about the need for this, and in fact ran her successful campaign on this issue.  What’s not so obvious is whether she and her new team know how to address these needs in a sustainable way without dictating approaches and centralizing programs.


Every year since the tsunami, Dichato has hosted a big music festival “Viva Dichato” an event meant to attract visitors who might spend a few days and plenty of pesos supporting the businesses that have been reopened and new ones that have moved into town.  This multi-day celebration, staged on the new walkway next to the beach and televised throughout Chile, besides bringing visitors and their money into the Dichato economy, has enlivened this town and her people who were so depressed by the terrible events now just four years ago; it has become very important to the town.


But, now that the houses and buildings are almost all built, the roads and bridges almost all repaired, the street lights installed, and the “Viva Dichato” entertainers have moved on to the next concert venue, the really difficult job of community organization and sustainable business development begs attention, or what appears to be progress will be fleeting.  Dichato is a vacation town, for the most part dependent upon seasonal tourism limited to a three to four month period in the summer when the population of the town grows from the normal level of 4,000 residents to around 12,000.  Businesses have to make most of their income during that period. Some close the remainder of the year, while a few stay open all year long at a much reduced level of activity to serve the full time residents and what few tourists do come to Dichato in the off season mostly on long weekends.  Over time, it seems to me, Dichato must attract more off-season visitors, and to do so they have to provide a higher level of service (restaurants, hotels, activities) than they have in the past.  They have to develop new and higher quality employment and income generating businesses.



In the first year after the disaster, a Harvard program called “RecuperaChile” made small amounts of money available to individuals and very small businesses,  like the woman who runs the newspaper and magazine kiosk on the main corner of town (her kiosk was completely washed away in the tsunami, so she received enough from the program to get a new one and open up very soon after the disaster) and another who is now renting kayaks on the beach, an activity that could be lucrative throughout the year, not just in the summer, given Dichato’s relatively benign climate.  Both seem to be doing well after about three years of operation, and that’s a good sign.  And of course we checked in on Don Mino, who runs the seafood restaurant he rebuilt after the tsunami just north of town in Caleta Villarrica with assistance from CORFO, the government development corporation.  
Don Mino's restaurant

Mino's fried merluza
Mino is clearly thriving in part because he serves the best fried merluza (hake) in town.  Here’s a tip if you visit Don Mino’s place: he also will make available some local pipeño, the fresh homemade wine produced in the Maule and Bío Bío regions from traditional grapes like País, which is making a comeback after years of relegation to the backrooms of rural pubs and rustic eateries called picadas.  To get a bottle of this, though, on the day we were there, we had to order “Sta. Emiliana” with a wink of the eye to Don Mino, and he delivered it to our table in a refilled bottle with a napkin stopper rather than a cork.  Other days I suppose it may have another “label”.  The first restaurant to open after the tsunami, Donde Eduardo, was closed when we tried to have dinner there on this visit, but it looks like he, too, is doing well.  These two restaurants, and probably a couple of others in the center of town that we have not visited, represent the type of eating facility Dichato needs to attract more visitors throughout the year from the surrounding cities of Chillán, Concepción, and Tomé.


Programs like Harvard’s “RecuperaChile”, because of the involvement of academics who have specific research objectives driving their interest to work in Chile, have the inherent potential to draw attention to opportunities for individual and community development in places like Dichato where so many economic activities were brought to a screeching halt only four years ago.  The experts and energetic students who participate in the program, alongside colleagues from the University of Concepción and local authorities, bring “new eyes” and fresh perspectives to the local problem-solving dynamic, and can inject new levels of commitment to old ideas yet untried but with potential. 

 
 
When I try to imagine Pilar’s “renovated Dichato”, I am tempted to see a small coastal town like several I visited recently in Crete.  This image would have Dichato offering several very nicely decorated restaurants along the water’s edge; Don Mino’s and Donde Eduardo’s with one or more additional stars, and several new, small eateries operating out of the eye-catching “palafito” houses built with government subsidies in the neighboring harbors of Villarrica and Coliumo.  And in town, there would be several places where the menu would also feature seafood so abundant (at times) along this part of the coast of Chile.  My image has people flooding into this "renovated" Dichato during the summer and on weekends throughout the year because of these restaurants and the top notch service, high quality food, and unparalleled beauty of the bay.  Jobs in these restaurants would require a certain level of training and would pay quite well.  Sanitation would be a major focus of the authorities, not only in the restaurants, but also throughout the town generally. 

Jessica Cabrera
So what would it take for this to happen?  In my scenario, it takes a Jessica!  And lots of mussels!  And maybe some oysters and scallops! 


For our visit to Dichato, Pilar arranged for us to meet with Jessica Cabrera, resident of Coliumo, fisherwoman, shellfish diver, and the type of person who, immediately upon meeting, exudes “game changing” personalities.  Jessica is not just someone who fishes; she has become a self-taught mariculture expert and producer, having studied industrial scallop, mussel and oyster farming in southern and northern Chile, and courses at the University of Concepción. 
She is a tough nut, and having struggled with the maritime bureaucracy for ten years to obtain a mariculture concession in her bay, is now the proud but frustrated owner of an 11-hectare section of Coliumo Bay where she began farming mussels only to have the whole operation washed away in the 2010 tsunami, before she was able to have her first harvest.  



Caleta Coliumo
Ximena and Ned observing longlines
Oysters growing in "lanterns"
She took us out in her boat with her brother at the helm, and showed us the two longlines of mussels she is now managing, as well as a few wire cages called "lanterns" hanging from the lines with young oysters. 


