Chile
Spring 2004 | Volume III, Number 3
Table of Contents
Editor’s Letter →
by June Carolyn Erlick
Politics and Identity
Politics and Corruption
Since the beginning of Chilean redemocratization in 1989, numerous allegations of corruption in local government, the judiciary, ministries, public services and public enterprises have impacted…
Naked in Santiago
On a freezing winter Sunday morning in July 2002, four thousand people euphorically took off their clothes in a downtown Santiago park. Spencer Tunick, the American photographer working…
In Memoriam
We, the members of the social science community, mourn the profound loss of Norbert Lechner, a renowned Chilean social scientist. Born in Germany in 1939, Lechner visited Chile as a young…
Chile Today
Two divergent views seek to define Chile today. One tends to be self-complacent, optimistic and officialist. The other is more marginal, skeptical and sour…
An Identity in the World
English + Español
On March 4, 2004, Chilean Army Lieutenant General Mario Messen received a gust of heat on arriving at Touissant L’Ouverture Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Under his command the first 120…
Chile Has Changed
English + Español
A tourist or a foreigner on a business trip returning to Chile after a few years away receives a crystal clear impression upon arrival: Chile has changed. What he (or she) sees confirms press…
Focus on Economics
Poverty or Potential?
Teresa stops me three blocks from Nueva Imperial’s main plaza on a quiet Wednesday morning, eager to chat. She is wearing a light blue sweater and a matching blue headband glowing slightly against her dark black hair.
Freedom in Code
In January 2004, Congressman Alejandro Navarro Brain announced his intention to introduce Chile’s first piece of legislation requiring the use of free software in all branches of public…
A Foray into the Mystique of Chile’s Wine Industry
In the fall of my junior year, I sat down with the undergraduate advisor at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and announced that I would be taking myself to Chile…
Chile: The Lonely Success Story
Chile, with just 15 million people, is considered the paragon of open trade and the economic miracle of Latin America, a region where such miracles are rather scarce…
Citizenship: Diversity and Equity
Open Schools, Open Minds, Open Societies
Seventeen years of authoritarian rule leave deep scars in the people of a nation. They also leave deep marks in an education system. On a trip to Chile in June 2003 to study the effects of…
Migration
n the last decade, citizens from Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina and Cuba have flocked to Chile. They migrated to Chile with expectations based on the stability of the economic model…
Homosexual in Chile Today
Homosexual advocacy organizations appeared at the end of the 1980s as a social response to the HIV/AIDS epidemics and the fight for democracy. Homosexual groups such as Liber-H…
Gender and Chile’s Split Culture
Seven out of every ten Chileans (69%) believe that “Having a job is fine, but what most women really want is a house and children,” according to a July 2003 study by the Santiago…
Modernization a la Chilena
English + Español
On the 30th anniversary of the coup in 2003, Chile also celebrated two decades of practically uninterrupted economic growth and 15 years of peaceful transition from dictatorship to…
The Struggle of the Mapuche Peoples
English + Español
Chile’s Mapuche Nation, with nearly a million members, is becoming a central protagonist of the new Chilean political and cultural panorama. Since the beginning of the 1990s and with the…
The University Student Movement
English + Español
Almost three months ago, I witnessed an event that truly describes the situation of the students in my country. The elections for the director of the Federation of Students were happening at the…
Memory and Reconciliation
The Other 9/11
Like a bolt of lightning that illuminates a darkened landscape, attracting everyone’s attention, the recent commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the military coup of 9-11-1973 has…
Chile’s National Stadium
Chile’s national stadium became a national monument on August 21, 2003. Thirty years ago, just after the Pinochet coup, the National Stadium possessed the largest single prison population in the country. Today, the stadium joins other civil-society…
The Coup in Chile
English + Español
I was in England at the time of the coup. Like many observers it took me by surprise—I thought that, difficult though the situation was in Chile, somehow a compromise would be worked out…
From the Culture of Confrontation
English + Español
In 1969, two soft drinks sparked an episode worthy of the Cold War in Chile. The protagonists of this new clash were products from the same company, the essence of the image of imperialism…
Focus on Harvard
Three Students, Three Experiences
I was extremely impressed with how successful the Chilean health system has been in improving the health of its citizens despite its limited resources. Its success, however, in many…
Salamanca of the Southern Cone
A few decades ago, Chile was commonly perceived as a long, earthquake-prone country in South America with a tough human rights record that made even intrepid travelers wary. Today…
Magellan Telescopes
The center of our galaxy passes directly overhead Las Campanas in Chile. Velvet dark night skies and long stretches of clear weather provide extraordinary opportunities to study astronomical…
Health Reform Process in Chile
Doctors had been striking against the health reform laws two weeks before we arrived. Newspapers were full of debates over the proposed reform. We’d organized a course for 15…
Harvard in Chile
“So what’s Harvard doing in Chile?” is a question that I am rather often asked as program director for Harvard’s Regional Office of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin America Studies (DRCLAS) based in Santiago, Chile. There are at least three answers to this question…
ELEMENTAL
There have been two major movements in the history of social housing. The first one was in Germany in 1927, when, the best architects of the time tried to solve the problem of low cost…
The Other Chile: Art and Literature
A Country of Poets
A Celebration of Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) at Harvard’s Houghton Library honored the centennial of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s birth. Items featured include manuscript drafts of Neruda’s…
Contemporary Chilean Narrative
Toward the end of the 1970s, the upper class neighborhood of Vitacura in Santiago, Chile, gave rise to the Los Cobres and Bulevard Kennedy shopping centers. Chile’s first fullfledged…
Chilean Art
English + Español
Chile’s contemporary artists do not cling to any particular ideology. Rather, this new generation of artists seek to understand the recent past without a sense of guilt or victimization. They look…
Book Talk
El jardín pandémico
English + Español
Imagine the tranquility of a garden. With the aroma of flowers mixed in with the buzzing of bees and the contrast of shady trees against the fierce Paraguayan sun. From the intimacy of a family garden in which daily ritual leads one to water the plants, gather up the dry leaves…
Opening Mexico: The Making of a Democracy
The defeat of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known by its Spanish acronym as PRI, in the July 2000 presidential election was the anti-climatic finish to the process of democratization that…
Sociedad Civil, Esfera Pública y Democratización en América Latina
A civil society in Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru has contributed to democratic governance over the last two decades. Relations between civil society and State in this region are complex…