Santiago origin story

The day’s homework done, Truus & I are just kicking back and enjoying some awesome, vintage $3 supermercado Chilean wine. The sun is down, and with it the heat of the day has lifted. We’re hangin’ in our flat in Santiago, or “The Big Empenada”, as it’s never likely to be known. 

The truth is that the city is named for a Spanish conquistador sent by the Peruvians to take charge a while back. Pedro de Valdivia (or Pete to his friends) reached the valley of the Mapocho (the river that keeps showing up in our pictures) on 13 December 1540. It was tasked to him to convince the native Picunche people that it was a good idea to build a thing called “a city” on behalf of the King Carlos I of Spain. What may have got lost in translation was that this would be the beach-head for governorship of Nueva Extremadura (The New World). The natives figured the guy with the horse and the cool clothes must know what he’s doing, and, after a few cups of eggnog spiked with rum, chose to accept the deal, rather than killing the strange interlopers in their beds en masse.

So, on 12 February 1541 Valdivia officially founded the city of Santiago in honor of St. James, patron saint of Spain, near the Huelén. To seal the deal, the conqueror renamed the hill as “St. Lucia.” The city name Santiago turns out is a garbled and crude nod to the Latin Sanctu Iacobu, “Saint James.” If they had it to do over, I think the natives would acknowledge that they should have spent less time imbibing and more time sharpening their spears. 

Well, what’s done is done. Switching to the present, the back of our flat in present day Santiago looks out onto half a dozen other high-rise apartment buildings. We’re on the tenth floor, so it’s kind of like being in our own personal South American Rear Window Hitchcock film. We keep a hawk-eye on the neighbours, like we are watching a Telenovela. Every siren, clanging noise, shriek of joy, cheering of a gooooooooaaaaaaaalllllll, and mundane trash pickup gets registered in our database. The restaurant downstairs sings happy birthday to one of their patrons, on average, 3 times per evening.

Life in Santiago is densely packed. It’s a mostly and increasingly vertical city. Anything new that gets built has verticality.  Seen from on high and at a distance, it could be any large U.S. metropolis. This is fully intentional. They appear to be following the same blueprint as China, Singapore, Dubai, and other places where raw ambition is spinning their navigational gyroscope.
You notice it on the roads, in the subway, and in the way people move through the streets and stores. You notice it also in the unique old style burroughs where the traditional Spanish-style low-rise dwellings are the norm. Our school is in one of these places, between San Cristobel (Hill of the Virgin Mary) and the North shore of the Mapocha river. We went there today after school for a walk-around. It’s very trendy, toney, and upscale. It’s also ground zero for many of the protests that have dogged Santiago for the last months. It’s a place where realities are colliding and those not benefiting from prosperity have come to have their voices heard. A bit ironic given that this is likely pretty much the spot where Spanish Pete and his buddies set up camp back in the day.
The more things change…