pt at large

Dispatches from Chile: A Day On The Farm, part 1

January 30, 2010

Chllefarms, Nogales, Chile, Region V

 

 

 

 

 

Dispatches from Chile: Los Dulces de La Ligua

Part 1
The wash of a speeding two-ton, twenty wheeled semi trailer at ten paces can rock you back on your heels. It’s 90 degrees in the shade. You could fry an egg on the black asphalt. And there you are on the roadside hawking empanadas, sweets, avocados, fruit, water, or anything else you think has a prayer of selling today.

You’re one of the thousands of vendors who line the busy highways in central Chile every day. Some operate from a series of stalls on short pull offs. Some operate from a small shack a few paces from the road. Many set out hand painted signs in big black letters saying what and how much. Some work solo. Some in pairs, and some work with the whole family constellation. 

Sooner or later, one of these vehicles is going to hit the brakes and pull over to buy what you're selling. Maybe it's this next car...or the next one...or the next one...or the next one...

Part 2

Chilenos flock to the coast by the thousands during the summer. This is late January, equivalent to July in New England. Our VW Golf is doing 70 mph, heading north on Route 5, the meticulously maintained four-lane highway that runs up and down the spine of Chile.

There’s not much passenger rail service here (since Pinochet did away with trains during his tenure in office 1973-1990) and this perfectly level highway is full of massive semi trailers, commercial Pullman passenger buses, Citroens, Peugeots, Toyotas, and the occasional motorcycle that sounds like a honey bee on pure ethanol when it passes you doing eighty.
 
About a half hour before arriving at today’s destination, the sleepy Pacific seaside hamlet of Los Molles, the scrub scenery is blurring past, and we seem to be in the middle of nowhere.

Abruptly, the roadside comes alive. It appears that scores of vendors have been airdropped out of the blue and are on a mission. Every one of the vendors spread over the next ten miles is dressed in white. As soon as your vehicle appears as a dot on the horizon, they frantically wave white pom poms as if someone needs immediate medical attention.

"What’s going on here?" I ask my hosts Ricardo Ceriani and Susaan Straus.
"They’re selling dulces de La Ligua," Ricardo says.

I didn’t realize it but we were running the sweetest gauntlet in Chile. The town of La Ligua was miles away to the east. Lord knows how these vendors got here. There is no sign of car anywhere near any of the Frosties.
 
Ricardo slams on the brakes and pulls up in front of a tiny green and white sun canopy.

One of the two smiling women steps forward. With a delicate gesture, she removes a white towel from the top of a tan wicker basket and displays a collection of confections of several shapes and sizes.
 
"An assortment for my friend," he says, and hands the lady 2000 CLP (Chilean pesos). Using a plastic tong, she carefully fills a paper bag with goodies. I’m about to taste some of the most famous sweets in central Chile, Los Dulces de La Ligua (the sweets from La Ligua).
 
Wow, where to start! These are small, donut size goodies made with wafers and manjar (steamed condensed milk) covered in light as a cloud meringue, or cake and manjar topped generously with powdered sugar. At a bake sale in America, I can identify every item on the table. Not so here. The wafer and meringue sweets seem to weigh nothing and melt instantly in my mouth.

My favorite, I learn, is called a mantecados, a cone shaped baked treat filled with a paste of almonds and lard (don’t tell my PCP). My fingers are sticky and covered with powdered sugar within seconds.

Susaan says the sweets might be home made. Research that night reveals that there are nearly two dozen sweet making factories in La Ligua and a long history of how the sweets came to be associated with the small town miles away.

The presentation in a wicker basket is a tradition. The Public Health Service has issued an edict requiring acrylic boxes in favor of the traditional wicker but wicker carries the day today. 

Photo courtesy comunidad.muchoviaje.com

The government requires the vendors to be licensed, and that they give receipts for each sale. The women will leave their positions when they’ve sold what they brought today. They may have made the items at home but more likely purchased from a local factory.

What drives roadside entrepreneurs like this? If I spoke fluent Spanish I might have learned the answer. Like many Americans, they may be doing this to supplement their income or they may be unemployed.

What is clear is that the oven like heat doesn’t deter them. All they have into this is their time and they’re willing to spend it any way they can to improve their economic situation. The beneficiaries today are motorists like us who buy their treats.

Photos by Paul Tamburello unless otherwise noted

 

 

 
 

Dispatches from Chile: Pruning the Orange Trees

 
There are hundreds of orange trees here at ChileFarms. Maintaining them - water, fertilizer, chemicals to thwart insects, is part of the cost of growing them. Pruning the trees during growing season is a never-ending job.
 

One of the main reasons to prune the trees is to prevent infestations by the dreaded chonchito blancos, the fuzzy white little insects that can ruin the fruit if left to multiply.

Before pruning

 

 The chonchito blancos thrive in the dark center of the orange tree and in places, dark and moist, where leaves touch and moisture collects. The biggest job for several weeks is to find the portal, in which large branches have been pruned away to gain access to the center of the tree close to the trunk, and prune out the ‘suckers,’ new shoots of branches that block sunlight from entering the center area of the tree.

