False Advertising

What's behind this frenzied yearning to whitewash Chile? Is it inept but well-intentioned journalism by yanquis too far away to know the real story? Is it forgivable ignorance about a small, relatively unimportant Latin nation that causes these journalist-typists to accept whatever "news" makes it out of here, like Chile is on the rise, socialism is robust and the vast middle class have now become intelligent, naturally-blonde consumers and the last wisps of smog are being blown out of clean-air Santiago?

Reading Matthew Walters article today's Bloomberg, titled Chile, Seeking First World Status, Tackles Santiago River Mess, one would think so. A happy-go-lucky Gringo, ignorant yet optimistic. Except he doesn't pull it off that well. Matthew Walters lives in Santiago.

His article is about the Mapocho River, Santiago's Seine, or River Thames except here it's a sewage drain. According to Walters, Chile's troubled past is, well, past and environmental qualms are quickly on their way out. Santiago is becoming livable, open for business. It's a nakedly pro-development puff piece, and naturally the smog must be addressed. Mr. Walter's treatment of this delicate subject is ingenious. Hit it, Matt:

Bolstered by a more than sixfold increase in copper prices during the past five years, the government has awarded billions of dollars in contracts to improve the flow of traffic and cut pollution in Santiago, the smog-bound capital of 6 million in the shadow of the Andes Mountains that is known for its slums and smoke-spewing diesel buses.

In February, the city inaugurated its first centrally operated transit system, which, despite some start-up glitches, put new, pollution-cutting buses on the roads.

Start up Glitches!? Transantiago is now a world famous transportation catastrophe that has increased smog by putting more cars on the streets! An old man got smothered to death in the over-crowded metro, because of Transantiago. And even if Transantiago had worked, it would have reduced smog by 5%. But according to a recent editorial in La Tercera, car and truck emissions cause about 50% of smog in Santiago. And there are absolutely NO other initiatives to combat emissions, besides these billions flushed into failure.

So yes, you're right Mr. Walters. Transantiago has put more non-polluting buses on the streets. That is a Fact, an Almighty Fact. But your article was on Livability in Santiago. And that's how you treated smog? You conveniently fail to mention that smog reached its highest levels since 1999 last weekend! Boy I'd hate to base my relocation decisions on Bloomberg!

But then again, maybe it's not so bad. Business minded folk tend to live in neighborhoods like Las Condes, La Dehesa, Apoquindo, Vitacura, El Golf. Named after the golf course. Clean air. The cordillera. The brilliance of modernity -- they're the minority.

But seek and you shall find. I know the Rule is to first assume ineptitude -- not malicious design -- when something is gotten wrong. But in my casual perusal, so many stories about Chile the in business minded, white-washing North American press have been gotten wrong that I've developed a nagging suspicion: it's more than just lazy journalism which is drowning out the truth about Chile.

It's because cause of South America is not lost, just flailing, and 1st World capitalists who thrive on speculation search relentlessly for a bright and shining star to pin their hopes on. And when they can't find it, they turn to Chile. It's dull, smog stricken, poverty entrenched, unjust, exploitative and corrupt. But to big business, it's the best that South America has got.

So shining star or not, big business will make it happen, and the typists will type away. They'll lie, broadly and indiscriminately, with thick, wet, white brush strokes, paint that sparkles in the sun, pungent-smelling like progress, it's no shining Star, but it's good enough for them!

Brush strokes up and down the pickets of Chile's poor and underprivileged. Dead babies, increased asthma, cancer, higher geriatric mortality caused by smog, which proportionally thickens as the income bracket drops, overcrowded prisons, abysmal reproductive rights, religious parliamentary moves to eliminate all forms of contraception, massive imprisonment of Mapuche Indians, grocery store clerks who wear diapers because their supervisors won't allow them even 10 minute bathroom breaks. That's Chile! (At least, the Chile this Chile blog hopes to reveal).

But nobody needs to be reminded that the markets don't care about people. And so the markets will paint white whatever needs to be painted white. They'll even say that livability encourages more foreign companies relocating in Chile, and that those companies will magically reduce poverty, because, as we all know, outsourcing to third world nations is an altruistic movement in the U.S. paralleled only by the Peace Corps, and the wages they're doling out are magnificent.

After all, it doesn't take much to free yourself from the clutches of poverty in Chile.