By: Sabrina Kayser
January 4, 2016
The city’s geographical layout correlates directly with the wealth distribution of its inhabitants. Valparaiso was built on the sliver of land that juts out into the deepest bay in central Chile, which allowed ships to come and go easily. This tiny speck of land is completely ringed by steep cerros (hills). This precious flat land, called the plan, houses all the expensive businesses and apartments, where the central location and ease of transportation are big draws. The inhabitants value normal building ground so much that in the nineteenth century the city officials extended this land four or five blocks further into the sea. Where now there are streets crammed with banks and government buildings, there once were only waves crashing into the rocky cliffs.
When you begin to climb the hills, however, the demographic landscape starts to change along with the natural landscape. While the two most historical and tourist-frequented neighborhoods are bastions of economic prosperity and thriving businesses, mainly due to their UNESCO designation, the other cerros offer middle-class residential homes, and, as you climb further up, older and more decrepit buildings. At the very top of these hills live the poorest of the city in the poblaciones, communities situated in precarious old buildings, often squatting on property that has been damaged by a previous fire. It seems counterintuitive at first to think that the best views are found in the most undesirable properties, but the reason lies in city planning. The difficulty not only of transporting oneself up those steep hills, let alone water and food and all kinds of daily necessities, is what made the hillsides of Valparaiso so unattractive to its residents. Even now the availability of transportation and services is drastically less than on the plan.
But the distribution of its population is not the only aspect in which radically different realities coexist in Valparaiso. All you have to do is look at the food. Chile is known internationally for exports such as wine, fish, and fruit. While we can get Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon and Chilean Atlantic salmon in the United States, so much fish is exported that the price has gone up both because of demand and scarcity. The bay of Valparaiso has been overfished, and the salmon farmed off the coast of Chile is mostly destined for overseas markets. Chileans are not the ones who benefit the most from their country’s natural resources (at least not regular, middle-class Chileans). The ones who benefit are a few wealthy families and foreign corporations. For example, Chileans drink very little water in comparison to Americans, in large part because its price has gone up due to privatization by foreign companies like Nestlé.
In a place where such starkly different realities can coexist, art provides a means of expression and a way of bringing people together for a common purpose. In the city, the artistic hub is located in the compound of Valparaiso’s first prison, which was used during the Pinochet dictatorship to incarcerate and torture artists and intellectuals of all stripes who opposed the regime. Nowadays the prison buildings and central lawn are the site of countless fairs, workshops, and performances aimed at building solidarity and awareness in the general public. Such a dramatic change, trying to erase the painful past to make way for a positive future, showcases the incredible complexity of Valparaiso's myriad faces that change in accordance with the varied experiences of the Porteños, living their lives in this colorful city replete with art, disparities, decay, and life.
Sabrina Kayser graduated from Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service in 2017 with a major in regional and comparative studies with a focus on migration and identity construction in Latin America and Western Europe. She blogged for the Junior Year Abroad Network in fall 2015 while studying abroad in Valparaíso, Chile.
