Long time has passed since a hand game arrived on La Legua, one of the most dangerous place on Santiago’s downtown. One side, there is the police hand that runs through streets patroling the narco families. On the other, there is the invisible hand of economic crisis.

Until now, the intangible hand’s hits were questioned scarcely by the people of this place. Even, they grow up under its caress, like mexicans under Malinche’s stigmata. However, the outrage of this global hand, a hand the most saw ingenously, has arrived without lubricant.

Mrs. Raquel has lived in Toro Zambrano Street for years, but she made an oven-house just several months ago. Mrs. Raquel is almost 80 years old and like others octogenarians of here, put the stones of this new Arcade when she came from north of Chile in the 60’s. She is small and brown skinned. Her clients always are coming. And this is why her emporium has been broading to other products. She is doing the same of her neighbouring who sells as cigarrettes as soaps from a little window. And both elude taxes.

In Legua York, thus young people called La Legua, money drops. And not for the police assault that caught 19 gangs in 2007 –gans have decided now changing narco tickets by traffic arm bills to continue with business. In the Legua Streets you can see yet Hilfilger jackets and expensive cars moving on the corners. But money drops here from summer, since sicological fist came with fireworks and mass media firecrackers.

More than other times, you can smell fried fish or hear the lottery games’ shouts through savage moon’s nights. A lot of families of Toro Zambrano cord put tables when weekends came because they need to offer dishes just for $ 2.000 (four dollars aproximated). You can see sport clubs like The Vasas of Los Copihues Street or Legua Juniors Club full of people selling dishes o playing bingos. All things work here. For example, Mr. Zenén Vargas, a drawing, saw himself with empty pockets and knocked Legua Juniors Club’s door in serching help to pay the heart surgery of his grandchild.

Thus the invisible hand controls and shapes crisis’ lifestyle. It will be transitory, La Moneda says, the Chilean Government palace. And we must accept it. Meanwhile, the Legua village market, the famous market of Jorge Caning Street, branch out over corners. There are arguments because a quarter of seller has illegal patents. All wants the best side to sell. The crisis has hit this place so hard that even the priest of Santa Cristina Church has been saying that we must save our money. “Do that, fellas, and be concerned about this”, said one Sunday.

This image is not new. Who lived the Asian Crisis in the Frei Administration or bore the economic hits of Pinochet rule, know these pictures. In La Legua, like the world, the economic crisis strengthens with eagerness the certainty of its ciclic currents. The certainty of an eternal return that just Nietszche and ours, colateral sons of his minds, believe in it undoubtedly.

Carlos Oliva

Journalist

]]> http://enverdeseo.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/memo-from-santiago/feed/ 0 croliva foto mural legua http://enverdeseo.wordpress.com/2009/05/27/nuclear-energy-and-what-else/ http://enverdeseo.wordpress.com/2009/05/27/nuclear-energy-and-what-else/#comments Wed, 27 May 2009 13:33:08 +0000 enverdeseo http://enverdeseo.wordpress.com/?p=57 ]]>

Since 2004, when the government of Argentina suddenly started cutting the gas supply to our country, the discussion about energy in Chile has intensified. Nowadays, factors such as the popularization of “the environmental problem and the global warming” as topics to talk about over a cup of coffee and as if they mere pieces of news, have turned ideas about sustainable energy, from something worthless, mere novelties, into very important, top-priority subjects. While we Chileans keep on using our PC’s more and more everyday and continue replacing the regular kettle for “inconsiderate” electric ones, the question of how we will get the energy we need becomes crucial, transcendental.

As usual, the first thing we do when facing a problem, a threat or the possibility of a catastrophe coming out of the blue is to panic, to start talking as if we were mad, and to publish any idea that comes into our minds from anywhere; and if possible, we try to create a lot of fuzz in the process.  The impulse and the need to do “something” become everyday topics, notwithstanding whether that something is “really something” or not. We start looking out for new solutions, propositions and ideas approved by “more developed” countries than ours, and if possible, we adopt a new perspective and we try to make it true no matter how. But let’s keep it clear: we merely adopt this lonely and sad proposition that we liked so much, but we don’t worry about all its implications. As some might say, we just go for it. This is why some people defend the beneficial hydroelectric dams; others support the always clean and pure wind turbines; and yet others go and scandalously champion nuclear energy (may God protect us). Some people say there are just too many possibilities available. However, it would be good asking ourselves, have we really thought about our problem and its possible solutions? Many times, in the middle of all the fuzz, we don’t give ourselves time to answer this simple little question.