After finding the 'portal' and pruning the center

 

Once cleared of these new shoots, more sunlight pours into the center and less chance for the chonchito blancos to begin feasting. Once the bugs get a head start in the shady center area, they move outward on the tree where most of the oranges fruit, and begin to infest them.

 
pt at large has spent some nights and days in the orange grove learning what to look for, and how to prune efficiently. Some of the trees have prominent thorns, which an expert like Ricardo Ceriani knows how to avoid. Gringos like pt learn the hard way. This morning, Jose Pablo, one of the managers for the farm, laughed when he saw my arms and asked Ricardo if I’d been in a fight with a big cat.
 

The best time to prune is between 7 pm when the temperatures lower down from the 80s until 9:15 or so, when dusk settles into night. It’s a good feeling to look back one hundred yards and see the path littered with thousands of green suckers that we’ve pulled from the trees.

 

Pruning away

Pulling out a handful of new shoots in the middle of the orange tree

Susaan, Ricardo, Paul at 9:15 pm. Ricardo's nephew Cristhian was on the crew and took this photo.

Cristhian and Ricardo

 

 

Dispatches from Chile: A Symbiotic Relationship

 
 Emilio knew a good thing when it came along. Patrón (pronounced pa-trone) of ChileFarms Ricardo Ceriani has several acres of dry corn stalks on his hands after the corn’s been harvested. Emilio can’t afford to buy alfalfa (pasto) for his cattle in nearby Hijuelas. If Emilio cuts down the stalks and carts them away, they’re his for free.
 
Within days, the corn field looks like the aftermath of Sherman’s March to the Sea. Bare. Emilio has methodically cut the stalks, row by row, to within inches of the ground.
 

That was the easy part. He laid the stalks in small piles. After cutting a row, he wrapped his arms around a bundle weighing about thirty pounds and walked it to his cart and laid it in. When the stack got too high to arrange from the ground, he laid a wooden ladder at the back of the cart and climbed up.

The field is 180 feet wide, 300 feet long. There were just over 100 rows of corn.

There are hundreds of piles.

Stamping on the pile to compact it each time, the load grew to massive proportions. When the load began to spill over the sides of the cart, Emilio stabbed sturdy cornstalks vertically along the cart’s rails to extend the height of the load. There would be no unnecessary trips back to his farm.
 
At his farm, he’ll chop the stalks into short pieces. He’ll husk whatever corn he finds and feed the kernels to his chickens. The corn stalks feed the cattle. Emilio slaughters some cattle for meat for his family and sells offspring of the cattle on the market for more income.
 
Ricardo says landowners with large tracts of corn shred the corn stalks by machine. They store them in silos, a layer of shredded corn husk, topped with a layer of corn kernels and salt, then repeating the layers.
 

Emilio worked for hours at a time. Like compesino Don Pedro who works the fields at ChileFarms, Emilio rarely stops moving. The arduousness of the job doesn’t enter his mind. It’s an opportunity. He takes it. This is what life is like among the country poor.

Photos by Paul Tamburello

Dispatches from Chile: Vigilant Parking Agents and Entrepreneurs

 

Within 60 seconds of parking on one of La Calera’s main streets, a middle aged woman in a blue uniform appeared, jotted something down on a thick pad, and left a small slip of paper on Ricardo’s VW Golf. What’s going on, I ask him.

Thus begins the subject of today’s dispatch: parking fees.

In La Calera, a person may apply to the city for a job as a parking agent. Once appointed, the agent is required to issue an assigned number of parking permission slips each day from 8 am till 7 pm.

When you park, she is at your car within minutes, writes a slip with the time of your arrival and places it on your windshield. The longer you stay the more you pay. The fee in La Calera, 130CLP per half hour, about thirty cents US.  By the time you’ve settled in your car seat to leave, she shows up, collects the fee, records how much you paid, hands one copy to you, another she will give to the city collector (Concession Municipal Control de Estacionamiente) when she signs off for the day, and she will be taxed accordingly.

She is very vigilant. Her job depends on it.If she doesn't issue the required minimum of permits per day, she’s gone and so is her modest salary of 120,000 CLP per month, about $350.

There is also the matter of dignity. When I ask permission to photograph her, she smiles, removes her blue hat and scarf, primps her hair, and strikes a pose that says I am part of this city, I am proud of my job - and myself.

In nearby Quillota, a larger city, the parking agent works for the city under a unique arrangement. The agent rents a street or block from the city of Quillota. The agent collects parking fees, similar to the La Calera system, and pays for the rental of the street or block from what he she collects. Anything above what the agent pays the city stays in his pocket after he (the agents here are all men) reports to the city each day.

Receipts are must be given for every transaction. Citizens are required to take a receipt for every transaction - tolls, market, gas station attendants, phone bills -  just about any transaction in which money changes hands.

According to my host. Ricardo Ceriani, born in Quillota, this is a way the government makes jobs for people. They wont make big salaries but if they weren’t doing this, what would they do, he says. 

Employment possibilities for minimally educated people, and that is most of the people in the countryside, are limited to that of clerks, sidewalk sweepers, fruit pickers, farm laborers, sales people in one of the hundreds of shops in any city, sidewalk concessionaires, the list goes on.

