People are quite harsh while talking about Santiago Chile. They say its a boring, dirty place which I will attempt here to change its reputation. Though it is true that the Andes concentrate the cities pollution and you can barely see the moonlight through the smog, but the city beneath is very clean and is a striking contrast to the other major cities we went to over the course of the trip. On more than one occasion I've been shocked to hear Spanish because of how put together and organized the city is. The people are very diverse here too and brown hair isn't so unique. You kind zone out and feel that your in a major city in the US.
The city is equipped with an impressive metro system that snakes throughout most of the downtown area. The cars are packed to the brim at rush hour and if you plan wrong you'll have to see several trains pass before you can somehow squeeze into one. The metro is perhaps the greatest reason to love Santiago because it makes sites from the entire city possible within a days agenda.
Many museums are free! We spent days exploring their treasures. The art museums were full of mostly contemporary art and have other works intermixed in a somewhat random manner.
National Geographic declared Santiago's La Vega market as the fifth best in the world. The multiple buildings extend for five acres or more. We went as often as we could because of the bargains on groceries and the hidden local eateries serving lunches at unbeatable prices for the quality.
The market is a big family of sort that is often the first to load up a truck and to send emergency relief to disaster areas even before the government gets there. The unofficial motto of the market is dispues de dios esta la Vega which translates roughly to mean that the market picks up on providing for people where God leaves off. The sense of community echoes in a slightly jealous manner with the shop keepers. You pick your vendor for each good, and only go to that vendor for that good. If your seen by your tomato guy with tomatoes from someone else, he blocks you like on Facebook. Never again will you get his frequent customer good price.
2.5 million people are burred in the cities' cemetery which is absolutely huge. Here you can witness first hand the social stratification of the Chilean society. The graves range from modest to Moslem's. The majority of the larger ones are family plots and themed around an identity they want to relate the family to even past their lives. The families competed to use outlandish designs, symbols and architecture to reinforce their status or membership in a ethnic community. Italians built a ten story building for their communities departed.
One of the most somber areas of the cemetery is the children's area. Many kids starved to death during Chile's coup d'etat lead by the military dictator Pinochet. The American CIA backed the truck drivers union in a strike that paralyzed the country and allowed the boil over of what was already a rising social temperature. Without the trucks, the food sat and rotted and the kids were the worst victims. 1973 was the start of 18 years of military rule, warrantless arrests, torture, paranoid interrogations, and disappearances.