Nowadays, the need and the problem are becoming more evident. Our society is starting to require more and more energy, and we not only depend on this energy, but we also depend on the idea that by living in an energy-consumer system that is expanding, we are boosting our growth, thus becoming more developed and improving our quality of life. Yet to our detriment, the problem is not as simple as proposing a new generation technology and – after some routine research and some diplomacy – installing it somewhere in our country, letting the mass of thoughtless consumers waste energy freely; contributing, some might say, to the growth of the country.

The environmental problem is serious (believe me, VERY SERIOUS). To think that we need to keep on burning fossil fuels and that the ever-increasing demand of energy is a good indicator, is something that will lead us to ruin. It’s high-time for a technological change. For the time being, we really need a new technology that fulfills the current needs and the environmental expectations, that allows us to stop the chain reaction that we have started, thus giving ourselves the time we need to continue being a species on the planet and not to turn ourselves into a mere paleontological remembrance. A possible candidate could be the nuclear energy: it doesn’t pollute the air, nor contributes to the global warming; its price is stable; its supply is permanent, and its economic potential is attractive. Although we still have the serious problem of where to dispose the nuclear waste, we could say that nuclear energy is something which could help us dealing with the problem for the years to come. Anything to stop the dizzy and harmful emission of fossil-fuel pollution to our biosphere. The nuclear energy could be a good “transitional technology” till we find something better and more sustainable. Yet if we are planning to look out for new technologies, do some copy/paste and, some years after, install a harmless and productive nuclear plant, I think that my reaction would be of horror and desperation, rather than of happiness and excitement.

Imagine if the government launched a nuclear energy program, championing its virtues and peculiarities, stating their intentions of nurturing the institutions and the culture necessary for its correct implementation, and asserting the bright future we have ahead of us. What should we think of this? Having in mind the way these subjects have been dealt with till now, could we really believe that Chile has made the great and that we are going toward a brighter future in terms of energy? Let’s be honest: it would mean a couple of plants here and there, conceived to feed an uneducated and bad-mannered monster (environmentally speaking), and presenting the same problems of sustainability as before, plus the constant risk of a nuclear catastrophe.

Nuclear energy and what else? A new and efficient environmental policy framework? An adequate legislation? The implementation of efficient energy technologies? The longed-for and relatively unknown effective education of the people? Finally, the main question is not about nuclear energy (or solar, or wind, etc.) but about the What else? It is about the path we have to follow; about the perspective that we should adopt; about what is really important and what is not. Before that, let’s put “the atoms” in our pockets, and let’s think of them as a possible (and attractive) future, because now we need to act. Time flies and the clock is ever-ticking against us, tic, tac, tic, tac.

Danilo Jara

Electrical Engineering Student

Translated by Pablo Saavedra

Have you ever thought of how your life will be once you graduate from college? Nowadays, our university is crowded with new students, and I bet many of them have something resembling a life plan. But you who think of future days to come, have you stopped for a moment to analyze the conditions and the consequences that this plan could have for you and for all the people and things that surround you?

Married with children, a house, a big backyard, a maid, a succesful job, a dog and vacations in exotic places. Clearly, all of this will have consequences in the future. Even the smallest things we do, which we consider absolutely normal, have strong consequences and are based on previous decisions. How many members will your future family have? How much will it cost to society a big and inneficient house plus the pool and the backyard? How many people have to fail so that one person can be considered succesful? How many people will be buried under the effects of the World Climate Change that affects all countries, whether rich or poor, and that are caused by the same airplanes that take us to our holiday destinations?

Do you think, even for one second, that all of this has nothing to do with politics? Do you consider yourself a person who doesn’t care about politics, or do you simply declare yourself apolitical? Even though for many people it may appear impossible, politics organizes and will continue organizing the more basic elements of our life to a great extent. And because we are talking about life, our environment and all the future ecosystems have and will continue playing a key role in the politics of this century.

