Night Before New Years Eve

Saturday night was strangely quiet. It was as if all the neighbors, and all Chile was preserving its chi for the following day, the explosion of 2007 eve. It was a cool, windswept summer evening in Santiago and after dinner we decided to walk around the barrio, and see something really neat. But as we got closer, I got nervous. Something neat was in a pretty sketchy zone.

The street was so narrow it could only fit one car at a time, on each side were adobe houses squished together, distinguishable only by their color. From the tops of the houses, a zigzagging string crossed the street, back and forth, endlessly. From it dangled strips of multi-colored Mylar that glittered for blocks on into the orange night, as far as the eye could see. Without daylight, the streetlights nonetheless dazzled their dancing reflectors, gusts of wind accentuating their sparkling brilliance of silver, deep burgundy and outer space blue.

I didn’t dare take out my camera lest I get caught up in a South American escapade through the sordid slums of dangerous cement, chased by a rogue band of knife brandishing youth moving to the pulse of Reggaetón. That's a stereotype. In fact the scene did seem pretty mellow. A door was left open revealing an intimately lit room plastered with iconic, peeling images of Catholic saints. Two young girls sat on a curb, their bare legs shooting out into the street, they talked to a middle aged woman in a blue floral dress who sat on a chair, facing them. Further up on a corner, 16 teenagers, boys and girls hanging out, drinking. Reggaeton sprinkling out from somewhere. I decided not to reveal the camera.

I came back to see what it looked like in the daylight, and when I would feel safer, as well.


"Colder, colder, colder...warmer, warmer, warmer..." Two little boys were gradually amidst us. They weren't so dangerous. They were friendly and fun.