Chile offers a hardscrabble existance for many of the country's 16 million inhabitants who live in rural areas. This is a country of scarcity, the abundance of crops growing in this fertile valley to the contrary. Like in USA, well paying jobs are hard to find and impossible for the under educated, which is most of the country.

In Chile, any way to make money is considered. Including thievery. A young man at Ricardo’s birthday party asserts that even honest people are tempted to steal. When they see that a thief can bring in more money in one day than they can make in one week, it tempts moral resolve. Sound familiar?

It’s certainly the case in Boston, my hometown. It makes you wonder how the moral code is embedded in some and not in others and why more poor neighborhoods don't devolve into desperation.

From what I understand of the scarcity of money in their households, I wonder if under the seemingly bucolic surface exists a layer of uncertainty in the lives of the inhabitants in nearby La Pena and La Calera. Yet, this is not a dour country. Laughter always breaks out in conversations. It is genuine and contagious.

Chile is a country of contradictions. The people around my neighborhood here in Nogales embody all of them.

Photos by  Paul Tamburello

Dispatches from Chile: A Birthday On The Farm

Nogales, Chile

January 23, 2010

Guests arrive at ChileFarms on a sunny Saturday with a breeze strong enough to liberate napkins not anchored with silverware and gentle enough to keep us cool in the shade of the farmhouse’s wraparound porch. Huge bowls of salads, potatoes, and Ricardo’s birthday cake, made by his sister Uka, are paraded into the kitchen.

This is the kind of extended family party I remember as a kid, the kind where people fully intend to spend the entire afternoon here, the kind where people don’t sandwich it in between ten other things going on in the day but sweep away everything else and are present fully for the get together.

No one is checking a Blackberry, cell phones don’t ring during the long dinner (and everyone at the table owns one, including 16 year old Marcelita). The only one of the twenty people not toting a cell phone is Mateo, son of Barbarita and Esteban, who is ten months old).

From 1:00 PM until 7:00 PM the whole family sits on the porch overlooking the onion fields, orange groves, and on this clear day, even Mount Aconcagua, the tallest mountain in this region, gazes stoically from a distance, perhaps longingly, at these humans having so much fun together.

The group continually realigns after dinner between the long family style dinner table that is erected at every family gathering, to the low chairs with fluffy cushions that practically sing you a lullaby if you get too comfy.

Three generations of family have come from as far away as Santiago 70 miles away and as near as Quillota ten miles away to while away the day.

There is lots of laughter, stories told, many of them animated with gesture and mugging, gossip traded, and personal lives updated.

Marcellita, having been given tiny sips of tequila by her cousin, Mateo’s mother Barbarita, snuggles with her aunt Erica (Ricardo’s sister) on one of the low cushy lounge chairs..

Even the five dogs traipse by from time to time in search of some head scratching or handouts from the table.

As the sun sinks lower, bowls are retrieved, hugs and kisses distributed all around, extended goodbyes said, and a caravan of family retreats down the gentle hill on which the farm is perched. The last view is of hands poking out the car windows, waving goodbye.

 Photos by Paul Tamburello

Dispatches from Chile: Raucous Ride Down The Rumble Road

One of my daily routines in Nogales was to take a late afternoon four mile bike ride to the outskirts of Nogales and back. I had recently discovered the capability of my digital camera to make videos. Michael Moore, look out.

There are more videos to come but not any fun as this one. It started as I finished my ride and entered the gate into ChileFarms from the main road then barreled down a long gravel driveway with orange groves left and right.

The tricky part was holding the camera with one hand and holding on for dear life with the other especially while clattering over the rickety wooden bridge that spans the canal from which the farmers in this valley divert water to irrigate their crops.

Over the bridge to the right is a just-cultivated field in which potatoes, cauliflower and brocoli will be sewn and more orange groves to the left.

The farmhouse is barely visible on the little hill straight at the end of the road.

I'm heading for the barn (to be featured in an upcoming video!) where the road bike my host Ricardo Ceriani has fixed up for me is kept, with his truck, several horses and other farm implements.

Heeeeeerrre we go...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9fyo1m5YnQ

Photo and video by Paul Tamburello

Dispatches from Chile: A "Completo Classico"

 

It’s a hot dog with the works, Chilean style. We’re talking about a completo. A completo "Italiano” is served with avocado, diced tomato, and heaping mayonnaise. A completo “classico” is served with avocado, diced tomato, a huge layer of mayonnaise and sauerkraut. Mustard or ketchup are commonly  added. Calories are not a priority. They're also served in "super" sizes

Avocados (paltas) are grown on trees by the millions in the central valley of Chile. The nearby city of La Cruz bills itself as  "la capital de la paltas."

 
You can buy completos in cities, towns, and everywhere in between. The son of one of ChileFarms employees used to plead with my host Ricardo to take him to nearby Nogales so he could eat a completo.
 
I tried a "classico" at a storefront on the corner of the busiest street in Viña del Mar. Think of a hot dog nestled in its warm roll then piled to the tipping point with the “classico” ingredients.

 
 This is an awesome sight. The people next to this gringo at the narrow counter  laugh when they see my eyes pop as the waitress places it in front of me on a small platter . Remember how you spend a minute or two figuring out how get your hands around a huge grinder back in the USA without spilling, dripping, and dropping everything that’s inside it?
 