Because worrying about the environment is not only about reciclyng or buying organic food. Taking care of our environment demands a concrete political action. It demands realizing that the economic model, to which we have given so much space and merit, is very detrimental to our environment, and consequently, very detrimental to us. To realize this we need to ponder. We need to look at our mistakes in order to correct them and thus, change our own lives. This change doesn’t neccesarily mean to diminish the quality of our lives. It means to question the current model of life quality, the desperate competition for success and possesion. A change that means to renewing the concepts of life and direction themselves. This may seem ambitious or imaginary, but what it really means is to fall out of love with power and keep on being political at the same time.

The new politics leads us to consider many things. First we must consider others and ourselves. We must think in different levels of consequences and we must be able to reach the goals we have in mind, leading an ethical life in the meantime. A life where what is best for me is also good for everybody else. Here is the key of the game, because we have to turn the board over and shake the normative interpretation of economists that say that we all look for the increase of our individual benefit in a game zero sum game; meaning that many people will have to lose so that I can suceed, in the best of all worlds possible.

We can’t be disillusioned young people, blaming heaven and earth  because we can’t find absolute truths. It is high time to update our everyday fights and understand how human we are through reflection and kindness. It is high time to give space to the green, to that which is alive, and to put an end on that race for fast and destroying development, whose only future leads us to the impotence of finding ourselves in a dead-end street.

Leonardo Valenzuela

Sociologist

Translated by Pablo Saavedra

It’s very hot in Ho Chi Minh City (ex Saigon). It is a suffocating heat, a common characteristic of the places near the Equator. In winter, the average temperature can reach 31 degrees celsius. The heat is sticky; everything is a mixture of sun, sweat and humidity. But Saigon isn’t only hot: also there are motorbikes in it, a awful lot of motorbikes. From the very moment you enter the city, guidebooks and information leaflets will let you know that you have reached “the mortorcycle city” (as time goes by, the visitor will understand that this assertion is literally 100% true). With a population of seven millions inhabitants, the city has around 4 million motorbikes.

For the newcomer, it would be interesting to notice that not only there as many bikes as ants in an ant’s nest. Add to the motorbikes the fact that there are no traffic lights, and no traffic regulation. Just by the end of 2007 a law was passed that makes it mandatory for motorbikers to use helmet and not to carry more than two adults and one child per vehicle.

It is also important for the tourist to learn how to navigate this sea of traffic. There is some kind of order, for sure, within this chaos, an order that follows the next principle (the rule of thumb for the survival of the traveller): the biggest and strongest go always first (or if you prefer, the law of the jungle). The size of the vehicle rules the streets. Therefore, first comes the bus or the truck, then cars, then bikes, and finally the pedestrian. So, crossing the street becomes quite a challenge (for those who are keen on adrenalin). If it is possible, it would be better to walk the city accompanied by someone from the area the first time. In fact, it is enough if you walk by his side and follow his steps. These would be short steps, but anyway you will be going foward. You have to trust that the cars and motorbikes will dodge you and whiz centimeters away from you, because this is what usually happens. You always have to turn your back on the situation, if it’s worth doing so. Then, the pedestrian will find himself finally crossing the street.

The previously-described system works in the same way in many cities around the southeast of Asia. But in Saigon, because of its size, it becomes a motorized monster that turns the streets into a place to be afraid of. Also, because of the lack of traffic of lights, drivers go for the horn. Due to the fact that everybody wants to go first at the same time, horns honking all day long have become the soundtrack of the city. Traffic jams are incredible. To move around the city can take hours.

In the last years, countries such as Vietnam have embraced the international market system. Though it is still a communist country, little by little capitalism is starting to pierce it, as a regime as well as an ideology, at all levels: social, political and economic. Motorbikes are an example of this. They are cheap (compared to cars) in relation to the current purchasing power of Vietnamese people. It is clear that these motorbikes are small and not high-quality. To get a motorbike in a city of seven million inhabitants, where everything is faster and faster everyday, and where there isn’t adequate infrastructure, has become a neccesity. Before, when they were only a few, as in Cambodia nowadays, they were no subject for discussion.

But what happens when a few motorbikes turn into thousands, into millions? The system used to work in the past. It had a logic behind it. If there are few motorbikes, they can go first and that’s it. It is true there are no traffic regulation, and no adequate infrastructure, but then they are not that neccesary. However, now that there are 4 million motorbikers and everyone wants to go first, the system has become chaotic, mad. It is impossible to drive around, and accidents are increasing everyday. The streets are covered by smog, and people are starting to use masks when driving and walking. Everybody pushing, everybody like little ants, everybody wants to go first. Thousand of horns, honking at the same time, all the time. This is the law of the jungle, of free and pure competition (with no restriction at all). This is the law of the strongest.

