Lessons from Living Abroad: Santiago, Chile - Spring, 2022

Justin Kopek

SGS 484 - Global Experience

 I spent the Spring 2022 semester studying abroad in Santiago, Chile, and while part of

my study abroad involved taking Spanish-language courses at Universidad Nacional Andrés

Bello, the most impactful learning experiences took place outside of the classroom. Through

conversations with my host mom, meeting and talking with a number of local college students,

visiting museums, and even simply walking around the city I gained insight into the political and

economic dimensions of Chilean life that I would have hardly been able to glean without

physically being there. From the beginning, I was curious to learn more about how Chile has

dealt with the memory of its Cold War dictatorship, and while there I found that the tradition of

remembrance is more complicated than it appears from abroad. Though I already knew that

Chile was one of the most unequal countries in the world and had adhered almost religiously to

the neoliberal playbook over the past half century, living in Santiago gave me a much clearer

picture of who the Chilean economic miracle has benefited and who it has not, as well as the way

that inequality has manifested itself in the country. Finally, through my conversations with a

number of Chileans and consuming Chilean media I learned about how Chileans see themselves

in the world, both from the perspective of immigration and geopolitics. Together, these

experiences not only taught me about Chile but went so far as to cause me to reconsider the way

that I understand the world, especially from the standpoint of global geopolitical attitudes.

One of the major themes connected to global studies coursework that came up over and

over during my time abroad was human rights discourse and memory. Part of my motivation for

choosing Chile specifically was my interest in the country’s Cold War history. For multiple

history classes, first in high school and then later in college, I researched the US role in the coup

d’etat that overthrew democratically elected socialist, Salvador Allende, and led to a nearly

two-decade long military dictatorship under the rule of Augusto Pinochet. While doing this
research, I inevitably came across a number of references to how the dictatorship is remembered

within Chile, including to the Museum of Memory and Human Rights (MMDH), which

documents the atrocities of the Pinochet regime. Overall, I came away with the impression that

Chile’s attitude towards its past dictatorship was very healthy and reflective.

After visiting Chile, I’ve come to realize that the reality on the ground is a little bit more

complicated, and that the memory of the dictatorship has become, like in several other Latin

American countries, a deeply political and controversial issue that hardly evokes consensus.

Most significantly, remembrance of the period has been institutionalized to a certain degree.

During her first presidency, Michele Bachelet inaugurated the aforementioned MMDH, which is

without a doubt the single most important site for remembrance of the dictatorship. I visited the

museum on two occasions and came away feeling very glad that I had gone. The museum seeks

to retell the history of the dictatorship from an emotionally neutral perspective. Though the

MMDH does include filmed testaments of torture survivors and is at many points somber, it is

not meant to evoke horror in the same way that many museums remembering the Holocaust do,

for example. A number of former torture sites throughout the country have also been turned into

monuments and sites of remembrance, such as Villa Grimaldi in eastern Santiago, which I also

visited.

Moreover, remembering the dictatorship is an important cause for a large segment of the

population: especially the young, economically-marginalized left. On March 30, el “Día del

Joven Combatiente,” which celebrates two left-wing students that the dictatorship killed in the

streets of Santiago in 1985, protests broke out throughout central Santiago, including down the

street from where I attended classes.1 The protests escalated to the point that I had to walk to a

1
“Nuevos disturbios con estudiantes bloquean el centro de Santiago,” France 24, March 30, 2022,
https://www.france24.com/es/minuto-a-minuto/20220329-nuevos-disturbios-con-estudiantes-bloquean-el-centro-de-
santiago.
different metro station to get home because the one I normally use had been closed due to

security concerns. This is all to say that remembrance of the dictatorship is far from absent in

public spaces and continues to animate large segments of the Chilean populace.

That said, this remembrance of and disgust towards the dictatorship is not nearly as

universal as I had initially thought. For example, the French-Chilean film Nostalgia de la luz

won a plethora of international awards, including the 2010 European Film Award for Best

Documentary.2 It includes sufficient criticism of the country’s dictatorship, telling the story of

women who still search the Atacama desert for the remains of their disappeared loved ones.

Despite its international success, the film is far from widely celebrated within Chile. For

example, the film’s director, Patricio Guzmán, accused the Chilean education system of

censorship after a screening at a Santiago secondary school was abruptly stopped by the school’s

administrator.3 One of my Chilean professors also told me that when TVN, one of Chile’s large

television networks, dedicated a week to celebrating Chilean film, the documentary was aired on

Monday at 11:00pm on a Monday despite being one of the most internationally acclaimed films

ever made by a Chilean. In Chile, there remains a very pervasive notion, especially on the

political right, that the dictatorship should not be discussed and is better off forgotten.

Even beyond this, I learned that reverence for the dictatorship has surged in recent years.

