I.
I leave my dance class with the project on my mind, the mind that's still dancing cueca (1), preoccupied with the new steps that I've been struggling to learn, the movements that only confuse a class full of North Americans who picked the course because it seemed easy and fun. I'm walking with friends, other exchange students, but I'm not paying much attention to the conversation. They're speaking English, and I didn't come to Chile to speak English. I start thinking about the project again. I've spent a couple of weeks trying to convince myself to get started, and I finally have a plan. Tuesday is a flexible day: just one class in the morning and a few hours free afterward, so I have all afternoon to work. Nothing can keep me from it but my own thoughts.
I'm sitting on the metro on my way to Viña. I don't think about it so much now, this aspect of my daily routine, but there's a part of me, the girl from the rural South who's always had her own car, that isn't used to public transportation. I can't quite get over the discomfort of traveling every day with strangers. By the window an elegant older woman in a nice coat and jewelry is taking a nap, her head bobbing softly with the motion of the train. Next to me a man in a business suit is reading a law book. In front of me a young man with an angry face concentrates intently on the floor. I put on the serious, disinterested face of an urban girl, the one that says I don't matter to anyone and no one matters to me.
I usually don't leave things to the last minute. I've always liked the satisfaction of a job well done. It's not because of laziness, then, that I've avoided starting this project; it's just that I'm tired of being the gringa with the camera. This is my existence this semester, that of perpetual outsider. At first, when everything seemed fresh and exciting, every minute detail caught my attention. But the novelty of taking photos of my new surroundings gradually diminished, lost in my attempts to get used to things, to fit in. It's a process that's lasted longer than I expected, and sometimes I just wanted to scream so that everyone knows, "I live here too! I'm not a typical tourist! I don't want the English menu!!" What I want is authenticity, some kind of entrance into this culture that still shuts me out.
All of that occupies my mind as I emerge from the metro, getting my camera ready. I step onto the platform and contemplate on the fact that the graffiti here in Viña doesn't have the same character as the works of art that decorate the streets of her crazier sister, Valparaiso. There's an old, red, messy stain that barely shows on the wall, the faint memory of a tag painted by some daring hand. Someone has tried to scrub it away, erase it, eliminate it as if it were a spatter of blood left at the scene of some terrible crime that everyone wants to just forget already. It doesn't belong here on the wall of this modern metro station, where everything is square and orderly. Here there's no space for anything different. Here you have to hide it.
I climb the stairs and my eyes confront the sun that shines above, heating up the afternoon. I try to convey a casual attitude, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to stand by the street and take photos of supremely mundane things like buildings and cars and signs. I convince myself that no one is watching me, even though I feel the questions in the eyes of the people who pass me. I start to look for the perfect angle to recreate the old view of Calle Alvarez and Estacion Miramar. It's not difficult to find examples of transculturation and globalization, as we've been instructed. But I'm confused about the specific view that has been assigned to me to photograph. Nothing I see looks like the photos. My efforts are frustrated: the place has escaped me this time. I'll have to try again.
II.
I leave my literature class, determined today to finish the project, which will be due very soon. This time my mind is full of Borgesian images. Today in class we've traveled to El Sur in a gaucho dream (2). "Or was it reality?" the professor inquires, provoking us to challenge his interpretation. The point is that nobody knows and that's the way it should be. Sometimes I feel like I too am dreaming here, reality just beyond my grasp outside my meditative mind. I walk in the direction of the train and the fog descends on the port, a ghost of rain. It comes in from the sea, this fallen cloud, penetrating every corner and hiding the sun.
The station smells like gasoline and cement: the smell of progress? The music they play in the metro always makes me laugh, those instrumental versions of North American pop hits that sound strange--all cleaned up and way too happy. I ask myself what Madonna and REM would think if they knew their songs had been converted into this daily rhythm of arrivals and departures.
