December 9, 2009
At 6:00 am grey clouds covered Santiago. By 7:00 am, the sun appeared and illuminated the remaining snow on the Andes Mountains. The highest peak visible from the city, El Plomo, stood out. Supposedly the Inca Empire extended to this point, as archaeologists found a mummified baby at the summit.
The bus from the airport to downtown Santiago charged through weekday morning traffic. Posters, flyers, and all kinds of propaganda related to the upcoming elections added to the chaos. A flashy billboard announced the businessman Piñera as Chile’s new president with the slogan, “We will defeat delinquency.” On the other side of the street, a poster related information about the Revolutionary Left Movement (Movimiento Izquierdo Revolucionário, MIR). At streetlights, hired workers waved flags for Frei, the Christian Democrat candidate. Flyers with the names “Arrate,” the Communist Party candidate, lined walls.
In the working class neighborhood of Pudahuel, trucks filled with family members and sacks of fruits and vegetables made their way to the central market. Girls and boys dressed in school uniforms waited for the bus. Workers on bicycles dodged cars, trucks, buses, and taxis. Thousands of people marched in and out of the metro entrance. Horses attached to carriages ate grass on islands next to the main street, La Alameda. In the same island, people had constructed homes from discarded materials. Dogs ran around chasing each other and looking for food scraps. Old men chatted leisurely next to newspaper kiosks. On the corner of Arica Street and San Borja, a homeless couple warmed bread over a makeshift fire. In downtown Santiago, a vendor sold the summer bounty of Chile’s Central Valley: apricots, cherimoyas, peaches, loquats, strawberries, nectarines, plums, almonds, walnuts, avellanas, and raisins. Street vendors sold 15 Haas avocados for ~$2. The temperature in the city passed 90˚ Farenheit that afternoon.
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