Same here except add the thought of where you’ re going to have to be hosed off once you’re done.
 

There’s a prodigious pile of sticky paper napkins in front of me when I finish, but hey, most of it is inside me.

 

Your trip to Chile wont be complete without sampling a complete (sorry, couldn’t resist).

Photos by Paul Tamburello

Dispatches from Chile: Cajón del Maipo

When the temperature hits 90 degrees, Santaguinos ask themselves a simple question to escape the broiler for the day, East or west?

Viña del Mar and miles of beach lie about an hour away to the west. Cajon del Maipo, a steep mountainous canyon, is about an hour and change by car to the southeast. Chile is about as long as the trip from Boston to LA, but only 150 miles wide, at most. Santiago is approximately in the middle.

To the east we go. Our guide today is Judy Ress, whose deep knowledge of Chilean culture has been gained by thirty years of working with the poor and indigenous as a lay missionary for the Maryknoll Mission (Judy admiringly called the order "the marines of the missionaries").

Thirty minutes from Santiago we’re in a pack of buses, trucks, and cars heading up windy two lane roads into the Andes. Much of the steep, craggy land is inhospitable. The reddish brown torrent of the Maipo River comes into view. The river pounding down from the Andes has been gouging its way deeper through this valley for eons. The road follows the river up into the mountains. The only high rises here belong to Mother Nature.

Staring out the car window is like staring at a giant’s knees. You have to crane your neck to see the top of the rocky terrain, which juts up as if it were violently regurgitated from the earth’s core and hung out to dry.

As we close in on San José de Maipo , small cafes, eateries, and craft shops pop up along the road. We zip past San Jose and a half hour later arrive at the Santuario de Rio in San Alfonso for lunch with the roar of the Maipo River in the background.

The busy restaurant offers a huge buffet and use of pool and access to the river down a perilously steep narrow brush lined path. But we have a better option.

Ten minutes back down the road, we arrive at the retreat center of Centro del Espiritualidad, Tremonhue, Capacitar Chile  http://www.capacitar.org/ Judy is one of the founders of this holistic center for women.

The Centro del Espiritualidad Capacitar Chile is a beautifully designed compound filled with the gentle energy of past workshops, retreats, and seminars. Between the energy inside the building and the rumble of the distant Maipo River, it’s a revitalizing visit.

Back in the car, Judy navigates and narrates. The Cajon del Maipo has become a popular destination she says. More tourists, more businesses. San Jose de Maipo is still full of life at 8 pm when we pass it on the return trip to Santiago.

The main draw here is to escape the city, feel the vibe of the mountains and mighty Maipo River, and perhaps visit San José de Maipo, the colorful little town strategically located along the way and the only town en route.

For the price of gas and food at a roadside stand or small restaurant, you get gobs of fresh mountain air and scenes of natural grandeur. Maybe tomorrow, you’ll head west to the beach for a day.

+++++++++

The Santuario del Rio entrance in San Alfonso de Maipo leads to
a restaurant, pool, and very steep path past cabanas to the roiling river below.
Scores of less fancy places are on a stretch of road from San José de Maipo to San Alfonso de Maipo.

 

Entrance to Centro de Espiridad, Tremonhue

Behind the center, mountains and the mighty Maipo River

 

Deep in the Cajon de Maipo, mountains rise with sheer vertical majesty.
 

Heading back to Santiago, where 6 million of Chile's 15 million people live.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

ChileFarms Breathes

This farm’s a dynamic place. From morning till night depending on the season, there’s irrigating, tilling, seeding, cultivating, watering, pruning, inspecting, weeding, repairing structures and machines, shoeing and feeding horses, clearing land after harvesting, tending the dirt roads around the property, managing the wholesalers who come to pick up melons, corn, potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, and anything else compeseno Don Pedro Biernays chooses to plant in the fields surrounding ChileFarms.

Late one morning I stand next to a cornfield. I begin to hear the farm breathe.  Don Pedro’s shovel crunches into the earth and clears a water channel. Water gurgles past me as he irrigates this field for the second time this week. By tomorrow, the parched earth will be wet enough to plant this season’s crop of potatoes.

The sun beats on my shoulders. I listen.

Bees buzz, horses snuffle and neigh, roosters crow, lapwings squawk, mourning doves coo, the bread truck with its quirky loudspeaker passes along the nearby road, wind rustles through the dry corn stalks in the field behind me, dogs bark, tractors chug, men call to each other in distant fields, cows low, flies buzz, music drifts in from the tiny radio in Don Pedro’s shirt pocket, gravel crunches as a truck drives down the road to the horse barn, a diesel’s whistle moans from the railroad bed several miles away.

A symphony of sound, mechanical, animal, human, plays its melody day and night, every day of the year.

Dispatches from Chile: Grassfire races to Chilefarms property line

Something was going on out there. Spatters of water droplets landing on the broadleaf plants outside the door to my guest room facing the back yard of the farmhouse? Maybe Ricardo had turned the sprinklers on.

Fifteen minutes later, the volume of the mystery sound increased. I walked out my door and gasped. A towering yellowish orange cloud of dense smoke nearly obliterated the sky behind the farmhouse. I ran to the edge of the porch to see over the espina trees and thick brush in back of the farmhouse.