José Antonio Kast, the son of a guard at one of Pinochet’s torture camps, won 44% of the

national vote in the country’s 2021 presidential election after expressing a certain nostalgia for

the country’s military dictatorship.4 He has downplayed the atrocities of the dictatorship, for

example tweeting “I’m not talking about a dictatorship, I’m talking about a military government”
2
Nostalgia de la luz, directed by Patricio Guzmán (2010; Paris: Pyramide Internacional) Film.
3
“Patricio Guzmán acusa nueva censura a documental ‘Nostalgia de la luz,’” Diario UChile, Universidad de Chile,
October 10, 2013,
https://radio.uchile.cl/2013/10/10/patricio-guzman-acusa-nueva-censura-a-documental-nostalgia-de-la-luz/.
4
“Elección de Presidente 2021,” Servicio Electoral de Chile, Accessed November 9, 2022,
https://historico.servel.cl/servel/app/index.php?r=EleccionesGenerico&id=236.
and applauding the 1980 military constitution.5 In Chile, the military dictatorship is a politically

charged topic and there is far from any consensus on how its legacy should be viewed.

Contemporary political struggles have been superimposed on this history, with the left vocally

speaking out about the dictatorship’s atrocities, the center and center-right largely remaining

silent, perhaps because of their affinity for Pinochet’s economic outlook despite their discomfort

with the regime’s violence and repression, and the emerging far right beginning to embrace the

dictatorship as the country’s golden age.

One of the other major themes in global studies that popped up time and time again

throughout my time in Chile is global inequality. My favorite reading from SGS 101 was by far

the Milanovic article on global inequality in the neoliberal age.6 Chile is a fascinating case study

when it comes to trade and inequality, being both one of the most unequal countries on the planet

and one of the countries with the lowest barriers to trade. Though the country’s gini coefficient

has dropped significantly from its peak of 57.2 in 1990, it remains one of the 20 most unequal

countries in the world.7 At the same time, as of 2020 it had a weighted average tariff of 0.4%,

near the highest in the world and the second highest among major economies after Singapore.8

Though all of this information is easily accessible via the internet, it is much less obvious how

this sort of inequality manifests itself in the real world, and this is something that I gained

massive insight into while studying abroad.

One of the most notable differences between the US and Chile that I recognized during

my time there is the difference in class expression. While the US is certainly far from a

5
José Antonio Kast (@joseantoniokast). “Yo no hablo de dictadura, yo hablo de gobierno militar #KastPresidente
#ElSillonDePedro,” Twitter, August 3, 2017, https://twitter.com/joseantoniokast/status/893313818461433861?.
6
Branko Milanovic, “Global Income Inequality in Numbers: in History and Now,” Global Policy 4, no. 2 (2013).
7
“Gini index- Chile,” World Bank Data, World Bank, Accessed November 9, 2022,
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/TM.TAX.MRCH.WM.AR.ZS?most_recent_value_desc=false.
8
“Tariff rate, applied, weighted mean, all products (%),” World Bank Data, World Bank, Accessed November 9,
2022, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/TM.TAX.MRCH.WM.AR.ZS?most_recent_value_desc=false.
class-homogenous society, economic class does not feel as salient in each and every aspect of

daily life in the way that it is in Chile, and class segregation there is even more extreme than in

the US. Class is painstakingly apparent in nearly every aspect of Chilean life. It is not only

reflected in status symbols, like clothing and cars, but in support for football clubs and the

avoidance of certain sounds in everyday speech. For example, football matches between

Colo-Colo and Universidad Católica are not simply sporting events but microcosms of class

conflict, pitting “the people” against “the elites.” Similarly, while speech patterns reflect class in

nearly all modern cultures, I do not know of any other Spanish-speaking elite that takes great

care to avoid using the “-sh” [ʃ] sound at all costs, instead using “-ch” [tʃ], even in borrowed

words like shorts and sushi (pronounced chorts and suchi).

Additionally, class segregation stuck out to me as more stark in Santiago than in most

large metropolitan areas in the US (with Phoenix perhaps being one exception). Despite the city’s

extensive network of metro lines and public buses it is rare to see people of different social

classes ever occupying the same spaces. Not only do people live in class-segregated

neighborhoods, but they hardly leave these neighborhoods, even to work or shop. There is no

real district where Santiaguinos of all social classes occupy the same public space. Everything to

the east of Plaza Baquedano “pertenece a los cuicos” (belongs to the rich) and everything to its

west “pertenece al pueblo” (belongs to the people), with few exceptions. Visiting Santiago gave

me insight not only into the extent of inequality within Chile but also into the ways in which

inequality is culturally and geographically reified.

One of the units I found most engaging in all of my global studies coursework was

critical geopolitics in SGS 370. I drew upon the tradition of critical geopolitics put forth by Toal
and Agnew 9 to write my final project for that class, analyzing how the geopolitical idea of Latin

America is constructed in the US imagination. However, I did not feel that I had enough

background knowledge to write about the Latin American perspective of the US. While abroad

in Santiago, I learned a good deal about how Chileans view geopolitics, the United States, and

their country’s role in the world.

Being in Chile during the initial stages of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I observed a

much different perspective on the conflict than the hegemonic discourse in American media.

