Chile Forum

Written back in 2006, reposted in 2008... enjoy:

I should have taken a few minutes earlier to write, but I’ve been putting it off.

First there was the “Fiestas Patrias” which, although it is celebrated only one day, went on for about sixteen in a row. The party started on Thursday the 14th after work got out, because everyone was determined not to do anything on the Friday before the holiday.

Men, women, children, dogs of all ages, and the occasional burro took part: there was eating, dancing cumbias, more eating, drinking, more dancing — this time of cuecas, more eating and more drinking.

Everyone who has a restaurant or a corner store, even stores that weren’t on corners — puts out a kind of barbecue fired with charcoal and floor wax, to cook “anticuchos” to a crisp. You might call them shishkebabs, but really you would expect real meat on a shishkebab. Traditionally, anticuchos are made with what passes for hotdog wieners, chunks of onion, green pepper and some other food groups. Sometimes there is a chunk of stringy meat marinaded in fly-specks. Authentic anticuchos include real fly-meat as well. They will also burn — rather, heat up — empanadas and other delicacies. Empanadas usually come in three varieties: pino, queso and marisco. Only the queso variety comes without day-old hard-boiled eggs and unpitted olives. Those are probably your best bet. If you can find ones with melted queso inside, consider yourself blessed, as these are very rare, otherwise the queso variety is usually deep fried dough that has had cheese nearby while being prepared.

The pino variety can usually be eaten in most cases, although the best ones have less onion than cumin. These empanadas are said to contain some kind of ground meat. It may be some kind of grazing animal found on farms, or one that grazes the garbage bags on the street. I did notice that during “Fiestas Patrias” that there were less cats on the streets, but that may have been coincidence. Anyone who eats this kind of empanada takes care not to lose another tooth to the unpitted olive. Some people who prepare empanadas will put in an extra olive during “fiestas patrias” just to add to the festive activities. Dentists offices are usually closed until after the parties are over so that their patients can make a single visit.

There are some hardy souls here that will eat the marisco variety without benefit of alcohol; they can usually be found at the Posta — the Chilean equivalent for what we might call the Emergency Room. Much in keeping with North American traditions, line-ups at the Posta can extend around the block, but there is the festive atmosphere where the entire family accompanies the patient so that they can explain to the staff what happened. And, just like in Canada and the USA, the medical staff is not interested. They are usually at some “Ramada” or “Fonda” drinking “chicha” fortified with rubbing alcohol.

Ramadas are temporary structures, made from “ramas” — twigs and sticks that are found on your neighbour’s property. Some of the fancier ones will invest in bamboo and palm leaves that they will take from public parks. Inside the Ramadas, there are wooden tables and benches, again usually taken from some other unsuspecting citizen who purchased the materials to build additions to their homes so that they could sell trinkets related to Fiestas Patrias. Smaller structures are the Fondas, usually big enough to accomodate fifty drunken louts at a time, and built from the remains of last year’s Ramadas. The Ramadas can shove together hundreds of people, in complete comfort, protected from the elements. A Ramada usually has a straw roof, with electrical wires supporting clear bare bulbs (the kind that lets you see the glowing element). Fires are surprising not that common, as there is usually enough drizzle in the early hours to douse the sparks that arise from time to time.

There was a bit of a public outcry this year, since the draconian No-Smoking law came into effect. You can have a smoking or non-smoking establishment, but if you allow smoking, you cannot have minors present. Most places that sold alcohol opted for non-smoking, so that they could maximize their profits and sell their wares to anyone. Most people did whatever they wanted and allowed smokers free access. Officials are partial to cheese empanadas that have real cheese in them, and some chicha to wash it down. This will give them a fat eye causing them to not see anything wrong: what the Chileans call “la vista gorda.”

I have no figures on alcohol consumption, but based on the presence of vomit in the streets, I am sure that it was prodigious. That assumes, of course, that the vomit was produced from alcohol and not food, but since I observed very few olive pits in the puddles, I trust that it was due to imbibing.