Jesus Christ! A massive field behind Chilefarms was ablaze and its flames were making a beeline right for the farm’s alfalfa field 500 yards from where I stood.

“Ricardo! Susaan!” I shouted and ran for my camera. Ricardo caught up to me as I reached the alfalfa field fence.

Right before my eyes was the biggest fire I’ve ever seen. A shoulder high ribbon of flame several thousand feet long was quick marching over the wheat field. Fueled by the bone-dry wheat chaff from the recent harvest, it was advancing with military precision, not breaking rank, and not showing any sign of stopping. I could feel the hot breath of the fire at 300 yards.

Fanned by the wind, in several minutes the sizzling line advanced 100 yards. Ricardo’s horse corral was 200 yards to my left. A row of brittle dry chest high brush grew in front of the fence separating the two properties. If the rapacious flames could leap fifteen feet this brush was toast. Behind me, new six inch high alfalfa was growing between chaff from the previous harvest. My excitement had long since turned to apprehension.

It was too damn late to do anything preventative. The yellowish orange wall of flames now seven feet high had become predatory.

At one hundred feet, the insidious hissing of forty acres of incinerating wheat chaff is deafening. The billowing, acrid smoke lowered its shoulder and barreled toward us. Clinging to the fence, I saw a row of freshly dug earth at the edge of the wheat field. A firewall?

Twenty seconds later, blast furnace heat and thick smoke drove me back. Hell, I was running for self-preservation. The world turned opaque gray, visibility zero. My eyes stung. I was choking. And stumbling through the rough terrain of the alfalfa field I couldn’t see under my feet. 

View from the fence at Chilefarms alfalfa field, fifteen feet from the neighbor's wheat field.

The next sixty seconds stunned me. The volume of the fierce, crackling, hissing menace abated to a whisper. Like a cat that had lost interest in its ball of yarn, it yawned, drew its claws in and lay down.

As if in a vision, a farmhand emerged from the dense smoke at the edge of the wheat field.

Finito?  I yelled. Si, finito.

The landowner, with a permit, had set the fire. He knew exactly how and when to start the fire and where and when it would stop burning. The farmhand was casually walking the perimeter checking to see the extent of the burn.

Believe me, it was complete. Forty acres were blackened down to the nub in thirty minutes.  Small patches of smoke swirled where pockets of chaff still smoldered. Tomorrow the field would be irrigated and  plowed - ready for its next planting.

Even when controlled, fire is a frightening phenomenon. I’ve never been this close to such an inferno. A drive through uninhabited regions of the Aconcagua Valley reveals scores of blackened hillsides where grassfires have raged unabated.

I’ll never watch another wildfire on TV without thinking of this conflagration. Id rather watch one on TV than feel it singeing my back and burning my feet as I run for my life.

 

Wheat field...before

Wheat field...after.

ChileFarms farmhouse is just to right of the stand of alamos trees top center of photos

 

Photos by Paul Tamburello

 

 

Dispatches from Chile: La Calera's He Yi Restaurant, A Taste of Things To Come

Ok, I realize you’ll never eat at this restaurant in La Calera, Chile. But, I had to say something about it because but it may as well be on Mars considering how different it is from any other restaurant in the city - hell, the entire region. This place could be beamed over to Los Angeles or London and not miss a won ton.

Lunch at a Chinese restaurant in La Calera?  Chinese food in Chile, a country whose diners are consumed with serious beef and potatoes and cazuela cravings? Yet here we are driving down Calle JJ Perez, one of La Calera’s main streets, to find the first surprise of the day, a spanking new restaurant. The other places in town aren’t dumpy. They’re practical. They serve traditional food. They have tables to sit at and lighting so you can see your menu and paper napkins so you can wipe off your fingers.

The first glance inside the He Yi Restaurant was a visual appetizer. Emerald and white tablecloths, spotless white marble tile floor, a polished, deep brown floor to ceiling “China Gate” partition about ten feet long to offset the squareness of the interior, artfully chosen emerald and white light fixtures bathing the tables inside, and tables surrounded by Asian style high backed chairs with comfy cushions.

Just after 2 pm, the restaurant begins to fill. Note the glass enclosed, fully ventilated smoking area (left rear).

Somebody had obsessed with detail. A conversation with the manager reveals that the entrepreneurial Chinese family owners operate four Chinese restaurants in Santiago, one in Viña del Mar, and, as of two months ago, one right here in little ol’ La Calera, a long, long way culturally from Santiago and Vina del Mar, where the mix of restaurant fare and décor is much wider.

Street scene across the street from Hi Ye Restaurant

“Why not open in nearby Quillota, which is larger,” I ask the young manager, a scion of this burgeoning Chinese enterprise. “Too many Chinese restaurants there, and bad ones at that,” he says.

The whole exchange is pretty comical. Here I am asking questions in English to a Spanish speaking Chinaman, with my bilingual host Ricardo Ceriani acting as the UN, interpreting back and forth.

I learn that Chileans, renowned for fairly narrow culinary tastes, especially outside urban areas, have an appetite for Chinese food. The owner, married with one child, lives part time here and commutes often to Santiago. He says business is good.