Ropes with mussels ready for harvest


Jessica's longlines
Oyster seeds come from southern and  
northern Chile, but the mussels spawn locally.  If she grows scallops, that seed will have to come from northern Chile, probably Tongoy near Coquimbo or further north in Bahia Inglesa, near Copiapó.  
Oyster "lanterns"


But Jessica is facing huge challenges, not least of which is jealousy and maybe some sabotage from her neighbors and fellow fishermen.  Jessica would like to have her entire concession filled with mariculture longlines, but to do so she needs to associate with other fishermen, which she claims should be possible right now since so many fishermen are out of business because of the scarcity of wild fish and associated restrictions to their habitual fishing.  But fishermen are notoriously untrusting, competitive, and tend not to join commercial cooperative arrangements.


Artisan fishing boats
merluza pescada (hake)
Through the Harvard program, a group of business management students spent time in Chile analyzing Jessica’s situation and they have produced a draft market analysis and related business plan which, if brought to fruition, might provide the impetus and the economic wherewithal to fulfill the vision of Dichato as a vibrant year round seaside destination.  Jessica is working on ways not only to get more of her neighbors and colleagues (and hopefully some friendly investors) committed to her project, but she is pursuing ways to establish a shellfish hatchery in the area so she does not have to pay high transport costs for the seed she uses in her farm.  Jessica clearly has the required entrepreneurial personality and skills for her project to take off.  As we talked with her she kept feeding my Crete-induced vision of the future Dichato with her ideas of producing high quality gourmet seafood products to sell to restaurants and individuals in Dichato and surrounding towns, even in the large city of Concepción, of establishing a seafood museum or exhibit of some sort in the local market (Mall Dichato) to 
Dichato market area converted from emergency eateries
educate visitors on the ocean environment and seafood production, and even boat tours into her mariculture farm to give visitors a firsthand demonstration, including fresh samples, like she did with us during our visit.

Could Jessica and her mussels be the basis of a game changing initiative for Dichato?  It sure seems possible; with more assistance like that provided by the Harvard students, creation of some sort of cooperative organization that includes other fishermen, technical assistance from the University of Concepción and others working on mariculture, and a good dose of good luck, and Jessica may prove to have the nugget of a big deal for Dichato and her neighbors.




While we were bobbing up and down in Jessica’s boat, listening to her story and plans, her brother was slowly and meticulously gathering a sack full of mussels from one of the ropes they have lowered below the longlines.  Once on shore, Ned, Ximena and I put the sack of mussels in the trunk of my car, bid farewell to Jessica who was going to return to the longlines to do some equipment tending, so we headed towards one of the neighboring palafitos (those weird looking houses on stilts) that now houses the restaurant “Tía Paula”. 

Tia Paula's palafito restaurant in Caleta Coliumo


Cleaning congrio
View from Tia Paula's Restaurant
Fisherman with bucket of congrio
Due to have lunch with Martín a bit later, we were not looking for anything to eat, maybe just something to drink, but as we approached the restaurant, two men were cleaning freshly caught congrio right by the path we were taking down to the restaurant.  We watched them skin and debone this tasty eel-like fish, and in the process we gave in to the hunger we had been developing during our visit with Jessica, so instead of the intended soft drinks, we ordered a cold bottle of white wine and several fried seafood empanadas, and sat quietly, looking out over the Coliumo bay at the lines of buoys marking Jessica’s seafood farm, and let our imaginations run away to a time when the travel sections of most leading newspapers would run articles entitled “Dichato: World Renowned Gastronomical Paradise for Chilean Mussels, Scallops, and Oysters!”

That night, after a wonderful lunch at Don Mino’s and a long nap, we were invited to Martín’s home in the center of Dichato for “onces”, the traditional Chilean afternoon tea.  Usually Chilean “onces” is any combination of toasted bread, jams, mashed avocado, scrambled egg, fresh cheese, and tea or coffee.  We had given Martín the mussels we received from Jessica, but we were pretty much convinced those mussels would not be served for “onces”, and that since we were leaving the next day, we probably would not get to taste them.  Pleasant surprise!  As we sat at the table discussing Spanish recipes with Martín’s father-in-law, Don Fructuoso Biel (author of the cook book entitled “El Fogón de Don Fructuoso”, Martín’s wife, Marisol, placed in the middle of the table, a steaming pot of Jessica’s mussels, flavored not only by the cool waters of the Coliumo Bay, but also a mixture of feathered onion, chopped garlic and parsley, and laurel leaf.  The tea and coffee cups were quickly carried off to make room for the wine goblets and, well, you know the rest.

We had planned our visit to Dichato to coincide with the fourth anniversary of the February 27 event (4:30 AM, more or less), thinking that surely there would be some sort of public community event.  There was none.  What was scheduled, apparently, was a small religious service in the evening, before the sun went down, on the beach.  We were so caught up in the euphoria of Jessica's mussels, that we forgot we had thought about going to the beach for the service.  However, a woman who helps Marisol when she has guests did manage to slip away to the beach, but soon returned to report that "almost no one showed up, so I came back".  So maybe most have decided it is time to look ahead.  And we agreed we should do the same. So we ended our visit to Dichato with a toast to Jessica and her mussels,
to Pilar’s community development work, to Harvard University’s willingness to accompany Dichato through their tough recovery period, and of course to Martín, Marisol, and Don Fructuoso, who have added so much flavor to our visits to Dichato over the past four years.


Martin, Pilar, Dave, Marisol
 


Posted in Santiago, Chile, on March 26, 2014.