I've been told there's a way to walk up the hill close to the station, where I'll be able to get the perspective I need to reproduce the old photos. I find the way up near Cafe Journal, the favorite bar of "all the gringos." All the gringos except for me, it seems, at least the crowded dark room downstairs where beer sloshes and the chairs are too close together and you have to push your claustrophobic way through the dance floor that expands annoyingly throughout the night as bottles get emptied and chairs get pushed aside. I prefer the laidback atmosphere upstairs, where the music is calmer, the art relaxing, and the chairs comfy. I've never walked up this street before, but I pretend to know exactly where I'm going. Walking up, walking up, my eyes search for the images from the photos. Once again I've made a mistake. I realize that the photos were taken from the other side of the street. Luckily, a hidden staircase offers me an escape route and I cross the street to walk up the right way.
They're building something new on the corner and I have to walk by a construction site, where the workers whistle at me when I pass. I know enough not to respond to their comments, but this flagrant machismo still bothers me. The feeling of being conspicuous returns. At least I have dark hair, I think, although here some people consider it blonde. My pale skin, my green eyes, the freckles sprinkled liberally across my cheeks--all of this betrays me, and even more when I open my mouth. The camera I'm carrying doesn't help anything, although I've tried to be discrete and nonchalant.
I wander around the streets of Cerro Castillo, where I've climbed. There's a park here instead of the empty plot of sandy real estate where three proud men stood posing in the old photo. Now there's only one man, a gardener, watering grass and trimming plans. A black dog accompanies him. They pay me no attention. I approach the place where surely they must have taken the old photo, and pause: the plants are obstructing my view, same goes for a school building, some houses, the new construction. I take what photos I can, trying to capture the scene in a way that's faithful to history.
III.
Another class, another story, another dream. Is it that the moteca is dreaming that he's the motocyclist or is it the other way around (3)? I keep dreaming in the past, trying to find a trace of this place as it was in the old days. I climb again up to Cerro Castillo, walking, walking: it's my last attempt at finding the perfect image. The sun is blinding but standing in the shade makes me cold. The same gardener is working in the park, and this time, as the last, our relationship is one of indifference. I don't stay long, just long enough to take the last few photos that I need for the project. It's calm and quiet here, an island of green in an ocean of concrete.
The mansions on Calle Alvarez all seem to be restaurants, cultural centers, hotels, and schools these days. Some aren't even there anymore, others simply abandoned, the majority hidden between the identical towers of luxury that are the new hills here in this city where the developer is king. 1, 2, 3 bedrooms! Sales center! Open house! The most common trees that you find here now are the skinny palms that tell everyone this is a tourist destination. Fitzgerald wrote of those all-seeing eyes keeping watch over the Wasteland, but here the presence of Coca-Cola watches over us from above, a nearby apartment building crowned with a red billboard and blinking lights that keep the time every night.
I walk down slowly from the hill and head home on the other side of the street, walking toward the ascensor that I take to reach my apartment. The chemical smell of fresh paint emanates from a recently constructed building, offending my nostrils. I still don't know what exactly I will take away from this semester, but at the very least it seems I've found a place whose identity has been changing just as fast as my own. While the city of Viña del Mar continues to conquer the past, I'll keep fighting with the present.
(1). cueca: national dance of Chile
(2). El Sur: a work by the Argentine short story master Jorge Luis Borges, in which a proud porteño from Buenos Aires travels to his ancestral homelands in the southern countryside of Argentina and finds his death at the hands of knife-wielding rural thugs. A mysterious gaucho eggs him on. Or is he just dreaming all of this in his hospital bed after a nasty bump on the head? Borges loved to mess with you.
(3). La noche boca arriba: another short story, this one by Julio Cortazar, whose style is similar to Borges. A modern man is injured in a motorcycle accident and has a creepy dream while in the hospital that he is actually an indigenous captive from the Precolombian era on his way to be sacrificed by the priests of an enemy tribe. Turns out in the end that the dream is the reality, and the reality the dream. Got it?
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