Defensa Animal

Someone once accused my blog of "approximating natural inferiority arguments". Worth mentioning, though, that this same Someone also once, in conversation, jocularly referred to Pinochet's military coup as "animal cruelty".

I'm sure he meant it affectionately. And so if anyone can come up with any hard evidence (a good thing for a future investigative journalist) that I have ever referred to Chileans as a sub-species, I assure you I only meant it affectionately, too. And I won't take it back. Not until certain Chileans take back their hundreds of references to me as perrito and, recently befitting my storybook-like-cabin-in-the-woods existence, oso.

All of which...somehow...brings us to today's topic: Defensa Animal, a veritable Specter on the streets of Santiago, that leaves signs of a noble cause stenciled on cement, disturbing images that certainly give pause,


...to comical personifications of cows-as-animal-rights-activists, (the picket signs read "No Rodeo").


And their logo, a lethal, masked guerrilla holding a defenseless little dog, protecting it. A Robin Hood of violence. Or something that strangely epitomizes the Chilean spirit: combative, fierce, serious and hopelessly tender.


I approached some animal rights protesters outside the Universidad Católica, which apparently does animal testing, in Santiago Centro.



The two animal rights activists featured, Gabriela and Felipe, told me they're not really with Defensa Animal; they're just a nameless group that comes and protests every week.

The university's tsk-tsk response seemed to have a "weekly" feel to it as well:


Throughout the world animal rights activists stick up for animals. Among humans, however, do-gooders from "developed nations" often travel to poorer nations. When left unquestioned, however, this can easily fall into the same colonialist patterns as the do-wellers who came before them and those who continue to exploit. I think this has something to do with the term, LatinAmericanism, which from a citation in the book Witness and Memory I understand to mean:

"implicit sympathy for the material plight of the people in whose country they do research provides the moral justification of their work," and as yet another "attempt to position the European in a superior relation to a non-European people and culture".

Which leaves me with one question: can a Chilean be an Animalaricanist?