Berkley Center

Chile is a land of both mercados and supermercados. Soon after I arrived in Valparaiso, my host brother brought me to a shop filled with buckets of beans, nuts, grains, dog food, etc. We took a numbered ticket, and while we waited for assistance Benito told me that this was the traditional style of Chilean mercado, where dry goods are bought by the kilo at a family-owned store. Later, we shopped at an open-air feria lined with stalls of produce. Benito bought tomatoes, lettuce, olives, and apples from vendors who greeted him with hugs and comments about his recent haircut.

Not all Chileans shop this way. I’ve seen for myself the popularity of Jumbo, a Chilean equivalent to Target or Walmart. These chain superstores are generally more expensive, but convenience and luxury often win out in an increasingly prosperous Chile. Valparaiso is poised on the threshold between “developing” and “developed,” charged by a dialogue between the rainbow of shipping containers in Chile’s largest port and the equally colorful old houses clustered atop the cerros of this UNESCO World Heritage Site. Some stick with the old ways of doing things out of habit, tradition, or personal philosophy. Others have no choice; while Chile is now technically a high-income country, it experiences some of the greatest inequality in the hemisphere. For every Santiago high-rise there is an impoverished barrio or a community of campesinos living beyond the influence of Jumbo.

The feria is a good place to make friends. Back in the United States, we get most of our groceries by pushing a cart down the aisles of a supermarket. This impacts the global economy and environment, but on a more immediate level it means a different way of interacting—or not interacting —with other people. We can find everything we need without speaking to a human until we reach the cash register. In Chile, enclosed superstores like Jumbo are the closest thing to that isolated shopping experience, and even then many items have to be fetched by an employee from behind a counter. I think this perpetuates or reflects a friendlier culture (also higher crime rates, but that’s another discussion). From a New Englander’s perspective, Chile is a country with more conversations between strangers and less personal space between friends. This can be intimidating, especially after a long day of crossing language barriers, but when I venture away from Jumbo to buy dried fruit from a bustling mercado or cheese from the deli counter of a small shop, the resulting interactions are nothing but positive. A confused facial expression usually attracts immediate offers of assistance in a store or on the streets.

Time is relative (to when I eat). In addition to being friendly and helpful, Chileans (like many people around the world) tend to be more laid back about schedules than we are in the United States. Here, meals (and classes) can start and end at any time. In my host family, desayuno is whenever people wake up. Almuerzo, generally the largest meal of the day, is eaten somewhere between 1 and 4 p.m., which makes the productive part of my day later than I’m used to. Onces (elevens) tends to occur between 8 and 10 p.m., or whenever the last person gets home. And even to these general guidelines there are frequent exceptions. One night, I got out of bed to use the restroom, and I discovered my family enjoying an asado in the courtyard, so I went out in my pajamas to meet a bunch of new people and eat roughly a pound of grilled churipan (chorizo and herby mayonnaise in a bread roll).

Completos are dangerous, but so are generalizations; I have never seen a Chilean turn down a completo (a hot dog covered in mayonnaise, avocado, and tomato), but no two households are alike in any country, and food has helped teach me to avoid extensive cultural generalizations. My host family eats vegetarian for all but a few meals a month, subsisting mainly on bean soup, fruit salad, bread, and scrambled eggs. This is definitely not the typical Chilean fare, but who knows what is. Some of my friends are served unusual animal parts—one was fed almost nothing but pasta for a weeks, and another lives with a professional chef who makes fresh gnocchi, hummus, and apple pie. So, readers can take everything I’ve written about Chilean culture with a grain of salt—or a dollop of mayonnaise, because that stuff is on everything here.