A Word About Santiago

In early February, 2020, I had an opportunity to visit Santiago, Chile. My wife and I had just completed a tour of Patagonia, the southernmost region of South America, and were making our way home by way of the Arturo Merino Benitez International Airport, less than ten miles from downtown Santiago. We decided to spend two nights in the city and booked a room at the Luciano K Hotel.

The Luciano K is a "boutique hotel" centrally located across the street from a tree shaded park, near trendy neighborhoods with world-class restaurants, and near less trendy neighborhoods with shops and bars that cater to students and office workers. The hotel staff is friendly and helpful, its rooftop restaurant serves breakfast in the morning, and in the evening it serves dinner, cocktails, wine, and beer. It also has a commanding view of the streets below, Santiago's skyline, and surrounding mountains beyond. If you have occasion to travel to Santiago, I suggest you stay in the reasonably priced Luciano K Hotel.

A casual observer walking around the city would be favorably impressed by many things - green space, interesting museums, stylish shops, and a neighborhood dedicated entirely to farmers' markets, fish markets, meat markets, and restaurants that prepare and serve food purchased fresh from these same markets. I suggest that if you visit Santiago you visit this neighborhood and eat lunch at one of these restaurants.

But the casual observer would also notice some disconcerting things. Shanty camps of varying sizes populate the banks of the Mapocho River, which flows east to west through the city's northern neighborhoods. I have no official information, but my guess is that tens of thousands of people live in the camps. There are smaller camps in the city parks, including the park across the street from the Luciano K Hotel. The casual observer would notice that many of the city's busiest intersections have no street signs, no traffic signals, and no police officers directing traffic. Instead, young people wearing bright yellow vests direct traffic. They seem to do a reasonably good job of it, and the drivers seem to obey them, but it is stressful when a volunteer traffic controller signals you to cross the street. You don't feel totally confident that the traffic will stop and wait for you.

At first, I was impressed that these young people with no official status would volunteer to direct traffic. It seemed like civic volunteerism, like when I volunteer to serve on my neighborhood citizens' association, or when my wife volunteers to work at the local food bank. But then a young man pointed to one of the volunteers and said to me, "That is a police job. The police are not here. That is a volunteer." His tone revealed anger at the police. I looked around and, indeed, there were no police within sight. It occurred to me that I had not seen a police officer in this neighborhood all day. I started to regard the volunteers differently. They did not seem so much like civic minded volunteers. They seemed more like occupiers. The shanty camp residents had assumed a police job, a government function. They, not the police, or Santiago's local government, were in control of this section of Santiago.

That evening, my wife and I walked from our hotel to a nearby neighborhood, the Barrio Lastarria, to have dinner. We found a restaurant that a friend had recommended, the Bocanariz Vino Bar - a fabulous, classy little restaurant. The host seated us by the front window. The wait staff was knowledgeable, efficient, attentive, and friendly. They pretended to understand my highschool Spanish. The food and wine were excellent. Wonderful evening. If you have occasion to travel to Santiago, I suggest you have dinner at the Bocanariz Vino Bar.

After dinner, at about eight o'clock, we started to walk back to our hotel. It was a cool, quiet summer evening in Santiago. Lovely. We walked and talked. As we approached the Luciano K, our evening was interrupted by screeching sirens and flashing blue lights coming from behind. I turned to see several armored police trucks, as big as tanks, speeding up the street toward us, and toward a large gathering of young people in Baquedano Plaza, just ahead. The vehicles mounted water canons on top, and heavy steel mesh covered their bullet-proof glass windows. The vehicles presented a sinister, unmistakable display of official authority. The hotel staff had warned us, if we found ourselves near a street demonstration, get away from the police because the police would be targets. To us, this advice seemed counter-intuitive. As tourists, our instincts would be to run toward the police. But a shower of stones flew from the crowd and slammed into the vehicles, making the sound of a long, rolling thunder. People ran down the street past us, with their arms wrapped around their heads, trying to protect themselves and get away from the chaos. The police fired rubber bullets at the demonstrators and powerful water canons knocked several to the ground. Tear gas began to pollute the air. My wife and I found our hotel in the confusion, rang the buzzer and the doorman unbolted and opened the front door. We slipped in.

We took the nineteen-twenties era, vintage elevator to the terrace bar on the seventh floor to order a cocktail and to see what we could see. The bartender served us pisco sours, on ice. He asked us not to photograph the riot because if either the police or the demonstrators saw us taking pictures, they would attack the hotel. Understood. From our vantage point, we could see that demonstrators maintained control of the neighborhood for an hour or two, while police tried to push them back with clubs, rubber bullets, water canons, and shields. The masked demonstrators threw rocks at the police, and chunks of broken concrete pavers they had stolen from city sidewalks and broken up for this very encounter. Eventually, the tear gas chased us from the seventh floor terrace, so we retreated to our room.

The riot went on until about mid-night, when the police retreated and the rioters went home to their shanties. We flew home the next day, on schedule.