Initially, I expected Chileans to be just as abhorred by the invasion as I was, and I was surprised

by the degree of indifference, apathy, and misinformation present around the issue. For some

people, such as one of the Chilean friends I made, the invasion was lamentable, but simply

another example of oppression, no different in character from Palestine or Yemen or Ethiopia,

simply receiving more Western attention. For many others, especially on the political far-left,

such as my American friend’s host sister, the invasion was a welcome development as a

challenge to NATO hegemony. Yet, the prevailing attitude was one of disinterest and apathy. The

most liked comments on Instagram posts about the invasion were almost all jokes about nuclear

war between the US and Russia and how lucky Latin America is to be so distant from global

geopolitical conflict. Though the invasion was certainly covered on the news, it did not drive the

media cycle the way that it did in the US, and discussions of the conflict almost always centered

on the notion that this is not our fight.

Though I expected to find significant support for international, rights-based

order-building among a populace galvanized by US abuses in the region, the prevailing attitude

was one of detachment and realism. This outlook applied to geopolitical issues across the board,

9
Gerard Toal and John Agnew, “Geopolitics and Discourse: Practical Geopolitical Reasoning in American Foreign
Policy,” Political Geography Quarterly (1992).
from the invasion of Ukraine to US-China competition to Afghanistan. Though there was a

lingering sense of anti-Americanism, to Chileans, geopolitics is something that happens on the

other side of the world and only matters insofar as it has the potential to improve the country’s

material condition.

Finally, my time abroad opened my eyes to the way that Chile’s interesting position as a

center-leaning country within the semi-periphery affects immigration and emigration. The hottest

political topic, by far, while I was abroad was immigration, especially from Venezuela. The

discourse on immigration very closely mirrored the popular anti-immigrant narrative here in the

US. The prevailing sentiment, especially on the right, but even among many people who would

consider themselves left of center, is that Venezuelans are lazy and dirty, bringing crime and

violence to Chile while weakening the economy. The rhetoric was eerily similar to the way that

the GOP talks about Latin American immigrants.

However, Chile is not only a destination for immigrants, but experiences significant

emigration as well. One of the Chilean friends I made told me that “it is every parent’s dream

that their child leaves to go work in Europe.” Among middle and upper class Chileans, there is a

tendency to want to emigrate, though for reasons markedly different from the Venezuelans

arriving in Chile. Being one of the richest countries in the region, it is the destination for many

migrants living in poorer neighboring countries, such as Bolivia and Venezuela. However, the

gap that still exists between Chile and the global economic core has led many young, talented

people to leave the country and begin lives elsewhere.

My time studying abroad in Chile was both personally transformative and exceptionally

valuable in the way that it taught me about the country and challenged my understanding of the

world. The observations noted above only scratched the surface of my intellectual journey in
Chile, and each of these topics deserves a full essay in itself. As much as learning about the

world from the classroom helps to expand our understanding of the world, classroom learning

alone simply fails to compare to academics supplemented by international travel. I am incredibly

grateful to have had the opportunity to live abroad for a semester and I look forward to the

personal and intellectual growth that further international travel and engagement with issues of

international politics will provide me.

Works Cited

“Elección de Presidente 2021.” Servicio Electoral de Chile. Accessed November 9, 2022.

https://historico.servel.cl/servel/app/index.php?r=EleccionesGenerico&id=236.

“Gini index- Chile.” World Bank Data. World Bank. Accessed November 9, 2022.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/TM.TAX.MRCH.WM.AR.ZS?most_recent_value_d

esc=false.

Guzmán, Patricio, dir. Nostalgia de la luz. 2010; Paris: Pyramide Internacional. Film.

Kast, José Antonio. (@joseantoniokast). “Yo no hablo de dictadura, yo hablo de gobierno militar

#KastPresidente #ElSillonDePedro.” Twitter. August 3, 2017.

https://twitter.com/joseantoniokast/status/893313818461433861?.

Milanovic, Branko. “Global Income Inequality in Numbers: in History and Now.” Global Policy

4, no. 2. (2013).

“Nuevos disturbios con estudiantes bloquean el centro de Santiago.” France 24. March 30, 2022.

https://www.france24.com/es/minuto-a-minuto/20220329-nuevos-disturbios-con-estudian

tes-bloquean-el-centro-de-santiago.

“Patricio Guzmán acusa nueva censura a documental ‘Nostalgia de la luz.’” Diario UChile.

Universidad de Chile. October 10, 2013.

https://radio.uchile.cl/2013/10/10/patricio-guzman-acusa-nueva-censura-a-documental-no

stalgia-de-la-luz/.

“Tariff rate, applied, weighted mean, all products (%).” World Bank Data. World Bank. Accessed

November 9, 2022.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/TM.TAX.MRCH.WM.AR.ZS?most_recent_value_d

esc=false.
Toal, Gerard and John Agnew. “Geopolitics and Discourse: Practical Geopolitical Reasoning in

American Foreign Policy.” Political Geography Quarterly (1992): 78-91.