But motorbikes also symbolize something else, and they lead us to the core of one of the top subjects and problems of the modern world: the relation between human beings and the environment.The natural resources of our planet won’t last forever. Thus, the damage we are causing is alarming, whether we want it or not. And the model that dominates (call it market model, neoliberal model, or what you will) is simply not sustainable. It is a model that works just like the motorbikes in Vietnam, and that postulates that people have no relation with their environment at all. It also reveals the lack of thought regarding the consequences of individual actions. It’s no use considering this a spillover. This is not a market failure, but a consequence of an unregulated market, and of an excessive individualism.

I noticed the motorbikes in Vietnam because the case is similar to what is happening in the environmental realm. If we want to go first and we spend all the resources at the same time (in this particular case, the space itself, the street), we will end up living amidst a cloud of smoke and using all the space. The motorbiker thinks only of himself when buying a new motorbike, because he wants and needs to go first just like everybody else does. So every one of us is trying to ride the bike at the same time, without thinking about the consequences. It happened in the past, and is happening nowadays, regarding the environment. I don’t know if I would like to see our fascinating Planet Earth turned into big Saigon: a hot, noisy and smoky place, where the strongest and biggest go first, while the little people walk little steps trying not get run over by any vehicle, trying to reach the other sidewalk alive.

Colombina Schaeffer

Sociologist

Translated by Pablo Saavedra

If we separate the natural environment from the human system, we can see some elements that can be pigeonholed as absolute garbage, without any direct or potentially beneficial properties. The following scheme shows the interaction between the human system and the natural environment from a mechanistic and linear perspective.

Now, if we put ourselves in the picture, interacting with and depending on the environment, we have the following scheme:

In this case, garbage production affects us, because it generates no benefits for the natural-human system. This change of paradigm allows us to consider the application of some aspects of the natural system to the natural-human system, such as the matter cycles, that would reduce waste production and its negative impacts. Recycling is a clear example of this, for it has the following objectives: 1- to create resources from waste, 2- to reduce the volume of waste that goes to the garbage dump, 3- to decrease the extraction of new natural resources. In the current socio-economic paradigm, recycling in Chile is establishing itself as a serious business alternative, for it accomplishes objective 1, but taking the others two objectives only as positive externalities. But if we want to imitate a matter cycling function, such as the one found in nature, we have to focus on the whole system that operates across all the levels of the goods-production process. Unfortunately, our actual system is far from that kind of holistic point of view.

First, we have to choose what goods we want to produce. In a neoliberal economy, we let the market decide according to the desires of the consumers; because in the end, it is more important the satisfaction of our desires than our actual needs. It is what producers of goods are looking for: our desires. We can understand our needs as part of our desires. We can even think of them as our primary and more basic desires, but in an economy that looks to satisfy desires, the more ambitious desires of some people are satisfied while the basic needs of many remain are overlooked. To take the right decisions, we need to understand our needs and desires, and that’s not easy when they are influenced by the marketing system. The objective of marketing, which is highly invasive nowadays, is to influence the consumers to think in one way, and this could prevent us from taking a more rational and personal decision that would allow us to maximize our benefits (in broad terms and not only economic ones) or to use our resources more efficiently.

Then, after we have chosen what goods are to be produced, we have to select the methods of production. In general, the production systems try to minimize the company’s costs, without considering social and environmental costs. They are many examples of industries that comply with the minimum requirements of the environmental laws, and are just on the edge of illegality. Others are already incorporate eco-efficiency process in their line production, because in this way they can reduce costs and use the “green business” image. Finally, only a few industries choose social and environmentally friendly processes only because they are the right thing to do. For many, it will be necessary a law which forces them not to pollute a river or to treat their employees well, for it seems that ethics or common sense alone do not work when the market rules.

It is also an important issue the location of the production, as the more the distance between the product and the consumer,  the more fuel is spent on transportation (i.e. oil), and that brings private benefits but high social costs (the businesses that need transport are benefited, but we all pay by having more air pollution). Other location issues, such as the use of local resources and the global market, are too vast to discuss here.

