Academic Ambassadorial Scholar to Valparaíso
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In light of all of the extreme events that have been happening here in Valparaíso, I thought I would make a partial time line for those of you on the outside. Start by reading my first post on the paro.
Four universities have been collaborating with one another to make the impact of the paro stronger than ever:
Similar protests took place in September of 2007, resulting at one point in an overtake of the Intendencia Municipal (City Council building).
The police have been illegally entering into school buildings in Valparaiso; police aren’t allowed to enter a school building unless the director of the school calls and gives the precinct permission.
Wednesday April 16th –Students at the University Federico Santa Maria vote to start a paro.
Friday April 18th — Students are detained by carabineros (police officers) who entered illegally into the Isabel Brown Caces building of the PUCV and took them charge. (El Mercurio)
Thursday April 24th — Students (presumably from the PUCV) take over the metro for 10-15 minutes in the middle of the day. The students stormed past the turnstiles and raced onto the metro car at Francia Station, where they began to shout cheers in support of the education protests.
Monday April 28th — Students at the University Federico Santa Maria (USM) are tear gassed for education related protests. Students burn paper figures painted to look like Reinaldo Sanchez (Don Choco), board member of Transporte Metro Valparaíso, among others. Avenida España is blocked on several occasions by students and burning objects. The Gimpert and Ruben Castro buildings of the PUCV are taken over in a toma*.
Wednesday April 30th – The Geography Department at the PUCV is tear gassed while full of students.
Tuesday May 5th & 6th — more protests and tear gassing at PUCV and USM. The PUCV shut their main doors for the second time since the 30th of April. The police close down the USM on the 6th because of the extremity of the protests on the 5th, involving molotov cocktails, burning posters and other objects, rock and object throwing on behalf of the students and gas and water retaliation on the part of the police. Avenida España is blocked by the ruckus for nearly an hour.
See some pictures here.
*toma is literally a takeover. Students sleep in the faculty/dept. they are taking over, they lock the main exits and endure weeks without electricity and water. Friends and fellow students bring them food.
More information (Spanish):
http://unaprensadiferente.blogspot.com
http://www.fotolog.com/princesskariko/40930324
http://www.mercuriovalpo.cl (”Microbuseros subirán pasaje escolar en $20″, April 18th)
The students at my school are on strike right now, protesting bus prices which are set to be raised over 50%.
Buses are the main means of transportation in Valparaíso.
Some departments were on strike up until this past Friday, others are on strike indefinitely until the situation is resolved.
Students are not going to class, and incidentally I have been under the weather, so I was able to miss class without there actually being class to miss.
Update: The paro will continue into Thursday, when there will be a national student strike. 4/23
Update: The paro continues and will probably go until at least tomorrow, Monday April 28th. The Universidad Federico Santa Maria has declared they are on strike until May 4th. The Playa Ancha campus of the PUCV is in a toma–the students are sleeping at the school and the faculty no longer have access to the school. Bus fares are set to raise tomorrow. 4/27
Poster protesting raise in prices
This past week was Semana Novata, a week which celebrates freshman. Classes are suspended, and each evening boasts an event hosted by the university’s federación estudiantil, or student body.
To take advantage of this week off school, I along with two other girls studying at PUCV on exchange went camping at the National Reserve Siete Tazas. Siete Tazas means literally “Seven Cups” and is so named for the seven waterfalls which spill into one another through natural volcanic basins formed years and years ago. We spent Saturday buying camp food and supplies, and left Sunday morning for our trip.
Gretchen (Alaska)
Emily (Montana)
Things went pretty much on schedule on the way to the reserve. We managed to get student prices for bus fares and micros (city buses), and had little delays in the way of waiting in between transfers.
Our path was as follows:
This is where we ran into a problem…
Because it is no longer considered high season, buses do not run more than once daily after a certain point in February. Of course we found this out, no thanks to Lonely Planet’s Guide to Chile.
We had to wait in Molina until 5:00 for a bus to Valdesina, which was still about 20 miles away from our destination. Molina, by the way, is a pretty small community; we were well aware as we sat in the town square with our fair skin and huge backpacks, that we were the main attraction.
Waiting in Molina consisted of exciting things like:
Once we were finally on the bus to Valdesina, curious as to how we would find our way to the reserve from the destination of the bus, a fellow passenger told us about a bus that was leaving Valdesina for Radal (the embarkment point for the reserve) at 9pm that evening.
Valdesina was scarcely more than a wide spot in the road. We easily found the river (by turning right after we descended from the bus and walking 40 feet), and a place to set up camp. The question now was whether to set up camp before nightfall, or wait for the phantom bus which would whisk us away to Radal where we would set up camp and hike to the falls the next day.
We decided to wait.
We ate a hearty dinner of rice and mixed vegetables, and some type of packet soup. Gretchen and Emily both have ample camping gear, so we had two propane stoves to make food with.
After dinner we made a small fire in one of the many stone fire pits while we waited for the bus. At 9 a bus finally came, but it was the same bus that had taken us to Valdesina running the same route again.
The next day we got a local to take us to the park in his truck for 14,000 pesos (around $30). This was a huge rip off, but we had run out of options!
We found a camp spot once we arrived in Radal, and spent the rest of the day in the park.
The falls were beautiful. We saw two distinct sites, and had the fortune (due to the difficulty of arrival and the fact that it isn’t high season) of not having to share them with anyone.
