In today’s post, I want to talk about my native country, my people and their culture. In my opinion, as described in the title, we are out of the ordinary but this doesn’t mean something bad. I’ll explain to you why. 

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Earthquakes

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Chile is known for its wine (the cabernet strains was rediscovered in Chile), our football (soccer) players, our clear skies to watch the stars, our Torres del Paine National Park , our desert which is the driest desert in the world which is also the coldest at night, our terrains in the Antartica and yes, earthquakes, tsunamis and many other natural catastrophes.

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Every day we have tremors in Chile, most of them are not perceived by people because they are too low on the Richter scale, but others you can and they can vary in the length and the strength of it. Sometimes we have big earthquakes and tsunamis (cause by earthquakes) in different parts of the country. 

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*Fun Fact: Something incredible is that when there is a big earthquake in Japan, Chile received the tsunami and vice versa but they never touch Easter Island (Rapa Nui which means the belly button of the world) with is in their way, the locals say that the big statues called Moais are the ones that protect the island.

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I’ve personally lived an earthquake, one of the biggest in the world, in 2010. The biggest one with an instrumentally documented magnitude also happened in Chile in Valdivia on May 22, 1960, which was an earthquake, tsunami, cataclysm that left more than 40,000 casualties. 

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The night that I experience the earthquake, it was very scary. I felt very confused about what was happening but I’m not going to get into details about that night. I would rather write you about how we behave when something like that happens.

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It is a fact that most Chilean people don’t stop doing whatever they are doing unless it is an earthquake or a “tremor” higher than 6.5 on the Richter scale. Everything less than a 6,5 is basically a tremor for us. We tent to see how long it is going before reacting. If the seismic activity continues for more than 30 seconds, some people go to their backyard (which is a smart/natural reaction) and some people do something out of the ordinary. They stand up and hold their TV so it doesn’t fall. The funniest thing is that after a long tremor we tend to say, “This must be an earthquake somewhere else.”

Since we are prepared for these seismic activities, most of our buildings are built to handle many earthquakes, that’s why we don’t panic. At the same time in any city close to the ocean, there are alarms and rules, to keep people safe in case there is a tsunami, they usually go to a hill or to a safe zone in some high part of the city, in a very calm and organized way.

In Canada I don’t know how prepared they are for these things, so believe me if something like this happens in here, I’ll be the first running/escaping outside or somewhere safe, if there is still a place to escape to or from.

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Small houses, big TVs screens

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You won’t believe what I will tell you. People with  lower incomes that live in poor neighbourhoods, in tiny little houses, in some of the most dangerous places, that they don’t have much space for materials things, but no matter how tiny the house is or how poor they are, they’ll always have a huge flat screen at the bed footer or wherever they can fit the screen.

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At first, I thought that this was a ridiculous thing, they didn’t have money to buy basic things like food, clothing, etc, but they have those huge screens. Then I knew the reason why they have it.                                                                                         

 Firstly, it is their main source of entertainment but the most important thing is that it keeps their children inside, the more they are inside the safer they are. In marketing terms in the Maslow Theory of Needs for most people a TV would be in the “love and belonging” category or maybe in the “esteem” one but for the people in the poor neighbourhoods a TV will fulfill a more basic and important role it might fit somewhere between the two first levels the “safety and physiological needs”

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Our cuisine is out of the ordinary too

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I love Chilean food. I know coming from me it will be a real bias but it is very good.

Again, I’m not going to talk about how good it is. I’ll talk about two specific dished called “Empanada de Pino” and the Chilote Curanto.

1) “Empanada de Pino” known in Canada as meat pie. it is a ground beef and onion empanada with half (maybe less) of a hard-boiled egg, sometimes raising (which I don’t like), sometimes chilli peppers and one olive with stone and everything. The latter is the one about this title. We as Chilean we know the existing of the olive and its stone. That’s why we eat it carefully, looking for the olive to eat it separates. What we never realized is that foreign people don’t know and if they bite too confident, they might crash their teeth into the olive stone.                                                    

Who thought “I have a great idea, let’s make something soft like bread but inside let’s put a little pebble so people can break a tooth.” That might be the reason of when I eat “Empanadas de Pino” here in Canada they have a chopped olive with no stone😅.

Adding to that we also have not only “Pino empanadas”, we also cheese, seafood, ham and cheese and others.

So if you go to Chile and you eat an empanada, be careful, you’ve been warned.

To my Chilean reader, You’ve never thought about that, haven’t you?.

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2) Chilote Curanto: This is a famous dish from the south of Chile, specifically from Chiloe archipelago the Curanto consists in a combination of meats, seafood and vegetables, which are cooked in an underground pit on hot rocks, with different layers covered with giant tree leaves, from native trees from my country. 

Have you ever heard or seen anything like this dish from almost the end of the American continent?.

If you want to hear more about the empanadas or the Chilote Curanto or any dish from the Chilean cuisine, comment below and I’ll write about it 😉

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“Fiestas Patrias Celebration”

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We have a national festivity for almost a WEEK and we prepare all year for it. It’s called “Fiestas Patrias”. Most people believe that we are celebrating our independence on that day, but they are wrong. We actually celebrate the first government Junta, which was the first step that we took towards independence.      

