common in the rest of Latin America. I grew up among millionaire aunts, cousins of my grandfather and my mother, who wore ankle-length black dresses and made a great virtue of âturningâ their husbandsâ suits, a tedious process that consisted of ripping apart the suit, pressing out the pieces, and sewing them back together, inside out, to give them new life. It was easy to distinguish the victims of these labors because the breast pocket of their jacket was always on the right rather than the left. The result was consistently pathetic, but the effort demonstrated how thrifty and hardworking the wearerâs good lady was. The tradition of industrious women is fundamental in my country, wheresloth is a male privilege. It is forgivable in men, just as alcoholism is tolerated among them, because it is assumed that these are unavoidable biological characteristics: if youâre born that way, youâre born that way. . . . That isnât true of women, you understand. Chilean women, even those with fortunes, do not paint their fingernails, since that would indicate they donât work with their hands, and one of the worst possible epithets for a Chilean woman to be called is lazy. It used to be that when you got on a bus you would see all the women knitting; thatâs no longer true because now Chile is showered with tons of secondhand clothing from the United States and polyester garbage from Taiwan and knitting has passed into history.
There has been speculation that our ponderous seriousness is the bequest of exhausted Spanish conquistadors, who arrived half dead with hunger and thirst, driven more by desperation than by greed. Those valiant captainsâthe last to share in the booty of the conquestâhad to cross the cordillera of the Andes through treacherous passes, slog across the Atacama Desert beneath a sun like burning lava, or defy the ominous seas and winds of Cape Horn. The reward was scarcely worth the trouble, because Chile, unlike other regions of the continent, did not offer the possibility of wealth beyond dreams. Gold and silver mines could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and the minerals had to be torn from the rock with unspeakable effort. Neither did Chile have the climate for prosperous tobacco, coffee, or cotton plantations. Ours has always been a country with one foot in the poorhouse; the most that the colonist could aspire to was a quiet life dedicated to agriculture.
Ostentation was once unacceptable, as Iâve said, but unfortunately that has changed, at least among the residents of Santiago. They have become so pretentious that they go to the supermarket on Sunday mornings, fill their carts with the most expensive itemsâcaviar, champagne, filets mignonsâwalk through the store for a while so everyone can see what theyâre buying, then leave the cart in an aisle and slip out discreetly with empty hands. Iâve also heard that a good percentage of cell phones are made of wood, mere fakes to show off. Such behavior once would have been unthinkable. The only people who lived in mansions were nouveau riche Arabs, and no one in his right mind would have worn a fur coat, even if it was as cold as the South Pole.
The positive side of such modestyâfalse or authenticâwas, of course, simplicity. None of those parties for fifteen-year-olds with pink-dyed swans, no imperial weddings with four-layer cakes, no parties, with orchestra, for lap dogs, as in other capital cities of our exuberant continent. Our national seriousness was a notable characteristic that disappeared with the advent of the all-out capitalism imposed in the last two decades, when to be rich and to show it became fashionable. The character of the people is deep-rooted, however. Ricardo Lagos, the current president of the republic (2002), lives with his family in a rented house in an unpretentious neighborhood. When dignitaries from other nations visit, they are startled by
There has been speculation that our ponderous seriousness is the bequest of exhausted Spanish conquistadors, who arrived half dead with hunger and thirst, driven more by desperation than by greed. Those valiant captainsâthe last to share in the booty of the conquestâhad to cross the cordillera of the Andes through treacherous passes, slog across the Atacama Desert beneath a sun like burning lava, or defy the ominous seas and winds of Cape Horn. The reward was scarcely worth the trouble, because Chile, unlike other regions of the continent, did not offer the possibility of wealth beyond dreams. Gold and silver mines could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and the minerals had to be torn from the rock with unspeakable effort. Neither did Chile have the climate for prosperous tobacco, coffee, or cotton plantations. Ours has always been a country with one foot in the poorhouse; the most that the colonist could aspire to was a quiet life dedicated to agriculture.
Ostentation was once unacceptable, as Iâve said, but unfortunately that has changed, at least among the residents of Santiago. They have become so pretentious that they go to the supermarket on Sunday mornings, fill their carts with the most expensive itemsâcaviar, champagne, filets mignonsâwalk through the store for a while so everyone can see what theyâre buying, then leave the cart in an aisle and slip out discreetly with empty hands. Iâve also heard that a good percentage of cell phones are made of wood, mere fakes to show off. Such behavior once would have been unthinkable. The only people who lived in mansions were nouveau riche Arabs, and no one in his right mind would have worn a fur coat, even if it was as cold as the South Pole.
The positive side of such modestyâfalse or authenticâwas, of course, simplicity. None of those parties for fifteen-year-olds with pink-dyed swans, no imperial weddings with four-layer cakes, no parties, with orchestra, for lap dogs, as in other capital cities of our exuberant continent. Our national seriousness was a notable characteristic that disappeared with the advent of the all-out capitalism imposed in the last two decades, when to be rich and to show it became fashionable. The character of the people is deep-rooted, however. Ricardo Lagos, the current president of the republic (2002), lives with his family in a rented house in an unpretentious neighborhood. When dignitaries from other nations visit, they are startled by
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