When we arrived at 1:45, and were the only customers, I thought this restaurant’s future was toast. A few minutes after 2 pm, a steady stream of customers - families with little kids, a few businessmen, and couples, filled half the room and kept the waitresses, all in tailored traditional Chinese print dresses, on the run.

It also kept the chef, brought here from China, busy for the two o’clock rush. Many local businesses close at 2 pm for between one and two hours. Ergo, a lunch crunch everywhere in town. The He Yi restaurant looks like it’s going to get its share customers.

The food is well presented, generously portioned, and tasty but I’m surprised by my overall reaction. I’ve come from Boston where beautifully built out restaurants are commonplace. I love the local pragmatic restaurants fitted out in formica countertops and plastic seat cushions, the ones that feel firmly rooted here in La Calera.

Falabella superstore Tottus Hipermarket and right next door,a huge Home Center

But hold on, here. The big box Tottus Hipermarket, owned by the international Fallabella conglomerate, opened its doors a few years ago on the outskirts of town a mile away. Nothing country-ish about it. Great layout, lighting, range of food, clothing, department store goods, and a solid customer base. Change the Spanish labeling and you could be in Europe. Asia, or North America.

As in my hometown, local businesses co-exist with the mega stores. Comfort food eateries survive along with the spiffy chrome and glass cafés.  Established or wannabe, not all of them make it. That’s the way it’ll work out here on Calle JJ Perez and that’s the way it works out in Watertown, MA.

I’ll see how the free market is working when I visit La Calera next January.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Dispatches from Chile: Viña del Mar

 
 

Viña del Mar is booming. On a Friday morning, a steady stream of shoppers, sightseers, and the occasional tourist from abroad, yours truly, jostle along. The sidewalks are quilted with vendors - some with transportable booths and others hunkering down with their wares on the sidewalk.

 

Pause for a moment to admire an item at your own peril. Although some vendors let you make up your own mind, the aggressive ones offer you a better deal if you buy two, or the one you admired for fewer CLP. Before you know it, you begin to feel that if you don't buy something, you are taking food from the mouths of the insistent vendors frail children. If you don’t extricate yourself quickly, artfully, you just might feel yourself reaching into your pocket.

 

Tables for restaurants and cafes spill onto the sidewalk here and there, filled with lovers, businessmen, and people of all ages with time on their hands. People watching is a sport here. Occupants of the tables, the lovers excepted, sit back with their drinks and appetizers and survey the passersby as the passersby survey the cafe society.

Plaza José Francisco Vergara, in the center of Viña del Mar

A few miles north of Valparaiso, Viña del Mar (Spanish for: "Vineyard of the Sea") is one of the most popular cities in South America. Locals have dubbed it "The Chilean Riviera" because of its beaches. Founded in 1874, Chile’s fourth largest city has experienced a growth spurt in twenty years of post Pinochet Chile.

 

Towering, sparkling white condominiums are sprouting on sheer rocky hillsides that line the road between “Viña” and “Valpo”. Some of them represent supreme engineering feats. When money is involved, Chilenos are second to none in sensing opportunity. The beaches along this stretch are lovely welcome mats to the royal blue Pacific. The Spanish conquistadors imagined riches when they arrived in this area. Real estate wasn’t what they had in mind.

Chile, whether small town or Viña del Mar with a population of 330,000 (up from 281,000 in 1990) has thriving business districts. The jingle in people’s pockets in Viña del Mar must come from their wages in its paint factories and food processing plants or from their employment in some capacity in its army and navy base or the oil storage businesses.

Repair businesses - for anything - are ubiquitous, side streets are jammed with them. Indeed, Ricardo Ceriani has come here to have the air conditioning unit in his VW Passat fixed. More jingle. Humming down the highway at 70 mph with the windows down is no picnic and decidedly hot. This is eighty degree plus summertime. Ricardo and his wife and my dear friend Susaan Straus are my hosts on their farm in Nogales, a rural town east of Viña del Mar.

You could get lost for days inside one of the feria artesania, a dimly lit warren filled with scores of booths. Stretch out your arms and you have the width of one. Stretch your imagination and figure the contents. 

 

Kitchen goods, jewelry, tiny toys, scarves, shawls, hats, gloves, sandals, necklaces, socks, underwear, the list goes on. I don’t recall seeing one operated by a man. It’s a woman’s world in here. Decidedly not outside, popular former (as of January17) President Michelle Bachelet aside.

 

There’s a good vibe here. Smile and you get one back. Like many cities with a good vibe there is music on the streets. And what a range from block to block. Saxophones, guitars, harmonicas, flutes, clarinets, the occasional trumpet, combinations of the foregoing, and the most retro of all, a mustachioed man playing a crank hurdy gurdy organ, standing next to a man with a trained parrot who will climb from his cage and present you with small card with a horoscope written on it. In my estimation, every town needs a hurdy gurdy man.

 

There are few beggars and homeless people to be seen. Don’t doubt that they exist.

There are, however, characters, like the dead-on Charlie Chaplin impersonator, who regales us with his perfectly mimicked silent Chaplin antics - eyebrow gymnastics, tiny sad sack frown, sly grin, cool little duck walk. Oh yes, and gestures with his green cane. Complete with black bowler hat, black topcoat, red bow tie on white shirt, black scuffed shoes, he is the full package. 

