The Gringo Corridor

More than any other city I’ve lived in, Santiago feels like a living being. That’s not necessarily a good thing: Often I feel like it’s working in opposition to me.

When you’re a “norteamericano” like me, Santiago is always pushing you down its Gringo Corridor. Need to change money or renew your visa? Go downtown, or to Providencia. Walk down Avenida 11 de Septiembre, named by Pinochet to celebrate the day of the military coup in 1973. Nothing you need could possibly be in the blonde-free zones of Lo Espejo, Pudahuel, or Maipu. Even in middle-class Nunoa, I discover that I can’t get an apartment without buying my own stove or refrigerator. For “extranjeros”, I’m told, Providencia and Las Condes are easier, with their high-rises multiplying like shiny hairs on Santiago’s head. Some days I push up against Santiago and try to resist. Other days I give up and walk the same path I’ve traveled too many times already.

I know that the Gringo Corridor is part of the legacy of dictatorship: Pinochet actively consolidated the slums to keep them under police control, and during his rule new oases of wealth also appeared. Santiago became a city of invisible walls. Left-leaning friends are always telling me how much better this city was before Pinochet: less traffic, less smog to block the view of the mountains, the people friendlier and less depressed. They’ve even told me the food had more flavor—don’t tease me, I say! If everything they said were true, pre-coup Santiago was a socialist Disneyland. But something doesn’t add up.

That’s the problem: I feel like I’m being lied to on every side. Pinochet’s Gringo Corridor is a lie Chile has maintained even in democracy, to convince foreign investors (and Chileans themselves) that everything’s moving forward, forward, forward. But nostalgia is a lie too—a lie that makes its teller only seem more lonely.

I’m determined to keep pushing against the lies, and against Santiago, until I get through the curtains to the truth—or, more likely, to a city of different truths hiding below, or through, or past this city of lies.

posted by Adam at 6:16 PM [edit]