Berkley Center

The socioeconomic dynamics within Santiago have continued to interest and bewilder me in the three weeks since I arrived in Chile’s capital. In a country of approximately 17.5 million people, Santiago has a population of 6 million. The city that houses a third of the country’s population, however, is incredibly divided by wealth and, although less mentioned, race.

While walking through up Cerro Santa Lucia, one of the hills within the city, I was stopped by a man asking for money to help pay for his college tuition. As I chatted with him about the Chilean higher education system, he asked me, “Eres de Los Condes? Providencia?” Although at first flattered and excited that my accent apparently sounded Chilean, I quickly realized that my Spanish did not make him think I was from Santiago—he assumed based on my skin color that I was from Providencia or Los Condes, wealthy comunas in Santiago. Essentially, the more north you are in Santiago, the wealthier your family and comuna. Los Condes and Providencia are two stereotypically upper class comunas, similar to the Georgetown neighborhood in DC.

When I met some Chilean college students from wealthier comunas, they described the term “pelo-lis,” which essentially refers to wealthy Chileans who might be compared to New York City’s Upper East-Siders. Recognizing the problem and reinforcing it, they referred to themselves as pelo-lises and simultaneously described the inequality within the city. Their depictions of Santiago’s socioeconomic situation reminded me of Washington, DC. As in Santiago, a mere address ending, SE or NW, immediately establishes a person’s background and stereotype.

More than just a separation of comunas, however, social and economic inequality seems to continue through families and generations. The elites of Santiago all go to La Católica or La Chile, which are the two best schools in Chile. Through a better education, they have access to more opportunities than the lower classes. On our first day of orientation, the program advisor described how this trend reflects in Chilean politics; the same last names hold political and social power throughout generations. Again similar to DC and the United States as a whole, power seems to manifest itself within the same socioeconomic lines.

All of the above is not to emphasize the negative in Santiago; to the contrary, my time in Santiago has been colorful, welcoming, and full of learning experiences. The socioeconomic divisions within Santiago, instead, point out startling comparisons with the United States and make me wonder what people assume of Georgetown students when they walk around DC. Would someone be able to pinpoint our neighborhood or school based on skin color, clothing, or accent? And if that is the case, what other more subtle socioeconomic patterns exist in our city? There’s obviously no single or concise answer to any of these questions, but in Santiago not just skin color, but clothing, address, and slang all lead to assumptions of class; the real question is whether these assumptions still hold true in the majority of cases.