Approximate reading time: 6 minutes, 45 seconds
How to characterize the country that one—as a Chilean from abroad—visits from time to time? Recent news events make it easy for me: this is a “featherweight” country. By the way, I am stuck here with the information that the Mexican singer known as Peso Pluma decided to cancel his participation in the Viña del Mar Song Festival for personal reasons. Supposedly the character would be affected by a picture of stress. Be that as it may, the truth is that his departure will leave the organizers calmer since this subject is known for his songs that would promote the use of hard drugs and would defend drug trafficking. By the way, inviting him was a disregard for those who drew up the list of artists, just at a time when the government is trying to discourage drug use.
But let’s forget the singer of yore; It is Chile itself that is in the “featherweight” category, both due to the lightness of the issues that captivate citizen attention, and those that concern our elites. (“Ah, our elites, that bunch of mannered and ridiculous monkeys!” Professor Juan Rivano told us in those distant and glorious times of the Pedagogical of the second half of the 60s. It is not that I was one of his followers, very far from that, but in that characterization he was right).
By the way, the fact that a Song Festival achieves such repercussion and impact is already a sign of how things are going in this country: bread and circuses, the old Roman formula to keep the people moderately happy is still effective, although in the Chilean case they have saved their bread and limited themselves only to entertainment. In short, it’s something that some will say who are preparing to go to the Quinta Vergara amphitheater to be part of that shapeless mass that has its “nights of glory” when it calls itself the “monster” and can flatter a man to the point of absurdity. artist or sink him. In truth, this “monster” is very similar to those brave bands that have invaded the once happy and healthy spectacle of football, to transform it into an event typical of troglodytes.
The “monster” of the Festival operates in a very similar way, also with its bosses who, at a signal, issue their triumphant or fatal verdict for whoever is on stage. It’s not that I personally feel great sympathy for those who perform there, the worst and whom I would enthusiastically botch are the comedians. (I except Kramer, who is probably the only one who makes intelligent humor in this country). In general, the comedians who appear at the Festival have as their only talent to weave together some story sprinkled with many rude words that that audience—already idiotized by television, reggaeton and social networks—celebrates with a corresponding facial expression. Facial expression of that audience that reminds me of the one that the brilliant Ugo Tognazzi and Vittorio Gassman offered us in the episode of the retired boxers, in that hilarious 1963 film called I showed (The monsters) directed by Dino Risi: “we are happy” (“We are happy”), said the retired boxers who showed the effects of years of receiving blows.
It is not even worth mentioning here the list of celebrities whose marital and sexual affairs fill the pages of digital media and occupy a large space of that television monstrosity called morning shows. By the way, space that they share with that other great attraction that the media uses to idiotize people: the police report.
However, one should not believe that the attention that entertainment and crime attract entirely displaces other topics such as politics, but when the focus is on it it is done more or less in the same tone with which entertainment is addressed. or crime. That is, in a superficial or speculative way. The recent case of former Venezuelan military officer Ronald Ojeda, for example, has given rise to a whole string of mystery stories, of course fueling rumors that this person had been kidnapped by Venezuelan counterintelligence agents. In reality, nothing is known about the case, which could well be linked to the criminal actions of Venezuelan gangs who, as is well known, have dedicated themselves to extortion and kidnappings.
In any case, the light way in which the issue has been approached, creating that soap opera atmosphere, comes from knobs on the right in both Chile and Venezuela. In the Chilean case, it can deepen or create new fissures between the different partners in the government. As for Venezuela, if the trail of the alleged kidnapping is to be followed, one might wonder if this Mr. Ojeda is really so important as to deserve to be kidnapped and taken to his country. All of this suggests that it may well be that some have been watching a lot of James Bond movies.
By the way, this “featherweight” lightness with which the issues are addressed does not exclude even tragic situations such as the death of former president Sebastián Piñera: the string of silly praises transforming him into a saint could be enough for a posthumous edition. of the “Piñericosas”; On the other hand, some of the things that were said from our own sector were not the most accurate either. Strictly speaking, the late former president was not a demon either and those who, at the height of excessiveness, tried to make him equal to Pinochet simply have no idea what violating human rights really means. But in the final analysis, this sanctifying or demonizing of man were also expressions of this “featherweight” Chile.