Ricardo, intrigued, asks him where he’s from. La Peña! Two miles away from Ricardo and his wife Susaan Straus’s farm. Mr. Chaplin tells Ricardo the name of his teacher in La Pena, says his father was the town mechanic. "Chaplin" went to Valparaiso and made his living on the docks. Now, a spry 90 years old, with a small pension and tips for his sidewalk acting. he gets along.

The growth of the Chilean economy has spawned a consumer mentality. But in the countryside, around Nogales and La Peña, where I stay with Ricardo and Susaan, many people are dirt poor, live in small homes, and only buy what they cant grow or make.

They know how to repair anything and if it wears out, they will find a use for its parts or its material. I seriously doubt they would make sense of the consumerism on the main street here in Viña del Mar. The central question is are they better off or worse off for this.

Photos by Paul Tamburello

 

 

 

 

Dispatches from Chile: Pastel de Choclo

A popular dish in central Chile is pastel de choclo. Chileans love meat; corn is grown in Kansas size quantities here. For many in this valley, the corn, basil, onions, and eggs are produced in fields near the house.

Let's name this recipe Pastel de Choclo Ceriani, since it was given to my hostess Susaan Straus by her husband Ricardo Ceriani’s sisters.

The basil, corn, and onions (not pictured), are grown on the farm here in Nogales about 60 miles north of Santiago.

Brown in some oil:
2 large sweet onions diced large
2 raw chicken breasts cut into pieces about 1"x 1"
1/2 - 1 lb of beef (hamburger or sliced steak)

Simmer together

When these are almost cooked,

add 1/2 cup of raisins,
a medium can of black olives - pitted or not
Salt and pepper and 1/2 t cumin (optional)


2 hard cooked eggs, quartered.

Fill the food processor full to overflowing with 3-4 packages of frozen corn  (if you don't shuck your own. Ricardo picked and shucked the corn a few hours before we ate the pastel de choclo.)

add 20+ leaves of fresh basil (basil at right in Susaan's garden. Note the tomatoes in background, not ripe yet due to cool weather right after planting.)

Process until semi-liquid with chunks - blend in a tablespoon of olive oil.

Spoon the meat mixture into the bottom of a paila (stone bowl).  Top with corn/basil mix.

Cook in a 350 oven until the corn is browned - about 30-40 minutes.

Voila! Pastel de Choclo Ceriani

Photos by Paul Tamburello

Dispatches from Chile: Dunkin' Who?

Dunkin' Donuts
Next to Hiper Lider, The Mall Plaza
Santiago, Chile

Dunkin' Donuts in Santiago? Yep. McDonalds and Starbucks, Jiffy Lube and a host of others may not be world class but are world wide. So here, inside the perimeter of the Hiper Lider on the north side of Santiago is the recognizable orange and mauve color scheme that announces by sight what you sniff as you walk closer - coffee and pastries. Somewhere along the line, Dunkin' forgot the donuts -  there’s nary a one in sight.

Chileans, according to my hostess Susaan Straus, have a sweet tooth of massive proportion. Just about everything on the display rack in front of me is covered or filled with sticky sweet goo or powdered with confection. 

The coffee is topped with foamy latte and tastes like Dunkin' Donuts coffee in Beijing or Boston.  Look around. Mothers and daughters, solo shoppers, friends like Susaan and me, see that familiar signage and feel that DD siren call.

“Couldn’t  ya use a little cuppa joe and a little treat? We’re here for you.”

Ahhh, the joys of globalization.

Photo by Paul Tamburello

Dispatches from Chile: Hiper Lider, A Very Big Box

Hiper Lider
Mall Plaza, 5 km north of Santiago. Chile

This big box store on the north side of Santiago, Chile, breaks the huge-o-meter. You could park several Boeing 757s under the towering fifty foot ceiling. Brilliantly illuminated, the clean, clear quality of light bathes the interior and makes everything look appealing. It's sort of like mood lighting for shoppers.

 
Shelves are carefully organized - and packed. Why have fifty cans of tomato sauce when you have room for a hundred? The resulting displays are rich in color, shape and size, and suggest a comforting sense of abundance.
 
I spent several minutes walking through the fruit and vegetable aisles as if I were in a museum, admiring the textures and colors and compositions of the displays. I could imagine wearing a pair of earphones and listening to an agronomist with a Chilean accent describe the region in which the produce was grown, how it adds to the region’s economy and employment, and the health benefits of eating it.
 
Family picnic? Back to school shopping? Need a printer? You came to the right place. Massively stocked with food, drink, clothing, appliances, TVs, linens, toys, computers, and sundries, the Hiper Lider has broad boulevard sized aisles that can funnel traffic without causing shopping cart rage.
 
The only thing this massive enterprise doesn’t need to stock is patience. That’s because the Chilean shoppers have it in their DNA.  Standing in line happens a lot in Chile. It happens at the local butcher shop and it happens here at the hiper Lider, not because there aren’t enough registers but because hundreds of people are in the store buying huge quantities of stuff. Retailers in America would swoon at this sight.
 
