daveschile.com always ends the year leaving loose ends, lots of loose ends. 2018 was no exception. Loose ends result from the eclectic, sporadic nature of this blog, and because life produces events and associations that ebb and flow over time. To go back, tie up
Pope Francisco just visited Chile. As you might expect of an Argentine trying to provide spiritual guidance and comfort to Chileans, he made a couple of missteps and was only mildly well received.However, he did hit the proverbial nail on the head when he invoked
One night several years ago Luz Celia Lienqueo Castillo had a peuma…a type of dream the Mapuche believe is not just a vision but a type of premonition that must come true. Luz’s peuma described in great detail the small piece of land she was
About a year ago Pilar, the psychologist I met in Dichato where she is involved in community recovery programs with the most affected of the 2010 tsunami victims, told me “In ten years Dichato will be reinvented, more attractive than ever and with better services for
There was a chance that Michelle Bachelet would win Chile’s Presidential election outright in the November 17 round of voting. In fact there was mention of an election “tsunami” from within her Nueva Mayoría team of advisors, who, besides running what most observers term an
It was a little over three years ago that my plan to spend a night in the small, tidy coastal village of Dichato was frustrated when I decided instead to continue on to a hotel a few kilometers further south in Chile’s third largest city, Concepción. What transpired that night
Three years ago the outgoing President of Chile, Michele Bachelet, left the presidency, left Chile, and left behind a disaster not of her doing but one that challenged her country’s capacity, and her own, to prepare for, respond to, and recover from natural disasters to
“The New Coastal Panorama of Maule”, reads the title of the article in El Mercurio’s Vivienda Y Decoración magazine section that greeted us the day we arrived in Chile. Beautiful pictures of architecturally interesting buildings situated right at water’s edge in the small fishing villages
“We are never satisfied with a response to a disaster, because it is, after all, a disaster”.* To retrace the route I took alone about a year ago, the day before the earthquake, Gerry and I left Dichato, drove inland a bit through Coelemu and
“We are never satisfied with a response to a disaster, because it is, after all, a disaster”.* Driving down the Pan-American highway across the Maipo Valley, as you leave the snarl and smog-producing Santiago traffic, you can’t help but feel the tension release from the