For more pictures from this trip, click here.
You can access the original article here: http://www.estrellavalpo.cl today (March 25th) by scrolling down the page– or any other day for an indeterminate amount of time by doing a search for “Hannah Kelley”.
I was interviewed on Saturday while sitting at a cafe near my house.
At the top it says:
The Gringa of the day
>North american Hanna (sp) Kelley thinks that the nice part of Valparaíso is that each neighborhood is distinct and has its own identity.
HANNAH KELLEY “The hills left me stunned”
Aside from studying and getting to know Chile, she is working as a volunteer
by Lisa Karlsson
_________________________________
“Hannah Kelley (21) arrived in Chile three weeks ago from the U.S. It is her first time in our country and in Valparaíso, but she already has a variety of opinions about this port city.
‘Each community has its own identity even though they are separated by just a few kilometers. I love that.”, says the north american, who was playing chess when we found her at a café on cerro Concepcion (cerro = hill).
She didn’t have a clear image of Valparaíso before she arrived, but she says that it was more or less what she had in mind, except that the streets of the hills are much longer and the stairs more tiring. “The characteristics of the hills left me stunned, they are quite impressive”, she signals.
During this year that she stays in Chile she is going to study history and pre-hispanic art, among other courses.
“But I didn’t just come to study. Aside from that, I am also going to work as a volunteer with Rotaract, an organization similar to Rotary International.”, she explains.
She tells us that a few weeks ago she went to a place in Olmué to work with some children alongside the Rotaract club. “It was a different experience, it will be very fun to continue working with them.” recounts this gringa.“
Fellow Rotary scholar Paul Goldberg held a get together at his residencia on Cerro Placeres (Pleasure Hill). His good friend and proprietor of the residencia, Miguel Angel, is a former chef–which didn’t hurt in preparing food for approx. 20 people. Friends from the university came and invited friends of their own, along with Rotaractors and their friends.
One of the Rotaractors staying in our district right now, David, is from Baja California, and he rooms with about 4 other Mexicans. They were somehow roped into cooking for the event, much to my delight!
It was a non traditional Easter Dinner by U.S. standards: quesadillas, pico de gallo with chips, slow cooked beans (frijoles) and seasoned rice were made along with other dishes. Of course no Mexican dinner would be complete without meat, which was supplied with seasoned chicken and beef.
To take from Paul’s Blog:
“ It was a good opportunity to gather with the international students and the Rotaract club members. We were about twenty in all and represented eight different countries, three different continents, and five different languages. Despite all the great cultural differences, we all had one thing in common…. an Easter celebration with a Mexican feast prepared by a few exchange students from Mexico!”
It was a nice gesture of Paul to organize the dinner, and I certainly appreciated being around friends on the Holiday. Since I have a large and fairly close-knit family, I hate spending the holidays without them!
See the picture album for this dinner here.
Easter Dinner with friends in Valparaíso
The Saturday of Easter Weekend I went wandering around the hills Cerro Alegre and Cerro Concepcion near my apartment with fellow scholar Paul Goldberg. We first went to a very unique cemetery, which is actually visible from the rear windows of my apartment.
See more pictures of the cemetery here.
Although I live at the bottom of a hill, in fact I am inundated with hills at every turn, I don’t often have the chance to explore them. Cerro Alegre is known for being one of the more touristy hills, while Concepcion is slightly more residential. Despite what either is known for, the interior of these hills is full of life and surprises.
After exploring the cemetery we climbed a little higher into an area with a puppet theatre, and a small park. In the park a family was playing soccer, and there were other people sitting on benches enjoying the nice day. It was like walking into an alternate universe. In front of my house there is the hustle and noise of buses and taxis, yet a five minute walk yielded a quiet beautiful spot to spend with the family on a Saturday.
After we toured around the hills more, spending probably 20 minutes in our descent, I was surprised to find that we ended in the same spot we had began. The hills above me are within such proximity, but constitute a totally different life.
See some of the sights I saw during my wanderings here.
Houses on Cerro Concepcion
The same night I went to a Pastoral, or what might be known as a “Passion Play” in the U.S. on Cerro Placeres. It was all outdoors, and consisted of around 70 community members reenacting the Easter Story. There were large booming speakers at every block corner, with the deep masculine narrator’s voice reading passages from the Book of John. When the narrator wasn’t speaking, they would play AMC- Charlton Heston-Ten Commandments-style movie scores.
The play spanned about 10 or so blocks in total, and lasted about two hours. It is currently in its 56th year of production. Five thousand plus people showed up for the event.
I took a lot of footage of the event which I will *eventually* get around to editing and posting on my vimeo page. Until that time, look at the handful of pictures that I took of the event here.
While walking around Casa Central (main campus for PUCV) on Monday, I noticed that some fellow students were using white paint to write on enormous strips of black plastic, then hanging them as banners all along the inside of the courtyard.
Posters inside of Casa Central
I stopped to ask one of the students what they were doing. The posters all began with the word justicia, justice, in big capital letters.
The girl I asked told me that they were putting up posters for a vigil that would be held that evening for her friend and classmate, Karina, who was murdered. I later realized that Monday was the one month anniversary of her death. The purpose of the posters, and the vigil, is to raise awareness that the police have not yet investigated her case, and in a certain way to put pressure on them.
I edited a video out of the footage I took from the vigil, and from talking to the student.
