The Leroy Weekend Times - Feb 19

Editor's Note: LWT will not be published next weekend due to travel plans and a congested schedule. Instead, a double edition will be published on Monday March 7, and will feature content from travels to Santiago, Arica, and possibly Iquique or San Pedro as well. Thanks in advance from both staff members here at LWT.

A Tale of Two Cities

I used to wonder why Viña and Valpo were considered two separate cities. After all, the unofficial dividing line is pretty arbitrary and runs right through the middle of my neighborhood (I fall just on the side of Viña). There’s no interruption or break in the city, yet people firmly maintain that they are two distinct areas. It took me some time to figure out why, but living here for a bit shows the difference night and day.

On the surface there is the development of each city. Valpo is a historical city of Chile, home to Pablo Neruda’s house and UNESCO World Heritage protected cerros (old neighborhoods) amongst other sites. The cerros are protected for good reason: they’re incredibly unique. Each has an iconic ascensor, a cross between a cargo elevator and a tram, which have been ferrying people up the steep hillsides since the late 1800s. Valpo’s origins as a working class industrial port city shows in the architecture of the older districts in the city. Most of the houses were built using old corrugated aluminum shipping containers, which were free and offered outstanding protection against corrosion and the threat of earthquakes. But since corrugated aluminum is pretty ugly on its own, an underground graffiti industry formed to spice the place up. Whether it can actually be called graffiti or not is questionable; the artwork in some places is stunning. Whole murals that stretch for blocks are common, and artists today continue to repaint and improve.

Viña, on the other hand, is a new development altogether. Apartment towers and hotels make up the majority of the skyline. Its streets are lined with restaurants and shops, clubs and travel agencies. Valpo was built as a home by sailors and dockworkers; Viña was built as a foreign destination by entrepreneurs. Unlike Valpo, Viña has a full scale shopping mall and a shiny casino. Basically, it’s everything you would expect out of a white sand beach, upper class vacation town.

The differences between the two cities become more interesting when you start talking to the people about each. Valparaiso begrudgingly takes tourism and foreign development as a necessity for its economy, but really wishes it could do without. After all, Valpo has been on a long, slow decline as a result of modernization. The golden age of the city was during the California Gold Rush of the mid 1800s, when the city shipped huge amounts of supplies to the west coast. It was also an important stop on the route ships took when going around the southern tip of the continent. However, the transcontinental railroad in the US and the opening of the Panama Canal eliminated both of those roles, and the city has never been the same since. Chilean Porteños (residents of Valpo) are surprisingly pessimistic about the future of the city, despite an economy that is shifting for the better. One guy I talked to for a class assignment was less than thrilled about growing tourism and industry, thinking the city’s culture was being eaten away, and besides, ‘tourism brings capitalism’.

Viñamarinos, on the other hand, are pretty optimistic about their future. Although residents get annoyed by the swaths of quicas (high class snobs, essentially) that flood the city, they realize that that is a blessing for them as well. The economy is expanding rapidly, and regardless the beaches are always free. Valparaiso is slowly moving in that direction, to open up and meet the challenge of globalization while preserving its past, but it is certainly a challenge and the results might not be everyone’s idea of success.

Some of the graffiti decorating old town Valparaiso, showing the corrugated aluminum construction as well.

Entrepreneurial Idea of the Week

Once you’re finished building my Orbitz Bus website, take an idea straight out of Valpo and go start building clubs in old abandoned subway tunnels.

In Brief

Have you ever been in a city and suddenly had the urge to get together and have a barbecue on the roof of a 16 story building? Well, sometimes you get to do just that. I met this Dane in language class who shares an apartment on the top floor of an old commercial building in Valparaiso, which happens to have a great balcony on top. We gathered all the students we could find, and with 6 countries represented (France, Germany, Denmark, Norway, US, Chile), held a full Friday night asado from one of the highest points in the city. Word.

Speak Chilean – Words of the Week

Flaite [fly-tay]: noun, Chilean word for the type of person you find in rap videos – spiked up hair, stark white Nikes, long shorts, incomprehensible speech. Can also be used to describe places where these people like to hang out.

Huea/Huevon(a) [way-uh/way-vone(a)]: noun, word for a person or thing. Very commonly used. Comes from the word for testicles. In other words, in Chile, everything in the world can be (and is) described as testicles.

- LWT -