Solidaridad

Sitting with my family at the table after dinner this evening, drinking tea and mopping up a puree of avocado with a piece of bread, I watched as the country's exiting president, Michelle Bachelet, gave her last address to the nation ahead of tomorrow's change of government. Bachelet's past is almost inconceivable - her father, a general in the Air Force and a member of Salvador Allende's cabinet dead in Villa Grimaldi, one of Pinochet's major torture centers and holding pens, before she and her mother were tortured in the same compound, only to join in the resistance against the dictatorship after their release. Moreover, as an agnostic, single mom of 3 children from two different fathers, her political prospects in the US would amount to almost nothing. However, she is leaving office with a personal approval rating of upwards of 85%, an astounding, almost inconceivable figure, and in her final address, she spoke of one word that characterized the nation's response to February's earthquake and which seems to me to speak to what Bachelet embodies to most Chileans: "Solidaridad". Solidarity.

When given the chance, Chileans will emphasize how united their country is, and the earthquake and its aftermath has given them a chance to express this sentiment in very real terms. I was lucky enough to volunteer at a chapter of the Chilean Red Cross here in Santiago last Friday, and they literally cannot handle enormous number of clothes that had been donated in the week following the quake: they are now only accepting donations of certain non-perishable foods to send to the more affected regions further south. That same night, at 10pm, a 24-hour campaign began to raise money to help shelter the hundreds of thousands of displaced Chileans - most figures are above 1 million, this in a country with a population of only 17 million. The next day, street corners in certain parts of town were filled with young volunteers dressed up in circus-like garbs, faces painted, waving enormous Chilean flags and collecting donations for this effort: Chile ayuda a Chile ("Chile helps Chile"). By the end of the night on Saturday, after an endless procession of companies, families, workers' unions donating thousands of dollars each on a continuous telethon broadcast on nearly every television station, the "Chile ayuda a Chile" effort had collected more than double its goal of 15 mil millones de pesos, or a little more than US$30 million. I woke up the next morning to find that in all, the Chilean people had raised an amount equivalent to between 60 and 70 million US dollars in only 24 hours.

The earthquake has begun to fade from the news, and has all but disappeared from international and American news sources, but that has certainly not diminished the country's recognition of the difficulties faced by those most affected by this disaster. With the country's first conservative government since the end of Pinochet's dictatorship set to take power tomorrow, the process of recovery could not have came at a more strenuous time, as many people seem to be waiting apprehensively, hoping that the country doesn't back away from the progress it's made in the past 20 years. However, it is also very true that much of the credit for the recovery efforts can go to Chileans, independent of what happens with the country's new president.