A Meditation of Fear and Perception

The street I lived on for a month.

Once upon a time, well three years ago next month, a gringa came south of her border for the first time. Her country of choice was Chile. She was attending a conference at ESO Headquarters in Vitacura, the wealthiest of Santiago's comunas. To get to the conference from her hotel she had to walk 20 minutes down one of the wealthiest shopping streets in Chile.

She was on edge the entire time.

Last October, this gringa, now living in Chile found herself homeless and dog sitting for a fellow astronomer in Macúl, a middle to lower-middle class comuna, in a neighborhood filled with carabineros (national police) and old people. She was aware of her surroundings, but walked back from the bus, with her laptop bag, at 23:00.

The woman who walked warily around Vitacura three years ago is the same one who barely blinks at Macúl and La Moneda now, or is she?

Macúl with the Andes in the background.

I live in Providencia. Well within the "bubble," though not as far in as Las Condes where I spent my first year. The barista at my local coffee shop speaks some English, the local Irish pub is full of gringos and I am not the only Norte Americana living in my building, let alone the only foreigner. And yet, the me of three years ago would have wondered if it was ok to walk around this area. She would have been on edge the entire time she was in Bellavista after dark, even when walking with a group of people with nothing on her but some cash and her apartment keys. She never, ever, would have thought about getting off the metro at Rodrigo de Araya, let alone staying there for a month.  

Not anymore.

Typical house in Macúl.

Three years on I still go to Vitacura. ESO is there, along with its colloquia and the star clusters group I belong to. But I now see what I could not see then. The high end stores. The live-in nanas taking children to school. Women shopping, who wouldn't be out of place in Georgetown, on Market Street or on 5th Avenue. I still remember the odd looks I got a year ago when I walked from Escuela Militar to meet people near ESO. The residential street was lovely, shaded by trees, but the houses were behind 15 foot concrete walls, some with barbed wire and cameras. I am even less sure now what they are so afraid of.

Today I run back to Providencia, and Centro, laughing in disbelief at the ESO employee who doesn't know Mercado Central exists. (Mercado Central is the main fish market in Santiago and a major tourist attraction, but its west of Plaza Italia and therefore in the "danger zone.")

Am I still aware of my surroundings? Yes. I live in a city of 6 million people with massive income inequality. To not be would be to invite trouble.

However, I am no longer afraid of the city and country I landed in.  I wish I could go back in time and tell that gringa fresh off the plane that one day she wouldn't be either.

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