They wait cheerfully in glacial lines, have no qualms asking a clerk at the register to switch something or sending one of their kids to find something forgotten on the list and  realized at the check out counter. In America, this would be cause for the rolling of eyes in the extreme, huffing and puffing, muttering of oaths under the breath. If there is ever a case of register rage committed in America, a condign punishment would be to have the rager shop in a hiper Lider for six months.

 Chileans have a cheerful disregard for signage at the registers. You can take it to the bank that among the customers in the “Preferential Discapacitados, tercera edad” (Handicapped, Third Age) line or the “Embarazados, Mamas con ninos, menores de dos anos) (Pregnant, Mothers with children under 2 years old) line will be people who are patently not in that category. No one raises a fuss. People chat, no one behaves as if their house is on fire and needs to get to the head of the line immediately.

By the way, you’ve got to love the classification of "Tercera Edad," Third Age. This seems to be an extremely elastic span of years, as youngsters in their forties seem to be prepping for advanced age by standing in this line. And doesn’t Third Age beat “Senior Citizen” as a graceful way to classify those of us who are along in years?

If my luggage were to be sent to Buenos Aires instead of Santiago, I could come here, buy shirts, shorts, shoes, hats, toiletries, pens, paper for way less than $100 and a week’s worth of food for my host and hostess. And let’s not forget we’re in one of meccas of the wine world. I could buy a decent table wine $3 and an estate wine for $13.
 
Next year, I just might bring my toothbrush and let the Hiper Lider do the rest.

Part 2 Discovered while writing this dispatch

Wall Mart Stores acquired a majority share of Distribucion y Servicio, Chile’s leading food retailer, in January, 2009. Like Dunkin Donuts, D&S began as a family operation in 1957 and has grown ever since. D&S owns Hiper Lider and built it out smartly over the last fifty years. It has more than 180 stores, 10 shopping centers and 85 PRESTO financial services branches.

According to its web site, D&S is driven by three themes: community, sustainability, and opportunity.  It employs over 34,000 people. In 2008, it invested over 6 million dollars in community initiatives and launched a lifestyles program with local schools to reduce obesity (named best program by the Chilean and American Chamber of Commerce).

In 2009, D&A opened Chile’s first environmentally friendly store with state of the art technology and energy efficiencies. It’s website states: “In June 2008, we launched the 3Rs: Reducing, Recycling and Reusing for plastic bags. D&S is the first supermarket in Chile to sell reusable bags, working to reduce plastic bag waste by 50 percent by 2011.” American stores would do well to follow this example.

In a country where finance is treated cavalierly by smaller businesses, D&S  boasts “We are one of few Chilean companies paying PayMe suppliers in 30 days; the industry average is approximately 60 days.”

Photos by Paul Tamburello

"Groundswell" unearths dark questions

GROUNDSWELL
Play by: Ian Bruce
Directed by Daniel Gidron
Lights, Margo Caddell. Sets, Jenna McFarland Lord. Costumes, Seth Bodie.
At: Lyric Stage Company. Through Jan. 30. Tickets $25-$50, 617-585-5678
www.lyricstage.com

Groundswell is a political treatise masquerading as a theater piece. Like magma from a volcano, when enough pressure builds from below, something has to give. South African playwright Ian Bruce’s story line is slow to develop but when it blows, its heat reveals what’s been slowly boiling under the surface.

South Africa was welcomed into the world anew after it abandoned apartheid 15 years ago. Like the issue of slavery in the United States, the racist system left scars. Issues of entitlement. land rights, and business ownership became points of ugly contention.

Affirmative action? Reparations? Who gives? Who gets? How does anger, still smoldering between race and class, play out? South Africa’s social structure is in free fall. Who is an African? Very simply, can the races get along together in post apartheid South Africa, and by extension, anywhere?

Groundswell, playing at the Lyric Stage in Boston, takes on these questions in a one-act 90-minute production set on the wild and remote western coast of South Africa. Three men grapple with the fallout from a country in socio-politican flux: Thami, a black gardener who manages a guest house in the off season; Johan, a white handyman and former policeman in apartheid Africa; and Smith, a retired businessman who decides to flee the urban Capetown environment in which he no longer feels secure. 

Tension builds from the outset. Johan is haunted by his brutal past, and is driven to find redemption, even if twisted. Thami is desperately seeking to make something of himself in the new Africa and enters into a scheme Johan hatches to purchase part of a nearby diamond mine when the government auctions it off. When the affluent Smith comes along, Johan senses an opportunity to talk him into investing. The result is not pretty. Nor is the transition from institutional racism to post apartheid Africa.

Greed, the desire to dominate, lawlessness, and corruption are equal opportunity behaviors in the new South Africa. Groundswell shows that freedom and equality don’t necessarily result in a just society.

Jason Bowen as Thami, Timothy John Smith as Johan, and Richard McElvain as Smith breathe life into their characters. Smith’s Johan is a ticking time bomb. McElvain delivers one of the most gut wrenching performances I’ve seen this season.

Apartheid and its demise altered the lives of South Africans of all colors. It has been famously said that all politics is local. One exits the theater with the unsettling question of how each of us has addressed the question of race in our daily lives.

Photo courtesy Boston Globe