Traditions change with time, and so too with “Fiestas Patrias.” It seems now that the beverage of choice is Chilean Cerveza — beer — although there are still die-hards who will swill liter after liter of Gato Negro (a fine Chilean wine sold in a TetraBrik container) while singing “Puro-Chile” and dancing cumbias. Older celebrants will dance the cueca and guzzle Pisco and Coca-cola, “Piscola” — which they pronounce as “Pee-kola.” This is not because it causes them to urinate, rather because they have eaten too many empanadas while drunk and lost too many teeth, making it impossible for them to voice any sibilants. Another popular drink is “Chicha” — which is best described as a very young wine. Many older people prefer to drink their “chicha en cacho” — which is to say that once they get a good buzz on, they will drink anything poured into a dead goat’s horn.

These activities went on twenty-four hours a day until Monday, the actual National Holiday. During the day solemn military units of young cadets go marching through the main square and have their pictures taken by tourists. They dutifully will lay wreathes next to the Monument to Arturo Prat, and if they remember, dust off the plaque commemorating Bernardo O’Higgins, the liberator of Chile. These little marches wreak havoc with the micro-bus service, which can result in hundreds of buses waiting to cross the square so that they can rush revelers to the Ramadas so they can start drinking. Some drivers have been known to stop off with their passengers to tank up before they return to their “corridos” in the streets. Near the end of the day, all hell has broken out and the Ramadas are bulging at the seams with drunken bus drivers, thirsty cadets sucking kegs of beer dry, and of course, crazy chileans dancing cuecas and screaming out “Puro Chile” at the tops of their lungs. The tourists have gone to their hostals wondering why the city is a ghost town, resolving to go to some local cafe or restaurant, only to find that it is closed. Some will pay a taxi driver ten thousand pesos to go to a Ramada that Tio Pepe is running, in order to try the Chicha and test their teeth on empanadas de pino. Usually it is this Ramada that goes up in flames due to the dryness of the structure. You can usually see the tourists struggling back to their hostals on the “cerros” without their back-packs and cameras, having left them unattended for a moment while they visit the insanitary facilities only to return and find them "missing"

The final day of Fiestas Patrias, the nineteenth, is taken up in earnest by the locals, who find that the local botilleria still has a few cases of Gato Negro in the back of the store. The supermarkets are raided for another round of dead animal carcasses to turn into tasty barbecue, the requisite “carbón” (accent on the last syllable: car BON) and Nugget floor wax being sold at a hundred peso discount. The air is filled again with the smell of parrafin and burning flesh as people try to start their barbecues without benefit of crumpled newspapers (who reads the newspaper during Fiestas Patrias?) or gasoline. The Bomberos (Chilean firemen) make the rounds, putting out various fires and sampling the Anticuchos while they take the opportunity to sell their Rifa (raffle) tickets.

This year, because the eighteenth and nineteenth fell on Monday and Tuesday, few people felt inclined to go back to work on Wednesday, and so the rest of the week was taken as a holiday as well. People suffering from third-degree burns from partying in burning Ramadas or starting barbecues with Nugget floor wax, and those who were still alive after eating empanadas de mariscos were still lined up at the Posta on Friday, however, as the hospital workers were on a work stoppage. Dentists did a booming business, and I was able to visit mine on Thursday after a short hour and a half wait.

Even so, this weekend you could still hear in certain places, people singing:

“Puro Chile, es tus cielos azulados,
Puras brisas te cruzan también,
Y tus campos de flores bordados,
Es la copia feliz del Edén!”

May was a bit early for that post :s, but interesting anyway.

I know there might be only one or two besides me who care about this stuff... but I found a 'vegan fonda' seems to be very cheap:

http://huasovegetariano.blogspot.com/

I'll go check it out

P.S. why non alcoholic CHICHA? WTF, who said vegans don't drink!