Some of the priorities of our elites also portray superficiality. A few weeks ago, the remodeling of Plaza Italia, announced a couple of years ago, was confirmed. That at a cost of several hundred million pesos. The main change, the removal of the rotunda where until before the social outbreak was the statue of General Baquedano. With typical “elite speaking to the people” language, when this was first announced many references were made to creating a space for the people, a meeting point. However, Plaza Italia already is, the problem is how to reconcile that vocation of “citizen space” with maintaining that area of the city in a civilized condition (the “civitas” is precisely the city). That is, a space for people to express themselves, but also a safe and habitable place for the neighbors and also safe and welcoming for the businesses that exist there (and that I hope continue to operate there, I say this as a client of Fuente Alemana, today Antigua Fuente, an emblematic site of Santiago and where they probably serve the best lomito sandwiches in the city).
The curious and contradictory thing with the projected elimination of the roundabout (already disfigured in the 60s when it was converted into a kind of oval), is that with this the Alameda and Providencia Avenue will acquire total continuity, in all honesty, it is about a project—recycled from one that had already been presented in the 1960s—that will primarily benefit motorists who until now must slow down when approaching the roundabout. Without it, it will now be “free ship” for those who want to press the accelerator as soon as they give the green light at the corner of Vicuña Mackenna and quickly enter Providencia. Space for people? “My ass” as we would say in Montreal. This remodeling of Plaza Italia has been a typical case of elitist design, which in theory, however, is advertised as beneficial for ordinary people, and in an environment marked by lightness, some will believe it.
The cultural decline of Chilean society, apart from manifesting itself in the lightness with which people perceive reality, is also expressed in curious daily attitudes. The penetration that soft drinks that use chemical sweeteners have in this country is surprising. Under the slogan that sugar consumption has negative effects on health, the most common thing now is for people in a restaurant or soda fountain to order a “Diet Coke” or a “Pepsi Zero”, products sweetened with synthetic substances such as aspartame or sucralose. Regarding aspartame (aspartame in English), the World Health Organization (WHO) has it listed as a probable carcinogen. Information that by the way here in Chile most people ignore. While there is no doubt that excessive consumption of sugar can be harmful to health—as is alcohol, red meat, fried foods, salt, etc.—on the other hand, those same products, consumed moderately, may not have any negative effect. . It’s all in the quantity, you can say. The paradoxical and almost comical thing about all this kind of anti-sugar paranoia is that on more than one occasion I have seen how someone who has ordered a “light or zero” soft drink immediately gobbles down a gigantic hamburger sandwich with cheese and mayonnaise, or that monument to cholesterol called the “chorrillana”. In Chile, people tend to accept everything that becomes fashionable, largely because they rarely read and learn more.
And certainly if we talk about reading, statistics indicate that a high percentage of Chileans no longer understand what they read. There is a growing number of functional illiterates. As a film fan, I also see this in another curious custom that has been established in many exhibition halls in this country: the majority of films (from the United States, by the way) are now presented dubbed into Spanish (generally by Mexicans), something that was never done in times when people should and, above all, could read subtitles. Dubbing, very common in post-war Spain, was necessary because that country had a high illiteracy rate. In Canada, in the province of Quebec, many films are dubbed into French but due to a custom inherited from the times when a high percentage of the French-speaking population was illiterate, a situation that is no longer such, but the custom endured. For the English-speaking public, however, films made in other languages were never dubbed, because at that time the English-speaking population was more educated than the French-speaking population; today both communities have very similar educational levels.
For those of us who appreciate cinema, presenting films with well-known English-speaking actors and actresses, set in New York or Chicago and all spoken in Spanish is an attack on the authenticity of artistic creation. Naturally, those who now prefer to watch dubbed movies are not to blame for this, but rather the systematic destruction that Chilean public education suffered since the times of the dictatorship and that unfortunately has not yet been recovered so that our people can do something as simple as read subtitles projected on a screen.
Chile is no longer what it was, those of us who converge on the country from various parts of the world during the southern summer tell ourselves. Much less is it what we once aspired it to be: a more just and less unequal society. Or at least a society where you could make people laugh with subtle humor without rudeness, where you could go to a soccer match without ending up with the stadium half burned and where the private lives of singers, soccer players and Politicians were not and did not have to be the central theme of television. Perhaps there has already been a lot of talk about how we have fallen into this state of cultural and social “featherweight”, the question is how to get out of it and return to a category of more intellectual weight.
By Sergio Martínez (temporarily from Ñuñoa, Chile)