Once the product arrives to the consumer, we have reached the utilization stage. It is usually only here where the consumer gives value to the goods. What happens before (production system, origin, raw materials), in many cases, is not important, and the consumer does not even question about the origin of the thing that he has bought. What matters is that it fulfills the function for which it is required. When a product is already used and becomes useless, it turns to trash; it no longer valuable and we try to get rid of it as soon as possible. Here we return to the beginning of our discussion, and when the reutilization and recycling solution come to play, but before we applied that solutions we need to change our concept of trash; we have to realize that our garbage can still have value and we must also realize the damage that it can create.

We can’t be concerned about things only when we use them and they are beneficial to us. We must be responsible for the effects that our trash has on the environment. So, we must ask ourselves how our actions affect the social and physical environment to which we belong. At a consumer’s level, we also can take actions to diminish the negatives consequences that the garbage production have on the environment. We, as buyers, have the power of demand, but to use it we have to avoid being manipulated by marketing and to try to take our own rational decisions beyond the individual and temporary benefits.

Robert Petitpas

Forest Engineer

I don’t consider myself someone who sticks to an ecological standpoint. Sometimes (more than once to be exact), I find it hard to understand the concept itself in all its depth and to take it out from a solely biological and environmental semantics. Thereby, the lens I use here is different. My aim is not to propose anything (I lack enough wit to do it), but to describe, and probably, to describe in a very negative way.

If we are wondering about our limitations regarding using and re-using our enviroment, I believe that first we should look for what is pushing us to the limits. We should look for that process that turned the world into codes, into a place not only more accesible but also in danger of becoming dominated at any time, and available to everybody’s desires of glory. Whether one is in favor or against this previous idea, I believe there is something nowadays which undermines completely the value of an ethical judgement on these topics, to wit: the imposibility of calculating human behavior rationally.

I can foresee the arguments against this last assertion, so I will try to explain it in few words. The “system”, “model”, “cage” or any name you like, has built its base on the possibility of calculating the consequences of human behavior rationally, using as paradigm the way market behaves. This means foreseeing the eventual losses or profits that could come as the result of choosing a specific invesment alternative. I would place the stress on the actual “impossibility” of rationally calculating the long-term consequences of an action which some people think can be defined as rational.

Modern theories, such as Chaos theory, have put the emphasis on the impossibility of finding an adequeate viewpoint from which to look at the chain of causalities that could result from a specific action. In broad terms, we don’t have real conscience (rationality) of the consequences that our present behaviour will have in the future. This idea prevents the possibility of any normative orientation, so we can’t know whether the consequences will be favorable or not, because as times goes by, we still don’t know when this chain of causalities will end.

Evidently, if we accepted this proposition, the consequences would not only be terrible for our social and economic order regarding the difficulty in stablishing and guarantying expectations, but they would also mean a complete change on the way we look at our acceptance of the criteria that bring us together as well as on the way we act today. One possible and overwhelming answer could be a total paralysis which would deny any rational point of view. Another not more encouraging but at least more plausible alternative could be accepting the limitations of our actions, which means giving up a specific type of ambition: believing that we can use all the elements of the enviroment freely (when I say all the elements, I’m referring to subjective as well as objective ones).

This alternative, that I borrow from Borges and that he borrowed from the Buddha, gives us the opportunity of thinking, at least for a moment, that each one of is the sum of all the other human beings who have lived in the past, are living today, and will live in the future. This is why the means available should be updated without ignoring the chain of infinite causalities that we must consider, not out of obligation but probably out of fear. I’m not talking about a constraining fear in a negative sense but a real conscience of our own limitations, which could at least let us dream about ways of overcoming them.

Progress, Development, Future, are nowadays slippery concepts; however, I don’t think that just accepting the risk and going forward with eyes wide shut is a real solution. My humble reflection aims at overcoming the mass motive of action, and the individualistic methods of defense. The sea of Arnal and the uncertainty of the “free world” should be enough to teach us all. I believe that we should change the measuring scale, not for a “human scale” (a ridiculous crying out from the heights of human oblivion) or a revival of the individual conception that seems to me stained with  too much normativity. We are human beings, born from other human beings, and future parents of generations to come. No more, no less.

Patricio Velasco

Sociologist

Translated by Pablo Saavedra

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