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 It’s celebrated on the 18 of September. But we have the 18,19 as a holiday. In some places in the north of the country, in the city “La Serena” for example, they also celebrate the 20th because they got the news of the junta that day. By the way, the real independence day of Chile was the 12 of February of 1818 but we don’t celebrate that day for some reason, maybe because is in summer and most people like students is on holiday due that there is no school and people take their vacation days to spend them with the family, at least that’s what I heard. 

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If I said before that we have 2-3 days of holidays, why do I say that we have the whole week?. That’s why if the 18 and 19 are a Wednesday and Thursday they give us the Friday as a holiday plus the weekend. In total we usually have 4-5 days to celebrate the “Fiestas Patrias” where we eat barbeques, we drink and party the whole celebration. I also do that but for me is a family celebration. We do eat a lot, and party, but we do it in the family. Sometimes the whole family from my father’s side gets together, sometimes is a more small thing with my parents and siblings but it is always in the family.

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Fun Fact*: In these holidays, people that is drownded in debt, magically get the money from something called credit cards so they can drink and eat all week. They also the more vulnerable people are helped by the government and others by their companies since they give monetary bonuses so the people can enjoy these holidays.       

Chileans are reminded about this holiday the whole year by their credit card bills coming month after month, after month, after month…

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United but just in Crisis

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During the whole year, most of the Chilean people are self-centred, especially people from the capital city.                               

The country is politically divided. People from outside the capital don’t like people that live in Santiago. People from the soccer fans of the team A hate to death the fans from the team B, but there are 2 moments in the life of when the whole Chilean people feel united, that we help the ones in need.                                                   

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These moments are: When there is a natural catastrophe like, yes you guess it correctly, an earthquake, tsunami, etc., or when someone is in desperate need. We are there to help, and maybe work to stand on our feet together, but as soon the issue is fixed, we come back to our own routine and to mind our own business as nothing happened.

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The other time is when the national soccer team “La Roja”  plays, especially against one of our neighbours or in important games like a final. Our national fan group which is called “La Marea Roja” which means the Red Tide in Spanish, it is known across the world by how powerfull they sing our national anthem and how they cheer our team.

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Chilean Spanglish

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It is a fact, that only 3 to 5% of the Chilean population speaks English but we have incorporated many English words to our language and sometimes we’ve even changed a bit their meaning.  

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For starters, we use the word “sorry” a lot, with our pronunciation (Sori) but it has been almost completely replaced the Spanish words “perdon o lo siento”, but we never use it in a serious apology is more like if I step on you by accident kind of thing.

Instead of saying going to the mall to take a look, we say “I’m going for a “looking” to the mall“, instead of saying I’m ready we say I’m “liztaylor” which sounds like “listo” which means ready in Spanish. The word “liztaylor” comes from the name of the actress Elizabeth Taylor, but the reason for using it, I’m not quite sure, I think it just because we are weird 🤣.

And like that I could name you many other words, the list goes on and on.

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The vocabulary evolves too fast

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Most of the written above is why people think we are out of the ordinary.

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Now I’ll tell you why I think we are atypical.

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While living abroad, I missed the new hit songs that my friends listen to, I miss celebrations, events, etc. 

I was counting on missing those things but what I wasn’t counting on, is that when I meet my childhood friends, they speak to me with some slang words that I’ve never heard in my life. I have to ask for the meaning of the words. I feel like an old man trying to know what his child/grandchild is saying. I urge a dictionary with some of the new slang and I need it now.😫

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If it has been hard for me even though I have been away for only a short 3 and a half years period. 

In my time in Toronto, I have been teaching a few friends from Chile that had resided for over 40 years in Canada, how we speak Spanish back home. Trust me it has been hard because even when I understand them, due that they speak somewhat similar to my parents, they had a hard time understanding all the slang that is being used in our nation nowadays and why. 

Now, my friends in Curicó have to do the same thing for me sometimes, they have to explain some words to me. Now I know how the people in Canada feel. The ironies of life, right?.

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Chilean by heart

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No matter what happens, or how are we, I love being Chilean, I met Chileans that have not even visited the country for over 40 years that still as proud as I am for my country or even more than me.                                                                                           

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I love being Chilean. Every bit of it. The good, the bad and the ugly of it. It’s a huge part of who I am. 

I know that we are a bit different from everybody else but every culture has its own out of the ordinariness, that’s what makes your culture special and unique too. All that you need is to have empathy for other human beings.  

In my case, Chile Is where I was born and no matter what happens, I know I’ll always be from the southernmost country in the world, the end of the world. My homeland.

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Having said that being Chilean is the core of my identity, even if there is some Italian blood flowing through my veins, I couldn’t be more proud of being born and raised in Chile, adding to the mixed, the values that my parents gave me, with my education, with all that.

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Now, living in a different city and country. It’s up to me to complement the strengths of who I am to the values that living in this country can offer me, to know about other cultures with open eyes and mind. That is what I believe is the key to evolving as a human being.

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With those closing thoughts, I hope you’ve learned a bit more about who I am and a little bit about my country. If you’d like to know more about my people, leave your question in the comments, I’ll happily answer you. Have a great weekend and write you next time.